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How Alzheimer’s disease could be reversed through lifestyle changes: new research

  • A plant-based diet, strength training exercise and meditation can help reverse the disease’s symptoms, study says

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Diet, specifically eating a mostly plant-based one, is a lifestyle factor linked to preventing or even reversing Alzheimer’s disease - the most common type of dementia - according to new research. Photo: Shutterstock
This is the 42nd instalment in a series on dementia, including the research into its causes and treatment, advice for carers, and stories of hope.
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It is not often you hear a hopeful story or read an encouraging study about dementia, given the sobering statistics about the disease.

Someone in the world develops dementia every three seconds, according to the non-profit Alzheimer’s Disease International. More than 55 million people worldwide lived with dementia in 2020, a number that is expected to double every 20 years, reaching 78 million in 2030 and 139 million in 2050.

Dr Dean Ornish, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco and founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute, also in California, paints a brighter picture in a paper published in June in the journal Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy.

Dr Dean Ornish has four rules for better brain health as we age: eat well, move more, stress less and love more. Photo: Facebook.com/Ornish
Dr Dean Ornish has four rules for better brain health as we age: eat well, move more, stress less and love more. Photo: Facebook.com/Ornish

He suggests that radical lifestyle changes might not only slow the progression of dementia, but could even reverse it.

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