If you scroll social media, you’ll see all kinds of crazy life hacks for keeping your brain healthy until you’re 100 (um, wiggling your pinky?). And it’s understandable people want to do everything they can to keep their brains sharp: The risk for cognitive impairment increases after age 55 and 20% of 85-year-olds live with some form of dementia.
But if you follow the science instead of the trends, you’ll see that there are proven ways to push back the onset of dementia and cognitive decline—and none of them require mixing up a cocktail of unproven supplements or doing tricks with your littlest finger.
Instead, it is all about living an active, healthy life.
One of the most intriguing studies on dementia prevention, published in JAMA Neurology in 2024, looked at the autopsies of 586 people who lived to an average age of 91 (the subjects were all part of the Rush Memory and Aging Project before their deaths, which meant the researchers had more than 20 years of data to mine).
The researchers discovered a direct link between healthy lifestyle habits and a lowered risk of cognitive decline as the subjects got older—even in people who had signs of developing Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.
“As individuals age, there is a progressive accumulation of dementia-related brain pathologies,” says the lead study author, Klodian Dhana, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of internal medicine at Rush University Medical Center. However, he adds, not everyone who has these changes will go on to develop dementia.
The 5 Most Important Habits for Brain Health
Based on the study, these are the five most important lifestyle habits for reducing dementia risk:
- No smoking.
- Engage in moderate to vigorous exercise for at least 150 minutes a week (that’s just 30 minutes, five days per week).
- Stop at just one alcoholic drink a day for women or two for men.
- Keep your brain buzzing with stimulating activities, such as reading, playing games, and visiting museums.
- Follow a variation of the MIND diet.
The researchers found that the more the subjects followed these guidelines in their everyday life, the healthier they were, and the healthier their brains were.
Researchers measured brain health by looking for lower amounts of beta-amyloid plaques, the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, and higher scores on cognitive tests that measured things like memory and attention span.
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Most remarkably, the benefits of following these healthy lifestyle habits were still there, even when the study participants had signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in their brains.
The Benefits of These Healthy Habits on the Brain
At baseline, these lifestyle factors and habits are known to be good for you. “Following a healthy lifestyle is good for the brain,” says Amit Sachdev, M.D., associate chief medical officer in the Department of Neurology at Michigan State University Health Care.
These factors in particular “have been investigated and shown to be associated with slower cognitive decline and a lower risk of dementia,” Dr. Dhana says.
This makes particular sense with the MIND diet, a plant-forward eating plan that incorporates several elements of the heart-healthy Mediterranean diet. That means plenty of fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, olive oil, and whole grains.
“Previous studies on similar diet patterns have shown that this style of eating is very rich in polyphenols, which are powerful plant compounds that have been shown to have neuroprotective properties,” explains Jessica Cording, R.D., author of The Little Book of Game-Changers: 50 Healthy Habits for Managing Stress & Anxiety. “That’s a big piece of the puzzle.”
The foods featured in this diet can help tamp down on bodily inflammation and promote good gut and heart health, she points out.
Eating plant foods, along with getting regular exercise, limiting alcohol use, and avoiding smoking is good for the cardiovascular system, Cording says. “What’s good for the heart and blood vessels is generally good for the brain—we have tons of blood vessels in the brain,” she says.
Clifford Segil, D.O., a neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, agrees. “A healthy lifestyle increases your heart health and brain health,” he says. “A healthy heart can only help your brain.”
As for brain-stimulating activities, it doesn’t have to be crosswords or learning a new language; pick something that will challenge you but that you also enjoy, so you will return to it regularly. Research shows doing mentally stimulating activities is linked with a lowered risk of developing dementia. “The thing I most often recommend to patients for their brain health is structured cognitive exercise,” Segil says. “That can mean taking a class at a junior college. With muscles, if you don’t use it, you lose it. The same is true of your brain.”
Dr. Segil points out that he often sees patients doing better after making lifestyle tweaks than they do taking certain medications to lower the risk of cognitive decline. So skip the pinky exercises, and get moving, thinking, and living your healthiest life.
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