By Sarah Ladd
Kentucky advocates for people with Alzheimer鈥檚 are excited by new showing that lifestyle interventions like exercising and learning can slow cognitive decline.
Published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in July, showed that being social and keeping the brain active can improve brain health over time.
The Alzheimer鈥檚 Association, which helped fund the trial, says it鈥檚 the nation鈥檚 鈥渇irst large-scale, randomized controlled clinical trial to demonstrate that an accessible and sustainable healthy lifestyle intervention can protect cognitive function in diverse populations in communities.鈥
Erin Abner, the chair of the department of epidemiology and environmental health at the University of Kentucky Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, said experts were already communicating to patients the importance of healthy lifestyle choices.
Now, she said, this new research provides 鈥渁dditional evidence鈥 that those interventions are effective in supporting brain health.