9/13/2026
Happy Birthday!
Yesterday, someone shared with me the 2024 Lancet Commission report, “Dementia Prevention, Intervention, and Care.”
The report updates the Commission's earlier work from 2017 and 2020 and identifies 14 potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia across the life course.
The headline finding is striking: the Commission estimates that addressing these 14 risk factors could potentially prevent or delay nearly 45% of dementia cases worldwide.
The 14 risk factors include:
Environment
Air pollution
Health-related
Untreated vision loss
Hearing loss
Depression
Traumatic brain injury
High LDL cholesterol
Diabetes
Hypertension
Obesity
Lifestyle-related
Physical inactivity
Smoking
Excessive alcohol consumption
Social and educational
Less education in early life
Social isolation
Of course, dementia has many causes, including genetic and other factors that individuals cannot control. The 45% figure is a population-level estimate of potentially modifiable risk, not a guarantee that an individual can prevent dementia by changing these factors.
Some risk factors, such as age and family history, are largely beyond our control. But many others can be influenced, at least to some degree, through medical care, lifestyle, environment, education, and social connection.
What strikes me most about the report is its life-course perspective.
The way we age is not determined only by what we do after we become old. It is influenced by things we do—and things that happen to us—many years, even decades, earlier in life.
That means dementia prevention begins much earlier.
Perhaps the lesson is asking a simpler question:
What can I do today that might help me remain healthier tomorrow?
Stay physically active. Keep learning. Protect our hearing and vision. Don't smoke. Manage blood pressure and cholesterol. Maintain social connections. Wear a helmet when appropriate. Get medical problems treated rather than ignored.
None of these things comes with a guarantee.
But perhaps healthy aging means making good choices, year after year, to give ourselves the best possible chance of a healthy future. So that we have more influence over that journey than we sometimes realize.
