I’m getting older, which means I’m starting to worry about my cognitive health more than I ever have before. When you’re nearing 40 years of age, nothing seems more frightening than losing your sense of self and the connections to family and friends that you have worked your whole life to establish. And that is the harrowing prospect that dementia and Alzheimer’s disease present: I once had a doctor tell me that what made Alzheimer’s disease different from all other conditions that afflict humanity is that it involves losing that sense of identity.
But there’s hope, as Bryan Walsh covered in a recent edition of the Good News newsletter. Scientists are figuring out better interventions to prevent or delay the onset of dementia. Some of that optimism comes from unexpected sources, like the shingles vaccine. Some of it is our evolving understanding of the relationship between our brain and the rest of our body. Scientists are learning that there are proven strategies you can adopt right now to protect your brain.
Bryan delves into both the long-term prospects for scientific progress on dementia and the near-term practices that you can follow to help yourself. Dementia is indeed terrifying; there’s nothing we can do about that. But that does not mean we are powerless.
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—Dylan Scott, senior correspondent
