Unlucky genes won’t necessarily doom you to a future with Alzheimer’s.
A breakthrough study finds that even people with a high genetic risk of dementia can offset their chances of developing the memory disease if they live a healthy lifestyle, according to the findings published in JAMA.
The disease — which still doesn’t have a cure — is expected to affect 82 million people worldwide by the year 2030, according to the World Health Organization.
The most recent findings, presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference over the weekend, will be a relief for what’s become a “fatalistic view of dementia,” says study author Dr. David Llewellyn, from the University of Exeter Medical School.
“Many people are worried about developing dementia, [but] our results suggest that healthy lifestyle is associated with reduced risk of dementia regardless of genetic risk,” co-author Elżbieta Kuzma tells The Post.
“This is a very optimistic public health message because you can’t change your genes but you can change your lifestyle.”
The researchers looked at nearly 200,000 people from the UK over a period of eight years. They identified which of the adults had a high risk for dementia based on several known genetic markers — some of which can be detected with at-home genetic tests.
Of those, the ones who exercised regularly, ate healthy, didn’t smoke and limited their drinking to moderate levels had a 32 percent lower risk of developing dementia. On the other hand, those with a high genetic risk for the disease were almost three times more likely to develop it if they lived an unhealthy life.
The researchers considered their subjects healthy if they got at least 150 minutes of moderate activity per week or 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week. Their diets were healthy if they stuck to something along the lines of a Mediterranean diet.
And though scientists have long seen links between preventing the disease and healthy lifestyles, this was the first to put a number on the ways some of those factors impact your chance of getting dementia.