Health problems that seriously increase the risk of dementia

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Some chronic problems with health conditions make dementia more likely, and if you have at least two of them, your risk of developing dementia as you age becomes very high.

Dementia is a general term that means acquired mental retardation, that is, the deterioration of a person's mental abilities due to pathological changes in the physical state and functioning of the brain. The resulting disorders of thinking, the ability to reason logically, and memory become so serious that a person is unable to independently lead everyday life. There are many types of dementia, one of the most common being Alzheimer's disease, which accounts for 60 to 80 percent of cases (which is why their names are sometimes used interchangeably). with health:

• high blood pressure,
• diabetes,
• ischemic heart disease,
• depression,
• chronic lung diseases.

The study showed that having only two health problems from this set can make a person prone to it. Moreover, this tendency becomes especially significant if these diseases develop before the age of 50, and not at a later age.

When a person has two or more chronic diseases, doctors speak of multimorbidity. After examining the medical records of more than 10,000 British men and women, the researchers concluded that multimorbidity at age 55 was associated with a 2.4-fold increased risk of dementia (compared to people without chronic conditions at that age).

If multimorbidity is observed in people under the age of 55, it increases the probability of dementia by 2.5 times, and if it occurs between the ages of 60 and 65 – by 1.5 times.

Scientists emphasize : the discovered connection means that it is extremely important to stay healthy for as long as possible – it is doubly important to avoid diseases such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure in young life.

Meanwhile, practice shows that multimorbidity is becoming increasingly common among middle-aged people, allowing for gloomy predictions of a sharp increase in the number of people with dementia already in the foreseeable future.