Half of Alzheimer's Cases Preventable?

More than half of the cases of Alzheimer's disease worldwide could be prevented if enough people made relatively simple lifestyle changes. Evidence presented at the Alzheimer Association's International Conference in Paris in July illustrated that seven factors are associated with up to half of all Alzheimer's cases:

1. Low education (possibly because less education means less opportunity to develop neural connections to carry into old age)
2. Smoking
3. Too little exercise (the leading problem in the U.S.)
4. Untreated or inadequately treated depression
5. Mid-life high blood pressure
6. Diabetes
7. Mid-life obesity

The risk factors were gleaned from research performed by Deborah Barnes, Ph.D., a mental health researcher at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, who analyzed studies from around the world that included data from hundreds of thousands of participants. Researchers estimated that cutting these risk factors by 25 percent could reduce Alzheimer's incidence worldwide by three million cases and by half a million fewer cases in the U.S.