Impact of Lifestyle on Cognitive Decline, Part 2: Looking Beyond Diet

In last month’s issue of the British Journal of Community Nursing, we delved into the impact of diet on cognitive decline (Mendes, 2023). Nutrition is a severely underrated factor in disease; however, it is not the only factor and a generally healthy lifestyle, including and beyond nutrition, is essential to strive for in both the prevention and treatment of illness and, in this case, cognitive decline.

A recent study carried out by Jia et al (2023) and published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) looked at an overall healthy lifestyle (including nutrition) and how this might be associated with memory decline in older adults. The aim of the study was to identify the optimal lifestyle profile associated with retaining good cognition into older age. This prospective cohort study examined Chinese participants aged 60 years or over, who started the study with normal cognition and also had undergone apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotyping at baseline in 2009. Participants were then followed up regularly until they died, discontinued the study, or when the study came to an end on 26 December 2019.