The health of your heart and blood vessels has a lot to do with whether you’ll develop dementia, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Your vascular system consists of your heart and blood vessels, and its health has a lot to do with whether you will develop dementia as you get older. That’s according to Anja Soldan, a dementia expert at Johns Hopkins.

Soldan: Vascular health is a really important variable in determining cognitive decline, and another one is physical activity, which is somewhat related to your vascular health. There’s a lot of research showing that both purposeful exercise as well as simply living an active lifestyle, is associated with reduced risk of developing cognitive decline with age. There’s also a lot of research suggesting that cognitively stimulating activities are related to one’s risk of cognitive impairment so the more cognitively active you keep throughout your life, the lower your risk of dementia as you get older.  :34

Soldan concludes that activity, even modest activity, stimulates both mind and body, and notes most people also report simply feeling better as a result. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.