Study links healthy lifestyle habits to better brain health later in life

Do you have uncontrolled high blood pressure, blood sugar or cholesterol? Don’t eat well or get enough exercise and sleep?

If so, and you’re also between 40 and 60 years old, you may be at greater risk of depression, dementia and stroke down the road, results of a recent study suggest.

Researchers from Yale University evaluated data for more than 316,000 middle-aged people (average age 56) and followed them for five years to evaluate their brain health. Participants were place into three categories – optimal, intermediate and poor – based on their scores for eight American Heart Association cardiovascular and brain health factors, known as Life’s Essential 8.

Those factors: being active, eating better, maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, maintaining a healthy blood pressure, getting enough sleep, and controlling cholesterol and blood sugar levels.

Among the participants with poor scores, 1.8% met the definition for “poor brain health” – defined as developing stroke, dementia or late-life depression. After adjusting for age, sex, race and ethnicity, the researchers found that the participants with poor healthy lifestyle scores were more than twice as likely to develop any of the three neurological conditions compared with the optimal group.

To confirm their findings, the researchers repeated the study with a group of more than 68,000 participants who were followed for five years. The results were similar.

“Brain health is paramount for the optimal well-being of every person, enabling us to function at our highest level and constantly adapt in the world,” said study co-author Santiago Clocchiatti-Tuozzo, a physician at Yale. “Making these healthy lifestyle choices in middle age can have meaningful impacts on brain health later in life.”

The study was published in Neurology.