Researchers Have Discovered 2 New Dementia Risk Factors. Here’s What They Are.

In 2020, these same researchers determined 12 modifiable risk factors that are known to put folks at higher risk of developing dementia. These are:

1. Physical inactivity
2. Smoking
3. Excessive alcohol consumption
4. Air pollution
5. Head injury
6. Infrequent social contact
7. Less education
8. Obesity
9. Hypertension
10. Diabetes
11. Depression
12. Hearing impairment

According to the report, these 12 factors, along with the two new ones, account for 49% of dementia cases across the world. Researchers determined these two new risk factors by looking at recent meta-analyses and studies on the topics; they looked at 14 papers on vision loss and 27 on high cholesterol. 

“It makes a lot of mechanistic sense,” said Dr. Arman Fesharaki-Zadeh, a behavioral neurologist and neuropsychiatrist at Yale Medicine in Connecticut. “A lot of these factors are very much interrelated.” (Fesharaki-Zadeh is not affiliated with the report.)

“There are many sources of vision loss, of course, but it tends to be a lot more common in folks who have metabolic risk factors such as high blood pressure, such as poorly controlled diabetes, such as high cholesterol, which is the other risk factor [identified in the report],” he said.

Moreover, vision is our primary sensory organ — it’s how we process the world around us — and when you can’t see clearly, you’re less likely to spend time doing brain-boosting activities like puzzles, reading or even spending time with other people, said Fesharaki-Zadeh. And these activities are known to help prevent dementia.

When it comes to high LDL cholesterol (the so-called bad cholesterol), it can lead to the hardening of the blood vessels in the heart and brain, Fesharaki-Zadeh said, adding that high blood pressure and uncontrolled diabetes also affect the blood vessels.

This can make it more difficult for oxygen to get to the brain, which over time can lead to neuron damage — “and dementia is essentially an end product of the neurons dying out, so it’s a neurodegenerative process,” Fesharaki-Zadeh explained.

“I can’t tell you how often I see in our patient populations, especially folks above the age of 60, there are certain parts of the brain that are more vulnerable to damage … and these are the areas that are especially vulnerable to hardening of blood vessels. Someone who has … high cholesterol, the correlation between that and hardening of blood vessels is quite high, and we see it in our clinical setting very frequently as well.”

“The saying that I like to use with patients quite often is what affects your heart will affect your brain, and we see that time and time again,” the doctor said.

You can lower your risk. First, have a good medical team and primary care doctor.