What if you could lower your risk of developing three common brain-related diseases — stroke, depression, and dementia — with a single set of behavioral changes?
That’s the question Sanjula Singh, MD, PhD, and her research team set out to answer when they analyzed the data from 59 studies, published between 2000 and 2023, that identified modifiable risk factors for these three diseases. Singh’s team discovered a surprising overlap of lifestyle choices that can reduce the risk of their onset.
“If you’re starting to work on one of [these behavioral changes], very often you’re actually improving multiple [health markers] at the same time,” Singh, a principal investigator at the Brain Care Labs at Massachusetts General Hospital, tells The New York Times. “That’s a great way to start.”
Because vascular damage in the brain may contribute to all three diseases, modifiable factors — dietary choices, cognitive activity, social connections, exercise — can make a difference. Research shows the cumulative effect of these adjustments may reduce the chances of developing hypertension, high blood-sugar and cholesterol levels, chronic loneliness, and unmanageable stress — any of which can contribute to cognitive decline.
Controlling those baseline conditions, earlier research notes, can delay or prevent 60 percent of strokes, 40 percent of dementia cases, and 35 percent of depression diagnoses in later life.
“Those are striking numbers,” Stephanie Collier, MD, MPH, a geriatric psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., tells the Times. “If you can really optimize the lifestyle pieces or the modifiable pieces, you’re at such a higher likelihood of living life without disability.”
Supporting long-term brain health can be as simple as joining a friend for regular walks around the neighborhood, a routine that offers both exercise and social connection, or challenging your cognitive muscles with puzzles, word games, or other mental gymnastics.
When it comes to working with a healthcare provider, Singh and her team discovered that controlling hypertension offers the greatest benefits to overall brain health. High blood pressure almost triples the risk of stroke. And in a recent research study, participants who lowered their blood pressure into healthy territory were 15 percent less likely than their hypertense counterparts to develop dementia.
Physical activity and dietary changes, as well as stress management, are other effective strategies to bring hypertension under control. For older adults, however, the stiffening of blood vessels can require pharmaceutical intervention.
No matter how you decide to address these conditions, Collier counsels against procrastination. The best time to start, she says, “is generally not older age — it’s middle age.”
This article originally appeared as “STROKE, DEPRESSION, AND DEMENTIA: The Overlapping Risks — and Antidotes” in the September/October 2026 issue of Experience Life.
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