LOS ANGELES, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Adopting a healthy lifestyle can not only keep one's body fit but promote brain health, with one study indicating an approximately 60-percent reduced risk of dementia, studies presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) 2019 have shown.
"While there is no proven cure or treatment for Alzheimer's, a large body of research now strongly suggests that combining healthy habits promotes good brain health and reduces your risk of cognitive decline," said Maria C. Carrillo, chief science officer of Alzheimer's Association, in a press release published during the conference held in Los Angeles this week.
"The research reported today at AAIC gives us attainable, actionable recommendations that can help us all live a healthier life," Carrillo said.
Researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago focused on five low-risk lifestyle factors, including healthy diet, at least 150 minutes per week of moderate to vigorous physical activities, not smoking, light to moderate alcohol intake, and engaging in cognitive stimulating activities.
After several years of follow-up studies on about 2,300 participants chosen from two U.S. databases, they discovered that people who adopted four or five low-risk lifestyle factors had about 60-percent lower risk of Alzheimer's when compared with those who did not follow any or only one of the healthy living factors, according to the conference press release.
They also found that the risk of Alzheimer's dementia dropped by an additional 22 percent for participants who adopted one more low-risk lifestyle factor, regardless of their current number of healthy lifestyle factors.
A separate study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, suggested that compared with non-smokers, "heavy stable" smokers were 1.5 to 2.2 times more likely to have cognitive impairment, while "quitter" and "minimal stable" smokers did not have an increased risk.
They also found people who smoked a pack a day for more than 10 years was associated with poor cognitive function, and the adverse effect was observed among smokers as young as in their 40s.
Last but not least, healthy lifestyle may also offset genetic and environmental risks of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, according to other studies presented at the conference.
Using data from 196,383 adults of European ancestry aged 60 and older from UK Biobank, the team led by Elzbieta Kuzma, a research fellow at the University of Exeter Medical School, found that participants with high genetic risk and an unfavorable lifestyle were almost three times more likely to develop dementia compared with those with a low genetic risk and favorable lifestyle.
Among those with a high genetic dementia risk, participants who followed a favorable lifestyle is 32 percent less likely to develop dementia than those with a poor lifestyle.
"This research is exciting in that it shows there are actionable things we can do to try to counteract genetic risk for dementia," said Kuzma.
