Health Behavior Change to Mitigate Dementia Risk: An Updated Review

Over the past two decades, we have become increasingly aware of the impact of health behaviors on risk for dementia and, more specifically, Alzheimer’s disease. This concept was stressed in the 2020 Report of the Lancet Commission, which demonstrated that up to 40% of dementia cases could be mitigated by behavior change alone. Though there are several psychosocial and health factors associated with increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease, health behaviors that appear particularly worthwhile for reducing risk include adherence to healthy diet, remaining physically active, and engaging in cognitively stimulating endeavors.

The present review provides a general summary of what has been learned from observational and controlled studies examining the roles of these behaviors on cognitive outcomes, including risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

Though this line of research has largely confirmed the importance of integrating health behaviors to promote cognitive outcomes, some constraints inherent to intervention research (i.e., time restrictions, variable adherence, reduced generalizability) have limited conclusions. As such, many questions regarding the impact of health behaviors on Alzheimer’s disease risk remain.

Future research on these topics should integrate tailored interventions that consider individual factors that appear to impact the effectiveness of health behavior change on dementia risk (i.e., age, sex, culture, access to resources) and influence engagement in health behaviors during and after interventions (i.e., health beliefs).