After age and genetics(遗传性), being a woman is the single most important risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease(阿尔茨海默病), experts say. "Two out of every three brains affected by Alzheimer's disease are women's brains," said Dr. Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic in the Center for Brain Health at Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt College of Medicine.
Now, a new study has good news when it comes to giving women a chance to reduce their increased risk. Personalized lifestyle interventions(干预)—such as diet, exercise, stress reduction and sleep hygiene—were able to reduce Alzheimer's risk factors in both sexes, but they worked even better in women.
"Our individually tailored interventions led to greater improvements in women compared to men across risk scales for Alzheimer's and cardiovascular (心血管的) disease," said Isaacson, who coauthored the paper.
"Lifestyle changes such as increased exercise, improved sleep and diet, and reduced stress can impact brain health. This study clearly stresses the need for additional larger studies to be able to better predict the baseline cognitive trail in aging females versus males," said Rudolph Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.
"As we aim to find ways to block out this disease in the early stage, we will need to know if prevention and treatment strategies will work equally on both men and women. This new study clearly brings us a big step closer to that goal,"Tanzi added.
Finding that women were able to reduce their risk even more than men is welcome news, as it provides a promising area for future study and gives hope that women can tip the battle against Alzheimer's in their favor. "By treating people in an evidence-based yet safe way, using various lifestyles and medical interventions, we've shown that you can really make an impact on brain health," he said.
