Think POSITIVE, CHILL OUT: Decrease Dementia Risk !

  Older people who hold positive beliefs about old age from their culture are less likely to develop dementia. Further, people with APOE4 (associated with a genetic increased risk of Alzheimer's) with positive age beliefs are 49.8% less likely to develop dementia than those with negative cultural beliefs. 
  Therefore, positive age beliefs (a modifiable thing) reduces stress and can be neuro-protective.
PLoS One. 2018 Feb 7;13(2):e0191004

Action Video Games to Boost Brain Power : NOPE

  Researchers in Montreal found that habitual players of action video games have less gray matter in their hippocampus (a part of the brain that regulates emotions and is associated with long-term memory and spatial navigation).
  The greater the hippocampal atrophy the greater the risk of Alzheimer's disease as well as depression, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder.
 Interestingly, researchers found that 90 hours of playing action video games (Call of Duty, Killzone, and Borderlands 2) led to hippocampal atrophy (shrinkage) while 90 hours of playing 3D-platform video games led to an INCREASE in gray matter within the hippocampus.
Mol Psychiatry. 2017 Aug 8

Alzheimer's Prevention: The Latest Recommendations

  From the recent report of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine come general recommendations.
  Cognitive Training: there is currently no evidence to support a conclusion that cognitive training can prevent or delay mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's.
  Hypertension: manage blood pressure in those with hypertension (particularly in mid-life i.e.. 35-65) to prevent, delay or slow the progression of Alzheimer's.
  Physical activity: studies fail to demonstrate increasing physical activity prevents, delays or slows mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's. However, the report noted the other health benefits of increased physical activity such as lowering the risk of hypertension, stroke and obesity as well as symptoms of depression.
  Contrastly,to improve your life overall: consider the FINGER study out of Finland which found that targeting diet, exercise, vascular risk factors and brain training slowed cognitive decline in older adults.
Downloadable report: nationalacademies.org/Dementia

Vascular Risk Factors : Narrowing Arteries in the Head = Alzheimer's Risk Increase

  Researchers from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Neurocognitive study demonstrated that hardening of the arteries in the head is associated with mild cognitive impairment and dementia.
  In MCI and dementia patients with posterior (back of the brain) cerebral watery plaque had 44% higher prevalence of MCI than without it. Dementia risk was increased threefold in those with anterior cerebral (front of the brain) artery plaque and twofold in those with narrowing > 70% or involvement of > vascular territories.
  Again, as per my last review, decreasing vascular risk factors (obesity, diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol) decreases hardening if arteries inside the head and decreases cognitive impairment.
Neurology 2017 Apr 18;88:1156

Get Fat Late in Life to Decrease Amyloid in your Brain IF YOU'RE NOT A APOE4 CARRIER

  From the Harvard aging brain study, greater amyloid deposits in brain were seen in individuals with LOW BMI (thin folks). However, those that were APOE4 carriers (increased risk with each APOE4 mutation you carry), NORMAL BMI (normal weight) was associated with greater amyloid burden in brains.
  Amyloid at high levels is toxic to our brains.
Journal of Alzheimer's Disease June 18 2016

Decrease Risk of Alzheimer's with Frequent Sauna Bathing

  2,000 men from Finland in a 20 year follow-up as a part of the Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study (KIHD) that took a sauna 4-7 times per week were found to have a 66% decreased risk of dementia than those that took a sauna once a week.
Age Aging. 2016 Dec 7

Modest Seafood intake Decreased Alzheimer's Risk

  Even a single seafood serving a week had a neuroprotective benefit against the development of neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid deposits in people that carry the apolipoprotein e4 risk gene for Alzheimer's. The same is NOT true for those that do not carry the APOE e4 gene. 
  Interestingly, that same population studied also were found to have increased mercury in their brains WITHOUT an adverse effect pathologically.
JAMA 2016;315(5):465-466