Daily habits for brain health

A woman in her seventies doing gentle morning exercises on a sunlit patio

The World Health Organization's 2026 guidelines concluded that up to 45% of dementia risk could be prevented or delayed by addressing modifiable factors. Most of those factors are habits rather than events.

None of this is exotic, and that is rather the point.

Two old friends in their seventies laughing at something a grandchild just whispered

What WHO recommends

  • Increasing physical activity
  • Stopping tobacco use
  • Reducing alcohol intake
  • Eating a healthy diet
  • Reducing exposure to air pollution
  • Managing blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol
  • Considering hearing aids as part of risk reduction
  • Cognitive training and stimulation
  • Social engagement

What it does not recommend is supplementation with vitamin B, vitamin E, omega-3 or multivitamins in people without a diagnosed deficiency. The full guidance is covered here.

Being realistic about this

Nine recommendations is too many to start at once, and most of them are lifelong rather than a project.

Blood pressure and hearing are worth prioritising, because both are checked easily, treated effectively, and frequently missed. Neither requires you to become a different person.

It also bears repeating that this is population-level risk. Doing everything on the list does not guarantee anything for any individual, and a diagnosis is not evidence that somebody failed to follow it.

A Latino man in his seventies feeding a neighbour's cat through a back door
A white man in his sixties adjusting a hearing aid before answering the door

Reading on this

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Start with blood pressure and hearing

if you do nothing else on the list, do these two.

Blood pressure is the most consistently supported modifiable factor, particularly treated in midlife. It is measured in two minutes, treatment is cheap and well understood, and it requires no change in how you live. High blood pressure has no symptoms, which is exactly why it goes untreated for years.

Hearing is the one people dismiss. Untreated hearing loss makes conversation exhausting, which leads to withdrawal, which is itself a risk factor. It is also frequently mistaken for inattention or early memory trouble by families. A hearing test is quick and the fix is well established.

Both are things a doctor can address at a single appointment, which is not true of most of the rest of the list.

A Latina woman in her seventies sorting beans into a glass jar

What cognitive stimulation means

WHO recommends cognitive training and stimulation, and this is the recommendation most distorted by marketing.

Brain training applications reliably make you better at the specific games they contain. Evidence that this transfers to everyday function, or to dementia risk, is much weaker, and the commercial claims have attracted regulatory attention.

What the research supports better is genuine novelty and difficulty: learning an instrument or a language, taking a course, complex work, demanding hobbies, reading substantially. The common thread is sustained effort at something you are not already good at, often alongside other people, which also covers the social recommendation.

You do not need to buy anything for this.

Seeing whether it makes a difference

Habits are slow and their effects are invisible from inside.

A baseline you repeat is the only practical way to see whether your cognition is holding steady over years. It will not attribute a change to any particular habit, but it will tell you whether there has been one.

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