28 Dementia - Lifestyle Choices, Illnesses and Other Possible Causes of Dementia [Update 3 12/12/13]

This post examines the content of two short pieces on dementia.

Five Life-style Factors
Firstly, I was in the local KCC Library and picked up a recent leaflet promoting the national NHS Health Check Scheme. It highlights the benefits of certain changes to my lifestyle (should I need to change). The purpose is to reduce my risk of developing dementia.  
Briefly, the following are key things that we all might want to do:

• Maintain a certain level of physical activity
• Measure your key biometrics, blood pressure, cholesterol
• Keep any alcohol drinking within certain levels
• Eat to a healthy diet
• Quit smokng. 

The leaflet's messages point to preventing or mitigating my chances of the following:

• diabetes
• heart disease
• kidney disease
• obesity  
• strokes or mini-strokes.

In a sense these checks may be regarded as part of a comprehensive dementia friendly community. For Swanley they are a local public health service programme carried out by the Sevenoaks District Council.  The purpose of these checks is to reduce  health inequalities, in the sense they hope to discover residents who do not visit their doctor regularly or are not registered with NHS GP surgery. 

Causes
Secondly, this weekend when opening my newspaper I found a short newspaper report which looked at possible causes of dementia. It emphasised the prevalence of dementia to be linked to diabetes, and other chronic long term conditions. 

Dementia Populations 
The projections of dementia population growth with, furthermore, increasing numbers of us with these diseases, augers for a gathering pace of those with dementia (see Posts 29, 29A, and 29B). 

Medicines
Another aspect of dementia is some evidence that regularly taking medicines following, for instance, a mini-stroke, may help to prevent or delay dementia. I suppose the jury is out on this one, but hopefully the G8 Dementia Summit induced spurt on research expenditure will enable the veracity or otherwise of this one.