Will the threat of impaired cognition motivate people to address risk factors? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Dementia is a scary prospect for many, with most people saying they’d rather have a host of other health conditions. Now that a Johns Hopkins study led by Michelle Johannsen, a stroke and cardiovascular expert, has shown that heart attacks increase your risk to develop dementia, will that motivate you to reduce your risk for cardiovascular disease?

Johannsen: When you start talking about people's cognition and how you're able to manage complex activities, that's what executive functioning is and the ability to remember what it is that you've done in the past. And those important memories that we rely on to give ourselves value and intrinsic worth and those are things that really catch people's attention, so I'm hoping that those will be motivating factors to say yeah hey I have four blood pressure medications it's really obnoxious to take these things I should take them because I know that by preventing heart attack by preventing stroke, that those things that hopefully will prevent this cognitive decline.   :31

Johannsen says start with your primary care doctor to assess your risk. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.