More news from Whitehall II: cardiovascular risk factors can predict cognitive decline 10 years early. In this particular analysis, the authors followed 3,486 men & 1,341 women for 10 years after first assessing their cardiovascular risk factors. It should be noted that these British men & women had to be free of heart disease in order to be enrolled in this segment of the observational cohort study. Their cognitive function was then assessed 3 times over the next decade.
The cardiovascular risk factors used for the analysis were the same used in the Framingham General Cardiovascular Risk Profile to compute 10 year risk of heart disease based upon age, sex, HDL cholesterol, total cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, smoking status & diabetes status. Domains of cognitive function included reasoning, memory, phonemic & semantic fluency, and vocabulary.
The point of this study (and many more like it)? If you take care of your heart, you'll also be taking care of your brain.
Great article! Keep 'em coming...
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