Making a few lifestyle changes may help cut your risk of dementia, according to recent research.

Tea and coffee

Good news if you’re a tea or coffee drinker. Researchers from the University of California tracked 4,800 people aged 65 and over for 14 years and found that those who drank tea regularly decreased their risk of Alzheimers by as much as 37 per cent compared with non-tea drinkers.

And drinking coffee more than five times a week reduced their memory loss by up to 20 per cent compared with non-coffee drinkers.

UK charity, the Alzheimers Society said the study “adds weight to previous research that indicates caffeine could significantly reduce cognitive decline.” However, more research is still needed to confirm this.

Sunshine vitamin

Getting out and about in the sun may also help reduce your risk of Alzheimers’. Scientists from the University of Exeter looked at 3,325 people over the age of 65. Those who were severly deficient in the “sunshine vitamin” – vitamin D – were nearly five times more likely to suffer from memory loss and lack of concentration.

“It appears that the odds of cognitive impairment increase as vitamin D levels go down, which is consistent with the findings of European previous studies, said Dr David Llewellyn who led the study.

Vitamin D is produced by the skin when it is exposed to the sun. As it is only found in a limited number of foods such as oily fish, liver, milk and eggs, older people who spend more time indoors are more at risk of vitamin D deficiency.

Some exercise will do you good

Doing moderate to heavy levels of physical activity may cut your risk of developing all types of dementia by 40 per cent, a US study found. Researchers from the Boston University School of Medicine tracked 1,200 elderly people with an average age of 76 for 5-15 years.

Those who got little exercise were nearly 50 per cent more likely to develop dementa compared with those who did the most. The results were most evident in men than women.

Professor Clive Ballard, director of research at The Alzheimers Society said: “This robust and influential study provides strong support to the already comprehensive evidence that exercise is one of the best ways to reduce your risk of dementia. It is the old adage, what is good for the heart is good for the head.

“Whether it be a round of golf, a brisk walk or a session on the treadmill, 30 minutes of exercise five times a week can be beneficial at any age.”

Eat some nuts

Eating walnuts may also help in staving off memory loss. US researchers found that mice with Alzheimers Disease which had been fed a walnut rich diet for nine – 25 months showed significant improvements in learning, memory and motor coordination compared to mice fed an ordinary diet.

Although further studies are necessary to test the effect in humans, adding a food packed with antioxidants and omega-3 can only be a benefit to your diet.

The findings were presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference held in Honolulu last week.

First we were told to steer clear of the saturated fats in butter and switch to margarine.  Then we discover the dangers of trans-saturated fats in margarine, resulting in many of us switching back to good old butter.   So which one really is better for us?

Butter
Many people prefer the taste of butter over margarine and are drawn to the idea that it is a more natural product.  However, it is high in saturated fat.  Saturated fat not only raises total cholesterol but it also significantly increases the LDL (bad) cholesterol – the type that clogs the arteries and can lead to heart disease.  Healthy eating guidelines advise that we should consume no more than 10% of total calories as saturated fat.

Margarine
Margarines usually contain fewer saturated fats than butter as they are predominantly made from plant rather than animal derived oils.  However, plant oils tend to be liquid at room temperature.  Therefore, in order to make them more solid and spreadable, manufacturers have traditionally used a process called hydrogenation.  During this process trans fats may be formed – a type of fat known to be even more harmful to health than saturated fat as they raise  LDL (bad) cholesterol and reduce HDL (good) cholesterol.

Increased awareness of the harmful effects of hydrogenated fats has resulted in a questioning of the real health benefits of margarine. However, the Food Standards Agency still recommends margarine as the healthier option. This is partly because changes in processing techniques have greatly reduced the amount of trans fatty acids likely to be found in most margarines, but also because margarines are generally much lower in saturated fat than butter.  They are also a good source of heart friendly monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.

Monounsaturated fats are particularly effective at helping to protect against heart disease as they not only reduce LDL (bad) cholesterol, but also increase HDL (good) cholesterol.  Polyunsaturated fats are a good source of immune strengthening omega 3 and omega 6 essential fatty acids and will also help to lower LDL cholesterol.

So on the whole, margarine really does seem to be the healthier choice but the different types do vary a great deal between them so here’s our 4-step guide to choosing a healthy option.

1. Choose a spread that has a low total fat content.  Ideally, look for a spread that has less than 55g of fat per 100g.

2. Look for a low saturated fat content.
Choose a spread that has less than 10g per 100 grams.

3. Look for a low trans fatty acid content.  Manufacturers don’t legally have to declare this on the label but most do.
Choose a spread that has 0.5 grams or less per 100 grams.

4. Go for a spread made from olive, rapeseed or groundnut oil as these are likely to have the highest monounsaturated fat content.

A word on cholesterol-lowering spreads
Many of the cholesterol-lowering spreads contain stanols and sterols.  These are ingredients derived from plants that can actually reduce the amount of cholesterol that the body absorbs.  These spreads can be effective at lowering cholesterol, but they should not be used as part of a healthy, balanced diet and not as a substitute for other, well established ways of reducing the risk of heart disease, such as increasing the consumption of fruit and vegetables, giving up smoking, eating less saturated fat and taking more exercise.

Lose weight and live longer

– Being fat in middle age may slash women’s chances of making it to their golden years in good health by almost 80 percent, a new study says. American researchers observed more than 17,000 female nurses with an average age of 50 in the U.S. All of the women were healthy when the study began in 1976. Researchers then monitored the women’s weight, along with other health changes, every two years until 2000.

For every one-point increase in their Body Mass Index, women had a 12 percent lower chance of surviving to age 70 in good health when compared to thin women. Researchers defined “healthy survival” as not only being free of chronic disease, but having enough mental and physical ability to perform daily tasks like grocery shopping, vacuuming or walking up a flight of stairs.

Experts consider people with a BMI between 19-25 to be healthy, while those from 25 to 30 are considered overweight and those over 30 are obese.

For every 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) gained since age 18, women’s odds of surviving past 70 dropped 5 percent, researchers found. Women who were already overweight at age 18 and then gained more than 10 kilograms (22 kilograms) later in life only had about a 20 percent chance of surviving to age 70 in good health. The most commonly reported diseases were cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

The study was published online Wednesday in the medical journal, BMJ. It was paid for by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Boston Obesity Nutrition Research Center.

“People may think they can safely gain weight through their 20s, 30s and 40s, but there is no evidence that gaining weight is natural,” said Aviva Must, professor and chair of the public health and community medicine department at Tufts University School of Medicine. Must was not linked to the study. “These results suggest that small weight gains are not innocuous,” she said.

A British study published earlier this year found people with a BMI from 30 to 35 die about three years earlier than normal while those who were morbidly fat, with a BMI above 40, die about a decade earlier.

Other studies have found similar trends in men. Qi Sun, a research associate at Harvard University and one of the study authors, said men were probably equally at risk, since fat acts largely the same way in both genders.

Experts said the findings underlined the importance of preventing obesity in the first place.

“If you are on the obesity track early in life, it could get very dangerous by the time you are middle-aged,” said Stephan Rossner, an obesity expert at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. He said it was uncertain if people could regain the health benefits of being thin if they lost weight later in life.

While average life spans have increased in recent years with scientific advances in treating illness, experts warned the obesity epidemic could ultimately undo those gains.

“We know we’re extending life span, but we don’t know if we’re extending healthy survival,” Must said. “If one is going to spend the last three decades of one’s life with compromised physical and mental function, that may not be the picture of aging we have when we think of living into our 90s.”

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