Every participant was scored on a scale of zero to seven, wherein they were awarded one point for following a healthy habit.
Healthy lifestyle changes can help in reducing the risk of developing dementia among the people with type 2 diabetes, according to a new study. The new study published in the recent issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, found that the type 2 diabetic patients who follow a healthy lifestyle are at the lower risk of developing dementia. Yingli Lu of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, China, who authored the study, said that the researchers tried to find out if following a healthy lifestyle could lower the risk of dementia in type 2 diabetes patients. “Type 2 diabetes is a worldwide epidemic that affects one in 10 adults, and having diabetes is known to increase a person’s risk of developing dementia. We investigated whether a broad combination of healthy lifestyle habits could offset that dementia risk and found that people with diabetes who incorporated seven healthy lifestyle habits into their lives had a lower risk of dementia than people with diabetes who did not lead healthy lives,” said Yingli Lu.
To conduct the study, health data of 167,946 participants were observed from a healthcare database in the United Kingdom. The population criteria were that the people can be 60 or older, can be diagnosed with or without diabetes, and people who did not have dementia at the start of the study. The researchers asked the participants to complete a health questionnaire, noted their physical measurements, and also took blood samples from everyone.
Every participant was scored on a scale of zero to seven, wherein they were awarded one point for following a healthy habit. The seven habits included consuming moderate alcohol, no smoking, 75 minutes of vigorous exercise, 2.5 hours of physical activity, sleeping 7-9 hours daily, consuming nutritious food, and participating in social activities rather than spending time on virtual activities. The researchers observed their lifestyle for a span of 12 years and found that 4,351 people ended up developing dementia. Of these, 4 percent of people followed 0-2 healthy habits, 11 percent followed 3, 22 percent followed 4, 30 percent followed 6 and 9 percent followed all 7 healthy habits.
It was found that those with type 2 diabetes, who followed two or fewer of the seven healthy habits, were 4 times more likely to develop dementia. Also, the participants with diabetes who followed all of the habits were 74 percent more likely to develop dementia than those who do have diabetes and followed all the habits.
