To send a link and summary of this article to a friend, click here . Just like your heart, your brain won t work as well if cholesterol deposits or high blood pressure damages the arteries that supply its blood. That word doesn t mean demented, exactly. But dementia does include age-related memory impairment and Alzheimer s disease. That s why many of the nutritional supplements recommended to shield your brain from age-related memory impairment also offer protection from heart disease.
People don t have to inevitably decline.
Some researchers regard Alzheimer s disease as a kind of a subcategory of normal memory loss that s associated with aging, Dr. Khalsa says. Experts now think that there is a continuum from age-associated memory loss into Alzheimer s disease, at least in some people. Other researchers aren t so sure. When people have Alzheimer s disease, microscopic changes occur in the brain, and those changes are somewhat different from the changes seen in people who have declining memories as a result of the aging process, says Jay Lombard, M.D., assistant clinical professor of neurology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City and co-author of The Brain Wellness Plan. There s also a genetic component to Alzheimer s disease, so your risk may be higher if a parent or grandparent had it.