If you’ve been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment what’s the best strategy to slow decline? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Comprehensive lifestyle changes are better than medications to slow, stop or even improve mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer’s disease, a study by Johns Hopkins neurologist Majid Fotuhi finds. This meta analysis of existing randomized trials sought to compare the two strategies.

Fotuhi: There are new drugs that have been shown to help patients with mild cognitive impairment or early stages of Alzheimer's disease. I wanted to find out whether programs that combine several lifestyle interventions are equal to these drugs or better or worse than these drugs. I've compared the results of randomized controlled trials for lifestyle interventions and these new drugs and what they found was that lifestyle dimensions appeared to be far more effective than these new drugs.    :30

Fotuhi notes that comprehensive lifestyle changes are needed, including cardiovascular exercise for 45 minutes five times per week, consumption of a Mediterranean type diet, smoking cessation and other interventions. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.