inc.com Want a Better Brain as You Get Older? Neuroscience Says Stay Far Away From These 3 Things Bill Murphy Jr. 5–6 minutes

Sometimes I go to write an article for Inc.com, and I find a really interesting story or a study to think about, and then I catch a weird detail that stops me in my tracks.

That’s what happened tonight. I saw that researchers at NYU Langone Health had dug into data from more than 12,000 people to see how many wound up developing dementia later in life—and then correlated that unfortunate outcome with some of their conditions and choices in middle age.

We’ll get to the three things they found were associated with significantly fewer dementia-free years shortly. For now, let me explain the part the track-stopping part.

It’s that when I look in the mirror, the version of myself I see is almost exactly the same version I saw when I was about 25 years old. The only difference is that that my mix of red and brown hair was replaced by a mix of red and brown and blonde and gray.

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Fair enough, I suppose, since I’m literally a bit over twice the age that I was then; my point is that I still feel young.

But then I realized the average age of the participants when the NYU Langone Health researchers assessed these midlife risk factors.

Reader, it was 56. I’m 55. Wait: Dementia? In young people my age?

I don’t mean to joke, except for the fact that sometimes the only way to deal with absolute unbridled horror is to stare it in the face and laugh.

Still, I can joke and be serious at the same time, so I went straight to the three conditions and choices the good people at NYU Langone Health said mattered.

They are, in order:

High blood pressure.
Diabetes.
And smoking between ages 48 and 68.

Fortunately, I can say “no” to all three.

Caveats from the folks at NYU Langone Health: They did not designe their study to actually prove that avoiding these risk factors caused dementia-free years. Also, they measured the risk factors only once.

Still, while I can’t quite say “doing X made Y less likely,” this seems to be a good opportunity to humblebrag that I’ve focusd for the last three years or so on health and habits, to the point that I dropped all the Covid-era weight I was carrying and became a bit of a gym rat.

I feel like it’s maybe a badge of honor at age 55 to have spent so much time at the gym that you get tendinitis in your shoulders to the point that a doctor shoots you up with cortisone and tells you, “Maybe skip the weights for a week or two and let your body heal.”

As for smoking—lucky for me, I’ve never really been a smoker.

Continuing my humblebragging, the last time I smoked at all was when I was a reporter in Iraq.

This was when I realized that being the guy with a pack of Marlboros to share created opportunity after opportunity to strike up conversations with American soldiers.

(I suppose the fact that I was old enough to be covering an overseas shooting war that ended in 2011 starts to date me, even if I hadn’t disclosed my age already in this article.)

Anyway, let’s go to the context provided by study senior investigator Josef Coresh, MD, PhD, founding director of the Optimal Aging Institute, which also contained the part that got my attention:

“Our findings argue that people need to actively avert these factors in midlife as a strategy for preserving brain health for more than a decade. Discovering new ways to delay dementia is crucial with 42 percent of Americans at risk for developing the condition at any time after age 55.”

Sheesh, 55. They also found that women generally live longer without dementia than men and that, statistically speaking, White study participants had more dementia-free years than Black participants.

The researchers published their study online in Neurology Open Access on August 5.

“These results suggest that vascular risk reduction may benefit all groups, but that certain populations, such as Black adults, may especially benefit from targeted prevention efforts,” Dr. Coresh added. “Hopefully, these results will encourage people to stop smoking and watch their vascular health closely from age 48 on.”

I don’t want to worry anyone unnecessarily. But, if you’re reading this and you’re also a proud member of Gen X, maybe getting stopped in your tracks for a bit isn’t a bad thing.

Oh, and apropos of nothing: Your hair looks awesome with the blonde and gray.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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