How’s your memory? A few people I’m close with are dealing with early-onset dementia and late-onset dementia. A woman in her 60s, a guy who is almost 70, and my Mom who is in her late 80s. It’s a really difficult thing to see. People that were completely independent a few years ago who are now unable to function on the most everyday of things.

My Mom’s been dealing with dementia for 5+ years. Her Dad had it. I thought dementia was pretty common among most people her age, but I was surprised to actually see how relatively uncommon it is. She was born in the late 1930s and only about 10% of people in her age-cohort (85-89) suffer from dementia.

You can see her age-group in the orange line from this chart published in The Economist …

The chart shows that the incidence of dementia doesn’t even jump very high in one’s early 90s. My Dad was 91 years old when he passed away and never had the issue. You can see from the light blue line in the chart that less than 20% of the people in his age group (90-94) had dementia.

There isn’t one easy way to avoid dementia. If your parent has dementia, you are 1.5x-2x more likely than the table above to develop it. Below are 5 things the The Lancet Commission on Dementia Prevention, Intervention, and Care recommend. They say these things can reduce your risk by 45-50%, which pretty much gets you back to “baseline” risk if your parent had it.

Here’s what they recommend … pretty much the same things we can do to be healthy in other ways.

Is there a risk of dementia in your family? How do you think about it as you age?

Image: Pixabay; Chart: The Economist