Healthy habits like exercising and eating well really do seem to improve cognitive decline, particularly if followed in a dedicated way
By Chris Simms
28 July 2025
Regular exercise could help keep us sharp
YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP via Getty Images
A structured course of exercise, diet, cognitive challenges and social engagement seems to be particularly effective at warding off cognitive decline, compared with more relaxed self-guided efforts.
The brain’s capacity to remember, use language and solve problems tends to decline with age, often leading to dementia. Yet, research has shown up to 45 per cent of global dementia cases may be preventable by modifying 14 risk factors, such as lack of education, social isolation and traumatic brain injury.
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To investigate ways of staving off this decline, Laura Baker at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina and her colleagues have been running an investigation called the US POINTER study.
They selected more than 2100 participants who were deemed to have a high risk of cognitive decline because they were between 60 and 79 years old, had a sedentary lifestyle, ate a suboptimal diet and met at least two other dementia-related criteria, such as a family history of memory impairment.
The participants were randomly assigned to one of two regimens, which both aimed to encourage physical and cognitive activity, a healthy diet and social engagement, but went about it in different ways.