According to Bloomberg News,
A quiz to test your brain health
For many of us, January is a season for health goals, whether temporary or permanent: a booze-free month, 30 days of yoga or maybe just trying to turn off Netflix a half-hour earlier to get more sleep. What’s good for the body is good for the brain as well, UK scientists said this week, and may even help reduce the risk of dementia later in life.
Most cases of dementia aren’t linked to lifestyle. But in as many as four in 10 cases, external risk factors — everything from educational level, brain injury and hearing loss to excessive drinking and smoking — may play a role, a report by The Lancet Commission found in 2020. This week, Alzheimer’s Research UK, a charity that funds science and education about dementia, launched an online quiz that draws on that study to help people zero in on what they could change in their own lives to help improve the health of their brains.
“Much of this is about helping people understand that they can be empowered to affect their risk of Alzheimer’s disease,” Paul Matthews, director of the UK Dementia Research Institute at Imperial College London, said in a briefing hosted by the Science Media Centre. “We need to give people the knowledge to make these choices.”
Knowledge doesn’t always result in action, of course. We circulated the quiz around the team and realized that even a bunch of health reporters aren’t always hitting the ideal targets for protecting our brains. Though we have jobs that generally keep our minds nimble on a daily basis — key for staying sharp in the long term — many of us also have little kids to keep us from getting the recommended seven-plus hours of sleep a night. If we’re honest, we do like a drink. And the quiz is a snapshot that doesn’t capture things like how a generally active person might be on an exercise hiatus while getting over an illness.
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Click here to see the full article: Dementia Quiz
Posted by Melissa Zheng, Associate Editor, Wealth Strategies Journal.
Wealth Strategies Journal 