As More People Live Longer Why Are Rates of Dementia Falling?

Dalrymple shares some good health news at Pajamas Media:

A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine points out that something unexpected has happened to confound the gloomy prognostications of epidemiologists and demographers. As the percentage of people surviving into old age increases, so the proportion of them who suffer from dementia decreases. People are not only living longer, but living better. This is a phenomenon that has happened across the western world.

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The explanation favored by the authors is first that the general level of education of the population has increased and second that the prevalence of risk factors for the development of small blood vessel disease, which causes dementia, has declined. Old people have healthier lifestyles and do more exercise than they used to. The decline in smoking (oddly enough once thought to be protective against dementia, but now thought to promote it) may have had a marked effect.

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