(2025-07-29) Its Not Too Late To Avert Dementia After Age60 Us Study Shows

Michelle Amponsah: It’s Not Too Late to Avert Dementia After Age 60, US Study Shows. The key takeaways are to "move more, sit less, add color to your plate, learn something new, and stay connected," Baker said.

To qualify for the study, participants had to have various risk factors for brain decline, like consuming a poor diet and not exercising regularly. Others had a gene mutation tied to Alzheimer’s disease.

While brain function starts to worsen in a person’s sixties, the results indicate that switching up one’s routine even later in life can stall the onset of dementia. Making such changes appeared to slow the cognitive aging clock by one to two years

It included more than 2,000 adults between the ages of 60 and 79 in structured and self-guided intervention groups.

Cognitive function improved in both, but those getting structured support had a significantly greater benefit than those in the self-guided group.

The program recommended cardiovascular exercise for 30 minutes, four days a week, and a low-salt diet with a focus on brain-healthy foods like dark leafy greens, berries, whole grains and coldwater fish. Participants in the structured group completed “brain training” computer games three times a week.

The structured group had 38 meetings with their peers over the two-year study to set goals and keep others accountable. The self-guided group met much less often — six times over the two years — but received the same information.

(That's lots of people and a chunk of time, but still smells a bit bogus. Effects like this tend to wipe out fast.)