Topic guides: Maintain your brain: Content

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Dementia Australia resources

Healthy brain, Healthy life: How to reduce your risk of developing dementia (Rev 2024)
Keeping your brain healthy is essential for living a fulfilling, healthy and long life. In fact, scientific research suggests that a brain-healthy lifestyle can reduce your risk of developing dementia later in life. Whether you are old, young or in-between, there are simple changes you can make to improve and protect your brain health. It is never too late to get started.

What you eat and drink and your brain by Dementia Australia
Diet is one factor researchers are investigating for its role in reducing the risk of dementia and for the assistance a healthy diet may provide to people who have dementia. This sheet outlines the part that diet can play in promoting a healthy brain.
Physical exercise and dementia by Dementia Australia
Physical exercise is essential for maintaining good blood flow to the brain and may encourage new brain cell growth and survival. Read about the role that physical exercise can play in reducing the risk of developing dementia and the benefits it offers to people with dementia.
Think Ahead - harmful substance use and the brain by Dementia Australia
Publication Date: 2018
This resource aims to increase awareness about the impact of harmful substance use on the brain. It urges readers to ‘think ahead’ about the future of their brain health and to recognise that current actions can have consequences in the future. In this resource, the term ‘harmful substances’ refers to non-prescription substances such as alcohol, tobacco, inhalants and illicit drugs that are taken to alter mood, cognition and behaviour.

BrainTrack App
BrainTrack is a free app that helps you monitor and understand changes in cognition over time, which you can use to start a conversation with your GP. The app will help you explore this common concern, providing brain health information through fun, travel-themed games that test your cognition. The resulting conversation and monitoring may lead to an earlier diagnosis of dementia.

Books

Mind Your Brain: The Essential Australian Guide to Dementia by Dr Kailas Roberts
Publication Date: 2021
There are steps you can take to reduce your risk of dementia, to delay its onset, and to ease the journey if the condition does occur. There are also effective interventions and treatments now available to address dementia-related symptoms. Dr Kailas Roberts who works as a specialist in memory loss and dementia uses plain and accessible language to explain how dementia affects the brain and body, what to expect in the event of a diagnosis, and how to manage each step along the way.
Brain Body Food The Ultimate Guide to Thriving into Later Life and Reducing Dementia Risk by Ngaire Hobbins
Publication Date: 2021
This book delivers the latest science in nutrition, ageing and dementia risk reduction in everyday language - so you can enjoy the life you had planned for the years ahead. You will learn food and life choices crucial to preventing avoidable physical and cognitive decline and the stark difference between those at 40 or 50, compared to what's needed as you move closer to your 80s and beyond. Brain, Body, Food gives you the insights into understanding that and knowing how to adapt your focus to avoid harm and relish life as you age.
**Also available as audiobook
Keep sharp: build a better brain at any age by Sanjay Gupta
Publication Date: 2021
A science-driven guide to protecting your mind from decline. Throughout our lives, we are always looking for ways to keep our mind sharp and effortlessly productive. In this book, neurosurgeon Dr Sanjay Gupta offers insights from top scientists all over the world, whose cutting edge research can help you heighten and protect brain function and maintain cognitive health at any age.
Keep Your Wits about You by Vonetta M. Dotson
Publication Date: 2022
This book offers scientifically-based information on living a brain-healthy lifestyle. While there is no cure for Alzheimer's and other degenerative brain diseases that cause dementia, research shows that you can reduce your risk for dementia and improve your memory and other cognitive abilities by adopting certain healthy behaviors. Through exercising, keeping your mind active, staying socially connected, and eating well, you can directly improve your brain health and thus benefit your memory, cognitive abilities such as attention and multitasking, and even your mood.
Use It or Lose It by Paul McIntyre
Publication Date: 2019
Paul McIntyre, host of ABC Radio's 'Medical Matters', sorts the fact from the fiction and reveals the practical measures we can all take to keep our body in good shape and our brain sharp and alert. Because when it comes to positive ageing, our physical and mental health are one and the same. Believe it or not, preventing a disease as serious as dementia is as much about pursuing interests and having a flourishing social life as it is about standard health prescriptions. Good nutrition, regular exercise, relaxation, social interaction and healthy activities are paramount for your body and your brain and your emotional outlook as you get older.
Save Your Brain by Ginni Mansberg
ISBN: 9781922616340
Publication Date: 2023-06-13
As we age, dementia and Alzheimer's pose a serious threat to our health and wellbeing. To give us a running start in the fight against cognitive decline, GP and acclaimed broadcaster Dr Ginni Mansberg presents the very latest evidence-based research on how to protect your most valuable asset - your clever, vulnerable, powerful brain. As the health of our brains increasingly takes centre stage, Ginni gives up-to-the-minute advice and strategies you can implement now to protect your brain as you age. A must-read for anyone looking to maintain their quality of life, or that of loved ones, into old age.
Visit the eCollection for more resources

Audio

Brain Power 101: How to Boost Your Memory and Stay Brain Healthy at Any Age by Richard Isaacson
Call Number: AudioBook
Publication Date: 2019
How can you keep your brain sharp at any age? Drawing on the explosion of new evidence about brain health, Dr. Richard Isaacson, M.D., shows you how to protect, engage, and exercise your brain over time.
The Art and Science of Aging Well by Mark E. Williams; Tom Perkins (Narrated by)
Call Number: AudioBook
Publication Date: 2016
The Art and Science of Aging Well gives a realistic portrait of how aging occurs and provides important advice for self-improvement and philosophical, spiritual, and conscious evolution. Williams argues that we have considerable choice in determining the quality of our own old age. Refuting the perspective of aging that insists that personal, social, economic, and health care declines are persistent and inevitable, he takes a more holistic approach, revealing the multiple facets of old age.

Papers / research

Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2024 report of the Lancet standing Commission (2024)
The 2024 update of the Lancet Commission on dementia provides new hopeful evidence about dementia prevention, intervention, and care. As people live longer, the number of people who live with dementia continues to rise, even as the age-specific incidence decreases in high-income countries, emphasising the need to identify and implement prevention approaches. We have summarised the new research since the 2020 report of the Lancet Commission on dementia, prioritising systematic reviews and meta-analyses and triangulating findings from different studies showing how cognitive and physical reserve develop across the life course and how reducing vascular damage (eg, by reducing smoking and treating high blood pressure) is likely to have contributed to a reduction in age-related dementia incidence. Evidence is increasing and is now stronger than before that tackling the many risk factors for dementia that we modelled previously (ie, less education, hearing loss, hypertension, smoking, obesity, depression, physical inactivity, diabetes, excessive alcohol consumption [ie, >21 UK units, equivalent to >12 US units], traumatic brain injury [TBI], air pollution, and social isolation) reduces the risk of developing dementia. In this report, we add the new compelling evidence that untreated vision loss and high LDL cholesterol are risk factors for dementia.
Livingston, G., Huntley, J., Liu, K. Y., Costafreda, S. G., Geir Selbæk, Suvarna Alladi, Ames, D., Banerjee, S., Burns, A., Brayne, C., Fox, N. C., Ferri, C. P., Gitlin, L. N., Howard, R., Kales, H. C., Kivimäki, M., Larson, E. B., Noeline Nakasujja, Rockwood, K., & Samus, Q. (2024). Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2024 report of the Lancet standing Commission. The Lancet. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(24)01296-0‌

Risk reduction of cognitive decline and dementia WHO Guidelines by World Health Organization
Publication Date: 2019
The WHO Guidelines on risk reduction of cognitive decline and dementia provide evidence-based recommendations on lifestyle behaviours and interventions to delay or prevent cognitive decline and dementia.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2017) Preventing cognitive decline and dementia: A way forward. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.17226/24782.
read online

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) initiated this study with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to take stock of the current state of knowledge on interventions for preventing cognitive decline and dementia, to help shape the messages NIA conveys to the broader public about these conditions, and to inform future actions and research in this area.

Brain training

Brain training involves repetitive cognitive exercises that gradually increase in difficulty as performance improves
Brain training can be effective at improving specific cognitive functions in healthy people without dementia, but it is unclear how long the benefits may persist
Currently, there is limited evidence implicating brain training in lowering risk of dementia
In older people, brain training may increase the ability of the hippocampus (memory) and the frontal lobe (planning and problem solving) to communicate with one another. This increased connectivity partly explains the cognitive benefits of brain training.

Dr Amit Lampit & Dr Alex Bahar-Fuchs (2020) Training your brain in lockdown. Pursuit 19 April 2020

The profound changes in our lifestyle due to COVID-19 social distancing may require us to take more deliberate actions to exercise our thinking skills. This article provides some tips.
read online

Shah, T. M., Weinborn, M., Verdile, G., Sohrabi, H. R., & Martins, R. N. (2017). Enhancing Cognitive Functioning in Healthly Older Adults: a Systematic Review of the Clinical Significance of Commercially Available Computerized Cognitive Training in Preventing Cognitive Decline. Neuropsychology review, 27(1), 62–80. https://doi.org/10.1007/

Burch D. (2014). What could computerized brain training learn from evidence-based medicine?. PLoS medicine, 11(11), e1001758. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001758

Lampit, Amit, Valenzuela, Michael & Gates, Nicola J. (2015). Computerized cognitive training is beneficial for older adults. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 63(12), 2610-2612. DOI: 10.1111/jgs.13825

Video content

Websites

Cogtale: Cognitive Treatments Article Library and Evaluation

CogTale is a comprehensive database of design (methodological) features and summary results from all relevant trials of cognitive interventions in the field of cognitive ageing.

The scientists behind CogTale are passionate about research on cognitive interventions in older age, and about assisting consumers in making informed treatment decisions, by providing up-to-date, evidence-based information on cognitive intervention treatments.

ANU Alzheimer's Disease Risk Index (ANU-ADRI)

The ANU-ADRI is an evidence-based, validated, tool aimed at assessing individual exposure to risk factors known to be associated with an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease in late-life, that is, over the age of 60 years.

The ANU-ADRI is intended to provide a systematic individualised assessment and report on Alzheimer's disease risk factor exposure. It may be useful for individuals who wish to know their risk profile and areas where they can reduce their risk. It may also be useful to clinicians who would like their patients to record their current risk profile for discussion at their next medical appointment. The ANU-ADRI is also used in research projects that aim to evaluate methods of reducing risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Moving pictures: dementia awareness for CALD communities
To raise awareness of what factors can reduce the risk of developing dementia NARI has co-designed with culturally and linguistically diverse communities nine short animations about dementia prevention based on the most current evidence available. The animations are available in Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Hindi, Tamil, Greek, Vietnamese, Spanish, & Italian.