Do you want to be proactive about your health, or do you just shrug your shoulders and figure you play the cards you’re dealt? And the big question is, what difference does it make? Today we’re going to look at 10 things that contribute to the development of dementia and what, if anything, you can do about it.

 I’m Dr.Vickie Petz Kasper. I practiced obstetrics and gynecology for 20 years until I landed on the other side of the sheets   as a very sick patient. When my own body betrayed me, I took a handful of pills to manage my disease and another handful to counteract the side effects. My health was out of control.

Through surgery, medications, and lots of prayers, I  regained my strength only to face another  diagnosis.  My doctor challenged me to make radical changes through lifestyle medicine. Now I feel great and I want to help you make changes that make a difference. Healthy Looks Great On You podcast takes you to mini medical school so you can learn the power of lifestyle medicine.

If you’re ready to take control of your health, you’re in the right  place. Whether you’re focused on prevention or you’re trying to manage a condition. I’ll give you practical steps to start your own journey toward better health because healthy looks great on you.

This is episode 155, Ten Must Know Risk Factors for Dementia.  Which ones can you alter, and which ones you just gotta accept. Here’s the deal, dementia isn’t just one condition with one cause, it’s more like a puzzle with pieces that fit together differently for each person. And some of these pieces are fixed, but others, well, they’re more like clay that you can reshape.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to dive into today.  

What if I told you that some of the choices you’re making right now, today, could be tilting the scales either for or against your brain health. It’s never too early or too late to make changes that affect your overall health, and that includes your brain health. So, whether you’re in your 30s or in your 60s, stick around. 

We’re about to break down these 10 risk factors for dementia and what you can do about it. Number one on the list is age. Yeah, I know, there’s not a thing in the world you can do about it. This is one you have to accept. And if you’re a woman, aged 45, your chances of developing dementia during your lifetime are 1 in 5. If you’re a man, it’s one in 10. And even though I didn’t include biologic sex in this list, clearly women are at increased risk, but there may be reasons for that that you can alter.

Bottom line is age is the biggest risk factor for dementia and the older you get, the greater the risk. In fact, the chances double every five years after age 65.  To quote Andy Rooney, it’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone. But the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.

And that’s generally true and with good reason. I mean, it’s not called over the hill for nothing.  They say you should grow old gracefully. Ha! There’s nothing graceful about some of the tolls the years take. And according to George Burns, you know you’re getting old when you stoop over to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else could you do while you’re down there. 

George Burns, remember him? He lived to be 100 years old and was pretty healthy. We’re gonna come back to that, so be sure you listen until the end. But age is just one risk factor you have to accept.  But while you’re practicing acceptance, here’s another one you can’t control. Family history. 

 If someone in your family had dementia, then you are at increased risk. And if more than one somebody in your family had dementia, you’re at even more risk. And you know what they say, you can’t change the past, but you can change the future. You can start where you are and change the ending.

And I want you to remember that quote as we talk through this, because even if you have a strong family history of dementia, your fate is not sealed, but it is at risk. So, think about your family history. You tend to inherit your lifestyle from your family. Okay, not always, but a lot of our habits are ingrained at an early age.

We sort of eat the same things and live in similar environments.  Education levels and socioeconomic advantages or disadvantages are often generational, and those things are passed down, but they’re not inherited like our genetic code. So I want to challenge you to start where you are and see if there’s anything you can do to change the ending.  

Number three is similar to family, but not exactly the same. Genetics. Pop quiz, true or false, you can alter your genes.  I want you to stay tuned next week because we are going to talk more about the genetics of Alzheimer’s.  The best way to not miss an episode is to subscribe to my newsletter. You can visit my website,  www.

healthylooksgreatonyou. com or I put a link in the show notes. I share tips, recipes, and lots of other resources. So why don’t you just push pause right now on the podcast and do it before you get busy or forget. Each week on the podcast, I take you to mini medical school And this week, we’re going to take a closer look at our  DNA.

Don’t worry. It’s a short course and it’s never boring. Do not argue with me. Science is fun if you do it right.  DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. See if you can say that three times really fast. Deoxyribonucleic acid, deoxyribonucleic acid, deoxyribonucleic acid. Now you’ll remember it, even if I did annoy you a little bit.

I won’t say it again. I’ll just use the nickname, DNA. So what is it? It’s like a double stranded helix, and I’m sure you’ve seen pictures before. Looks like a twisted ladder. It’s a molecule made up of four nucleotides,

C G A T. That’s cytosine, guanine, adenosine, and thymine, and these little dudes are held together by hydrogen bonds in different combinations. And here’s the exciting part. Every cell in your body follows the code that is written into your DNA. It’s like an instruction manual. And each person’s DNA is unique.

That is why human life is so sacred. Because this coding determines your eye color. your hair color, facial features, and ultimate height, as well as whether or not you’re born a boy or a girl.  And here’s the deal, it’s all determined at the moment of conception. When the egg is fertilized, wow, we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made.

Now, inside of each cell, there’s this little part called the nucleus, and that’s where most of the chromosome forming DNA lives.  And all of this is foundational to understand genetics but not only does your genetic code determine aspects of your health. But your environment, behavior, and lifestyle can impact genetic expression.

Meaning genes can be turned off, turned on, regulated up, regulated down, and we call that epigenetics. It can even happen in the womb before you’re born. So you really are what you eat, how you act, and what you do. DNA can also be damaged, so gene expression is affected by age, exposures, environment, and other factors that we’re going to look at.

 But since I mentioned environmental and exposure, let’s move on to number four on the list of risk factors for dementia, and that is air pollution. I bet that surprised you. Turns out that pollution causes damage to the nervous system.

Things like exhaust from cars in the city or wood burning in the country.

And you want to know what else pollutes the air? cigarette smoke. Smoking is a risk factor for dementia as well as a host of other conditions. Your mind may go straight to cancer, but it also increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and even macular degeneration, which can lead to blindness. 

And it turns out that number five on the list is uncorrected hearing loss.  and uncorrected vision loss. Remember when I snorted about growing old gracefully? Well, yeah, I’m over here putting in my hearing aids and groping around for my glasses and I don’t think any of that is graceful,  but I do it anyway. Now I can’t see without my glasses, so they’re not optional,

But,  uncorrected vision loss does increase the risk of dementia, and the worse the uncorrected vision loss, the worse the risk. 

 But again, this only applies to people with uncorrected vision loss, and I think most of us wouldn’t skip wearing our glasses or contacts, But, I do see a lot of people skip on wearing hearing aids. Now, my husband would argue with this, but I can hear pretty well. 

He just talks really soft.  And isn’t that what everyone with hearing loss says?  Quit mumbling! 

The deal is most people can get by with some hearing impairment. But it does increase the risk of dementia.  Why is that? Well, maybe because you’re not processing spoken words and that part of your brain isn’t getting used and it shrinks along with everything around it. Or maybe your brain is actually devoting all of its energy to try and understand those mumblers.

And it neglects keeping the rest of the brain humming along at full speed.  Experts don’t really know exactly why hearing loss is associated with dementia, but it’s felt to be responsible for 8 percent of cases. So get over it. Go to the audiologist fork over the cash and get your hearing aids.

Your brain’s worth it.  Another theory about the impact of hearing loss is interference with social activity. I mean, if you can’t hear, you can’t participate in conversations or play games or just connect as well. And that leads us to number six, social isolation.

We’re created to be connected. Isolation is associated with an increased risk of dementia as well as a whole lot of other health conditions. When I say

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