UK Edition
'New men' winning dementia battle as healthy lifestyles prevent 40,000 cases a year
The chance of a man developing dementia has plummeted in the last 20 years as a generation of ‘New Men’ have benefited from taking better care of themselves, Cambridge University has shown.
Decades of health advice, encouraging men to quit smoking, exercise, eat more healthily and lower their cholesterol and blood pressure, has led to 40,000 fewer cases a year than was expected.
When Cambridge academics first carried out research in the early 1990s, they anticipated 250,000 new cases a year by now. But the latest figures suggest there are fewer than 210,000 cases, an overall drop of 20 per cent.
However women’s rates have remained largely unchanged during that period, possibly because they were generally healthier to start with. The shift means that two thirds of people diagnosed with dementia are now women.
Twenty years ago the incidence rate for men over-65 was 31 in 1,000 and for women 25 in 1,000. But now it is 18 in 1,000 for men and 24 in 1,000 for women.
The researchers say it proves that making lifestyle changes can have a huge impact on dementia rates, and claim warnings about a future ‘tsunami’ of cases may have been premature.
They have called on the government to ‘dementia proof’ all policies and say it may be better putting more effort into encouraging people to live more healthy lives, rather than spending millions trying to develop treatments for disease like Alzheimer’s.
Professor Carol Brayne, Director of the Cambridge Institute of Public Health, at Cambridge University, said: “Our evidence shows that the so-called dementia 'tsunami' is not an inevitability. We can help turn the tide if we take action now.
“Our findings suggest that brain health is improving significantly in the UK across generations, particularly among men. It may be that men are becoming a bit more like women in terms of their health.
“The UK in earlier eras has seen major societal investments into improving population health and this appears to be helping protect older people form dementia.”
Last year a study by the same team found that although it was predicted that 884,000 people would have dementia by 2011, figures showed it is now closer to 670,000.
Despite predictions that 8.3 per cent of over 65s would now have dementia, it is in fact 6.5 per cent, 22 per cent less than expected and barely any different from how many people had the disease in the 1990s.
In February 2015 David Cameron announced a £300 million fund for dementia and set a target of 2025 to find a treatment or cure for the disease. But the new research suggests that the funding would be better spent trying to prevent dementia.
Professor Fiona Matthews from the Institute of Health and Society at Newcastle University, said: “Public health measures aimed at reducing people’s risk of developing dementia are vital and potentially more cost effective in the long run than relying on early detection and treating dementia once it present.”
To find out the current incidence of dementia, and how it has changed, researchers interviewed 7,500 over 65s between 1991 and 1994 with repeated interviews after two years to find out how many had developed dementia during that time period. They repeated the study 20 years later.
The figures showed a upbeat picture, particularly for men, who had lower incidence rates than women over the age of 80 for the first time.
The findings echo research currently taking place in Wales. In 1979, 2,500 men were asked to follow five simple rules – eat well, work out, drink less, keep their weight down and never smoke.
Four decades on, just 25 pensioners managed to stick to the plan. But they are all far fitter and healthier than the volunteers who gave up. None developed dementia or cancer.
Prof John Hardy, Professor of Neuroscience at University College London, said: “This improvement over the last 20 years is restricted to men. An important and difficult question is what is behind this improvement: if we knew that we could perhaps improve more and help reduce the incidence in women too.
“The most obvious changes relate to vascular health… smoking cessation and blood pressure and cholesterol control. Clearly, these issues deserve further careful study, but this study suggests some good news.”
Prof Gordon Wilcock, Emeritus Professor of Geratology, University of Oxford said: “Although we will never completely remove the risk of developing dementia, living healthier lifestyles from as early as possible will reduce that risk, or delay its onset.
“The most important finding from this study is that changing our approach to how we live our lives is as important as developing drugs to treat dementia. This is our individual responsibility, not anyone else’s.”
However Alzheimer’s charities have warned that rising levels of obesity and diabetes risk setting back the improvements of the past 20 years.
Dr Simon Ridley, Director of Research, Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This is welcome news. The challenge for research now is to understand what has driven the reduction, so that we can capitalise on this knowledge and take action to prevent incidence rates rising again in future.
“The UK currently has rising levels of obesity and diabetes, both of which are risk factors for dementia, and continued efforts to improve public health will be crucial to ensure that this trend in falling dementia incidence is not slowed or reversed.”
The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.