We’re winning the fight against dementia, one battle at a time.
Bruce Willis has it.
So did the singer Tony Bennett, the actor Gene Wilder, the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson and the author E.B. White. So did Rosa Parks, and Ronald Reagan. And so do millions of others around the world.
More than 7 million people over age 65 are living with this disease in the U.S. alone.
The disease in question is dementia. Or, I should say, diseases, plural — because in addition to the well-known Alzheimer’s, there are a variety of others, including frontal-lobe dementias — such as the one taking Willis — and many others.
So here is some good news (rare enough these days, it seems): Quietly, and piece by piece, we are winning the war against dementia. The war, it seems, will not be won by a single dramatic stroke, but by hundreds, maybe thousands, of individual battles. Some are small; some, not so much.
In some absolutely astounding news, scientists conducting a long-term study have found that certain, very simple “brain-training” exercises — you can do them on your phone — can cut your risk of dementia by as much as 25% over a 20-year period.
The 25% figure is amazing, but maybe even more so is the 20-year period. Oftentimes, studies find a certain activity or diet seems to lower the risk of dementia, but only during a follow-up period of five or maybe 10 years. Twenty years is serious.
The latest report is written by 12 medical researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, Brown University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Florida, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the University of Washington. It is based on a study of just over 2,000 elderly people as part of the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) study. The follow-up data came from Medicare records.
In a nutshell, those with a 25% lower risk of dementia than anyone else had two key characteristics: First, at the start of the program, in the early 2000s, they had up to 10 individual sessions, each lasting 60 to 75 minutes, when they took part in exercises designed to train their brains to perform cognitive processing more quickly. Second, about one to three years later, they took part in up to four more “booster” sessions of the same exercises.
The particular exercise, described as “speed training,” is part of a package that were sold to a San Francisco-based company called Posit Science. (One of the 12, who was one of the creators of the program, discloses that she still holds shares. The other 11 do not.) They are now sold as an app called BrainHQ.
I spoke to Posit Science CEO Henry Mahncke. As BrainHQ involves scores of different exercises, he directed me to the particular one, called Double Decision, that he says was developed from the original speed-training exercise used in the study. It tests your visual memory, but — crucially — the tests speed up each time you succeed at one.
The authors of the latest ACTIVE study declined to talk to me because I was talking to Mahncke, and they figured that, as scientists, they shouldn’t be involved directly in an article that might sound like it was promoting somebody’s business. I can understand that. On the other hand, like most readers, my main concern is not with theory, but with understanding what we can do differently to minimize our own risk of getting dementia, and the risks of people we care about. Frankly, I was more interested in the app than I was in the scientists.
I’ve subscribed to BrainHQ — it will cost me about $100 a year — and I will see how it goes.
The latest research is not the first to argue that brain training may help lower the risk of dementia. Mahncke, whose own Ph.D. was in the study of the so-called plasticity of the human brain — meaning its ability to change — argues there are “literally hundreds” of research studies supporting the benefits of brain-training exercises.
I’ve spoken to scientists who were skeptical about the benefits of brain training. As one said, scientists weren’t sure if doing Sudoku helped you do anything better except Sudoku. (The one thing they agree on, though, is the importance of exercise and general physical health.)
But the weight of logic is with the optimists. Why?
First, scientists, by definition, don’t believe anything until it’s proven, and these things are often almost impossible to prove in the real world. So their skepticism, while important, needs to be taken in context.
Second, we already know that the brain is “plastic,” meaning it rewires itself. For example, licensed taxi drivers in London, who are required to pass an exam memorizing pretty much the entire road system of the English capital, have been shown to develop physically different brains from the rest of us. Their brains change, both while studying and then while driving. So once we accept that the brain rewires itself actively, and changes even while we are adults, the argument that brain training can make and keep your brain healthier becomes highly plausible.
Third, and most importantly, is the logical argument sometimes known as Pascal’s wager. If we don’t know for certain whether brain training can lower the risk of dementia, but it might just, then why wouldn’t we do it? The cost is minimal, and the potential gains enormous.
This isn’t specifically about this particular app, I should add. It’s about anything and everything that might reduce our risk of getting dementia.
Medical experts now believe that nearly half of all dementias can be avoided or significantly delayed by things we can do ourselves. That’s the latest finding of the dementia commission of the Lancet medical journal.
The steps we can take, they say, include losing weight so that we are no longer clinically obese, giving up smoking, cutting down alcohol consumption or ending it altogether, taking more exercise, lowering our blood pressure, wearing hearing aids when our hearing starts to fail, staying socially active and avoiding isolation.
And eating right: There is a growing body of evidence that eating a so-called Mediterranean diet may dramatically lower your risk of dementia. That typically means lots of fish, nuts, leafy greens, whole grains and healthy oils, like olive oil.
Berries, tea and apples may also help. And a fascinating new study suggests a correlation between people eating full-fat cheese and a lower risk of dementia.
In recent years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved drugs that can avert symptoms like memory loss. And new research says drinking coffee may also help.
But maybe it’s more important what we don’t eat. The typical “Western” diet, involving lots of refined carbs and the like, may be a risk factor in dementia.
Scientific studies are still underway. Scientists are learning new things about these terrible diseases pretty much every month. It’s a reasonable bet that some of the developments that seem hopeful will turn out to be a bust.
But some, a growing number, are showing benefits. And if you eat better foods, go for more walks, drink tea, do crossword puzzles and engage in some brain training, what’s the worst that could happen?