Think ahead for your head.

11. Control your blood sugar

11. Control your blood sugar
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Diabetes can damage your blood vessels, according to the Mayo Clinic, increasing your risk for vascular dementia, triggered by reduced blood flow to the brain.

Researchers think there may be more to the connection between diabetes and dementia—the Lancet Commission report indicates that insulin resistance interferes with the brain’s ability to clear amyloid proteins, which clump together to form the plaques that can lead to dementia.

It’s important to keep eating healthy food and exercising to avoid getting diabetes in midlife.

If you’ve already been diagnosed with diabetes, work closely with your doctors to control your blood sugar and manage the disease.

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12. Eat a Mediterranean-style diet

12. Eat a Mediterranean-style diet
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If the goal is to control your weight, blood pressure, and blood sugar and reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease to protect your mind, then the Mediterranean diet is one of the best eating plans you can follow. It’s shown in studies to be one of the easiest healthy-eating diets for subjects to follow, according to the Mayo Clinic.

It includes lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, olive oil, fish, and even wine.

13. Wear a helmet

13. Wear a helmet
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Here’s the good news: Your brain can recover from common types of trauma like a concussion, according to the Lancet Commission report.

However, repeated mild injuries (such as those experienced by some athletes and soldiers) can lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy—a degenerative brain disease.

The benefits of head protection are huge when you’re riding a motorcycle, biking, skateboarding, or skiing; the only downside is a flattened hairstyle.

Think ahead for your head.

14. Try new things every day

14. Try new things every day
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While you’re eating lots of vegetables and keeping an eye on your blood pressure, don’t forget that an important part of protecting your cognitive health is enjoying life and taxing your brain in pleasurable ways.

Mixing up routines, taking on new challenges, and stepping outside your comfort zone provide stimulation that might help your brain maintain its resilience and build your cognitive reserves.

15. Know your risk factors

15. Know your risk factors
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Did you know that eating grilled meat could increase your risk of being struck down by dementia?

Or that getting on the treadmill can help keep your brain sharp?

The dozens of choices you make over the course of an average day—ordering the curry vs. the samosas, reading the newspaper vs. watching the news—really can determine whether you’ll develop dementia years from now, as well as how quickly the disease will progress.

There are no drugs or procedures that can cure or even effectively treat dementia.

But you have the power to combat some of its major risk factors, including diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, stress, social isolation, and sleeplessness, according to Bowman.

16. Enjoy coffee in the morning

16. Enjoy coffee in the morning
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Caffeine consumed too late in the day may disturb your sleep and ultimately harm your brain.

But coffee consumed in the morning and perhaps the early afternoon, depending on your personal caffeine sensitivity, may reduce risk.

Coffee contains a chemical called eicosanoyl-5-hydroxytryptamide (EHT), which, in studies done on rats, has been shown to protect against Alzheimer’s disease.

The caffeine itself may also be protective: Mice developed fewer tau tangles in their brains when their drinking water was infused with caffeine.

In humans, Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that 200 milligrams of caffeine—the amount in one strong cup of coffee—can help us consolidate memories and more easily memorize new information.

Think ahead for your head.

17. Play for a cause

17. Play for a cause
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Foldit is a multiplayer game designed by computer scientists at the University of Washington, and it enables nonscientists to work with others to solve challenging prediction problems concerning protein folding.

One day this game may help us understand how tau proteins misfold in the brain. Another game, Nanocrafter, allows you to build everything from computer circuits to nanoscale machines using pieces of DNA.

Other interactive games—ranging from bridge to Chinese checkers to Pictionary to charades—cause us to exercise social smarts along with intellectual ones.

In addition to using our brains to strategize and, at times, to do math, such games force us to contemplate what other players are likely to do and likely to think.

18. Talk to strangers

18. Talk to strangers
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When we’re seated next to a stranger on a bus, plane, or train, most of us clam up and keep to ourselves.

Yet research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business has found that many of us overestimate the difficulty of connecting with strangers and underestimate the rewards of doing so.

Before engaging in the study, participants predicted that engaging with strangers would reduce their well-being.

But when they went ahead and struck up a conversation with the person seated next to them, the opposite happened.

They felt better than when they sat in solitude.

19. Form a dog-walking group

19. Form a dog-walking group
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Our pets really are part of our social network.

They sleep in our beds, are pictured in our family portraits, and often earn a great deal of space in our holiday letters.

They also, in many cases, listen attentively to our problems.

Some surveys show that our pets are better listeners than our spouses.

Walk your pets together with your neighbors and you will feel less lonely, which helps ward off Alzheimer’s.

Think ahead for your head.

20. Choose the brightest of the bunch

20. Choose the brightest of the bunch
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The pigments that lend bright colours to many fruits and vegetables are especially powerful sources of antioxidants.

Higher vegetable consumption was associated with slower rate of cognitive decline in 3,718 people ages 65 years and older who participated in the Chicago Health and Aging Project.

All of the study participants scored lower on cognitive tests at the end of the study than they did at the beginning, but those who consumed more than four daily servings of vegetables experienced a 40 percent slower decline in their abilities than people who consumed less than one daily serving.

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