People with type 2 diabetes may be at increased risk of dementia.Researchers are still working to understand how lifestyle factors can affect dementia risk. Data from a recent study indicates that people with type 2 diabetes have a lower risk of dementia if they practice certain healthy lifestyle choices.
Dementia is a chronic condition that can be debilitating. Since there is no cure for dementia, people often wonder what steps they can take to reduce their risk of developing dementia. A recent study published in Neurology found that for people with diabetes, incorporating certain healthy lifestyle habits was associated with a lower risk of developing dementia.
Dementia is a broad term for disorders that affect a person’s ability to remember, think, and reason. It usually becomes more severe over time and can significantly interfere with a person’s daily life and ability to live independently.
Some risk factors for dementia cannot be changed, such as increasing age or family history. However, people can modify other risk factors to reduce risk. For example, smoking, obesity, and excessive alcohol use are risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
Having diabetes is also a risk factor for dementia, particularly type 2 diabetes. People with diabetes can work with their doctors to manage their condition and improve their health. Research is ongoing on how healthy lifestyle changes can improve conditions like diabetes and reduce the risk of dementia.
Researchers in this current study examined how seven healthy lifestyle habits affected dementia risk. They looked at how these habits helped people with and without diabetes. Habits included:
The researchers used the UK Biobank in their data collection. They included participants who were 60 years of age or older without dementia at the start of the study. They specifically excluded people with type 1 diabetes from the data collection so they could focus on people with type 2 diabetes.
The researchers assigned the participants a healthy lifestyle score based on the above seven behavioral factors. Each category had a definition of what the researchers classified as healthy. For example, someone was classified as regularly physically active if they had “at least 150 minutes per week of moderate activity or 75 minutes per week of vigorous activity, or an equivalent combination.”
The study included more than 160,000 participants, including more than 12,000 with diabetes. The researchers followed the participants for an average of 12 years. They found that healthy lifestyle factors were associated with a lower risk of developing dementia. But this risk reduction was even more pronounced among participants with diabetes.
Study author Dr. Yingli Lu, Ph.D., of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in China, told Medical News Today:
“Our findings highlight that although patients with diabetes are at increased risk of developing dementia later in life compared to those without, adherence to an overall healthy lifestyle can greatly reduce this risk.”
Jeroen Mahieu, Ph.D., an author who is not part of the study and an Alzheimer’s disease researcher, told MNT:
“The most important finding of this study is that adhering to a healthy lifestyle substantially reduces the risk of developing dementia for patients with diabetes; significantly more than when you don’t have diabetes. This is important given the higher prevalence of dementia among diabetic patients. However, due to the nature of the data and the research design, we should be cautious in interpreting these effects as causal.”
The study indicates that incorporating healthy lifestyle habits can lower the risk of dementia, particularly among people with diabetes. However, the study also had several limitations.
First, information on lifestyle behaviors was self-reported, which increased the risk of errors in data collection. Second, the researchers collected lifestyle factor data at baseline and collected data on lifestyle factor changes. The study did not collect data on participants’ lifestyle factors before they developed diabetes.
The researchers also noted that participants who had to exclude based on missing data were more likely to have lower education and socioeconomic status, which may have affected the results. Based on the data collection methods, the research team acknowledged that they might have misclassified participants with diabetes or prediabetes as non-diabetics.
Furthermore, although several confounders, such as medication use, were adjusted for, the authors acknowledged that there could be unknown or unmeasured factors that were not accounted for. The study also included mainly Caucasian participants, indicating that more diverse studies will be needed in the future.
However, the study adds to a growing body of data on how lifestyle choices influence health. Dr. Lu explained to MNT:
“Our data may have important implications for physicians and other medical professionals treating people with diabetes. [They] they should consider recommending lifestyle changes to their patients. Such changes may not only improve overall health, but also help prevent or delay the onset of dementia in people with diabetes. Future research is needed to determine how combined healthy lifestyle behaviors benefit cognitive outcomes in diabetes and possible mechanisms.”
Source: news.google.com