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Most people know what steps they can take to reduce their risk of heart disease and cancer. Choosing your diet carefully, exercising, and quitting all demonstrated that they reduce the risk of these diseases.
But when it comes to dementia – including dementia related to Alzheimer's disease – scientists have not found many concrete steps to reduce their risk. Genes play an important role in the development of dementia, especially Alzheimer's disease, and age is also a dominant factor in degenerative brain disorders, but none is under human control .
In a presentation at the annual Alzheimer's Chicago meeting, researchers report some of the most encouraging evidence yet for a risk factor that people may be able to control to reduce their risk of dementia: their blood pressure. In an extension of the SPRINT study that examined how low blood pressure could prevent heart disease, scientists also found that low blood pressure is linked to a lower risk of dementia.
TIME Health Newsletter
In the study SPRINT Memory and Cognition in the Reduction of Hypertension (SPRINT-MIND), over 9,300 older people having had heart problems or at a higher risk of developing a Heart disease was randomized to lower their blood pressure. less than 120 mmHg or 140 mmHg systolic. (The current guidelines, revised in 2017 after the start of the study, now recommend that most people maintain blood pressure or systolic blood pressure under 130mmHg.) People who have lowered their blood pressure to less than 120mmHg have decreased their cognitive risk slightly. , the gateway to dementia, or likely dementia by 15%, compared to people who lowered their blood pressure to 140mmHg.
"Controlling blood pressure is not only good for the heart, but good for the brain," head of geriatric medicine at the Wake Forest School of Medicine, and one of the leading investigators of the trial. "It's the first intervention of any kind that has been proven in a randomized controlled trial to reduce the risk of mild cognitive impairment."
Williamson notes that the study did not confirm that lowering blood pressure can reduce the risk of dementia, but this may be because dementia is taking longer to develop as the MCI, and the study only followed five years on average – long enough to detect probable dementia but not necessarily dementia, which may take longer to develop
The first once scientists have found something that can reduce the risk of MCI in a rigorous and randomized controlled trial, and that could help reduce the number of people who could be affected by MCI and even dementia in the coming decades. "It really encourages people to say, yes, make sure your blood pressure is well controlled, because that's one of the things you can do to prevent mild cognitive impairment. And this opens the door to testing more interventions. "
" It's a very big problem, "says Maria Carillo, chief scientist at the Alzheimer's Association." Now, we have evidence that lowering blood pressure is also related to brain health. Before, it was strongly suggested, but we now know from one study that it can make a difference. "
For those who participated in the study, like Margaret Daffodil Graham of 74 years of North Carolina, the results are welcome relief." Having been diagnosed with hypertension then she was in her thirties, Graham has been taking medication to control her blood pressure since She joined the study to make sure her blood pressure was monitored and under control, and she is rebadured that it can keep her brain intact. "My thing is, do not take my head," she says. "Just let my mind be in agreement. I can deal with the failure of my body, but without your mind, there is nothing. So, I do what I have to do to keep my body in shape and, I hope, not lose my head.
As part of his diet to control his blood pressure, Graham goes on long walks. makes regular trips to the local YMCA for weight training to maintain muscle strength.
For people like Graham, the study could make a difference by reducing their risk of developing dementia in the coming years. Williamson says that the Alzheimer's field has been frustrated in recent years by disappointing studies of new drugs that doctors hoped would be the first to treat the disease and slow down or even reverse the damage to the brain nerves that cause memory loss, disorientation and other problems. superior thinking skills. The possibility that lowering blood pressure, which people can control, could reduce the risk of developing dementia and even Alzheimer's disease is potentially revolutionary.
Another study, published in Neurology a week earlier, argued that control of blood pressure can affect dementia. In this study, researchers at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center found that people with high blood pressure tended to have more brain damage, or areas of dead brain tissue, which lost their blood, as well as entanglements of tau proteins. Alzheimer's, which the researchers found when they performed autopsies on the participants.
These data, combined with the latest test results, support the idea that blood pressure control can be a way of slowing the deterioration of the brain that can lead to dementia and even disease. 39; Alzheimer. "I like to illustrate the idea to my patients with the badogy of the air pressure in our tires," Williamson explains. "You do not want to have too low or too high pressure, otherwise you will damage the tires.The same goes for blood pressure; Over time, high blood pressure can damage the walls of very fragile arteries that transmit blood to the brain and other organs and this can produce some of the things we see badociated with dementia – inflammation and small strokes
More research needs to be done to explore the connection, All the more so as the study volunteers all have a history of heart problems – it is unclear to what extent the results are generalizable to people who do not have any other problems. may be high blood pressure, but the results are an encouraging sign that, ultimately, there may be something that people can do to help their brains, their body and their dementia
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