We are excited to announce that we are launching the fifth year of our Dementia Awareness Program this school year – a community partnership led by Professor Nathan Herrmann and a group of high school students and alumni at Havergal College in Toronto, Canada.
Our monthly blog series, beginning next month, will feature the voices of dementia healthcare professionals and caregivers – who will be sharing their perspective on what it’s like to work with individuals with dementia. We hope that you are as excited as we are for this new blog series, so be sure to follow our blog and check back in on the first Monday of every month.
In the meantime, we would like to share some highlights from exciting new dementia research from: Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2020 report of the Lancet Commission (posted with the permission of Professor Gill Livingston and The Lancet).
“Key messages
· Three new modifiable risk factors for dementia
o New evidence supports adding three modifiable risk factors – excessive alcohol consumption, head injury, and air pollution – to our 2017 Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention, and care life-course model of nine factors (less education, hypertension, hearing impairment, smoking, obesity, depression, physical inactivity, diabetes, and infrequent social contact).
· Modifying 12 risk factors might prevent or delay up to 40% of dementias.
· Be ambitious about prevention
· Specific actions for risk factors across the life course
o Aim to maintain systolic BP of 130 mm Hg or less in midlife from around age 40 years (antihypertensive treatment for hypertension is the only known effective preventive medication for dementia).
o Encourage use of hearing aids for hearing loss and reduce hearing loss by protection of ears from excessive noise exposure.
o Reduce exposure to air pollution and second-hand tobacco smoke.
o Prevent head injury.
o Limit alcohol use, as alcohol misuse and drinking more than 21 units weekly increase the risk of dementia.
o Avoid smoking uptake and support smoking cessation to stop smoking, as this reduces the risk of dementia even in later life.
o Provide all children with primary and secondary education.
o Reduce obesity and the linked condition of diabetes. Sustain midlife, and possibly later life physical activity.
o Addressing other putative risk factors for dementia, like sleep, through lifestyle interventions, will improve general health.
· Tackle inequality and protect people with dementia”
Thank you very much to Professor Gill Livingston and The Lancet for allowing us to share their recent work here on our blog.
It’s been amazing to see how far our blog and program have come since its inception in 2016. In September 2016, we created this two-pronged program with the goals of raising awareness and de-stigmatizing dementia through: 1) our blog, which has reached over 3,000 readers from around the world; and 2) weekly visits by a group of Havergal students to a local seniors’ residence to engage individuals with dementia and develop intergenerational relationships. Since then, we have been fortunate to be mentored by Professor Nathan Herrmann from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, who has generously given of his time and expertise to mentor and supervise our student leaders with dementia advocacy. You can also follow Professor Herrmann’s “Memory Doctor” blog for dementia caregivers, with his latest post on “Caring for a person with dementia during the COVID-19 pandemic” at: http://health.sunnybrook.ca/memory-doctor/
Professor Nathan Herrmann and Student Executive Team
Vice-Chair Zoë Stevens
Nathan Herrmann MD FRCPC
Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Division of Geriatric Psychiatry
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
