Countries With the Lowest Rates Of Alzheimer’s Disease. What’s Their Secret?
The biological clock is ticking, and the memory quite isn’t what it used to be. So you wonder if you might be headed towards Alzheimer’s somewhere down the road.
And this kind of scares you, if not a lot, because you’re the sort of person who’d rather get cancer than Alzheimer’s disease. You know friends, family or relatives who have it, and you just know that that’s not the way you want your life to end. It’s possibly your number one fear about aging.
Or perhaps you’ve already been diagnosed with it.
Whatever the case, you just get this sense of foreboding or a cold chill down your spine when “Alzheimer’s disease” pops in your head.
And you’d like to know if it were possible, at all, to reduce your risk of ever getting it.
Fortunately, it is.
And we can learn from people in countries with the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s disease to gain some insights on the how, especially if we compare them with people in the highest-rate countries.
These countries have the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s disease
The lowest rates of Alzheimer’s disease ever reported in scientific studies were in rural India, where Alzheimer’s was found in 0.62% of people aged 55+ and 1.07% of people aged 65+.
Other parts of the world where rates of dementia have been particularly low are:
- the Okinawa islands of Japan
- Nicoya area of Costa Rica
- PACA region of southeastern France
- Liguria district of northwest Italy
- certain areas of: Greece, Spain, and Central and South America, Africa and Southeast Asia.
And in general, there’s been less dementia and Alzheimer’s found among developing countries compared with developed countries.
Which countries have the highest rates?
So countries in Europe and the Americas have generally been found with the highest rates of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
In fact, when people from their home countries move to the United States, their risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia appears to increase. This was especially the case for Africans in Nigeria who moved to Indianopolis.
And the Alzheimer’s rate was higher among Japanese men in Honolulu compared with those living in Japan.
Similar results were found among the Japanese living in Brazil compared with those living in Japan.
So with rates of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia varying according to where people live, clearly, there must be something else going on than just ageing and genetics. Otherwise, the rates of the disease would be rather uniform across the countries.
What, then, could be different about the countries with the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia compared with the countries with the higher rates of these diseases?
What might account for the difference?
One study that examined dietary trends and Alzheimer’s disease in Japan and developing countries gives us a clue. The rate of Alzheimer’s disease in Japan had risen from 1% in 1985 to 8% in 2008. To determine what might have caused this increase in rate, the study investigators examined changes in dietary patterns among the Japanese during this period.
What they found was that the Japanese had been adopting a more Western diet, with an increase in their intake of animal products and processed foods, moving away from the more traditional Japanese diet.
In the same study, they also looked at the rising Alzheimer’s disease rates in eight other developed countries: Brazil, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Nigeria, Republic of Korea, and Sri Lanka. They found similar results to Japan, that there’d been an increase in the adoption of a Western diet, featuring more animal products and processed foods, correlating with an increase in Alzheimer disease rates in these countries.
Increased obesity was found among the eight countries, as well, while increases in cholesterol and saturated fat were found in Japan.
Countries with the lowest rates seem to have the following in common — Their ‘Secret’
So the avoidance of animal products and processed foods is one thing countries with the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia seems to have in common.
And this study would corroborate this view, which found that those who consume meat (including fish and poultry) in their diet were twice as likely to develop dementia compared to vegetarians.
Something else that research is discovering is that there seems to be a link between heart health and brain health. So the same risk factors that increase your chances of developing heart problems also increase your chances of developing brain problems, such as, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. These risk factors include:
- Lack of exercise
- Obesity
- Smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke
- High blood pressure
- High cholesterol
- Poorly controlled type 2 diabetes
And while a vegetarian diet is definitely one way to go, people in countries with the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia appear to follow a diet that’s generally healthy for the heart, characterized by:
- little red meat
- moderate amounts of fish
- low amounts of saturated fats
- lots of vegetables
- a good amount of fermented and pickled products
- some beans
- some tea, coffee, and red wine
And in developing countries, in particular, there’s less access to decadent desserts and sugary snacks, which is another hallmark of the Western diet.
Dementia is not a normal part of aging
You’re worried about Alzheimer’s, in part, because of the common misperception that losing your mind may be a normal part of aging.
And that’s simply not true.
While it can’t be denied that the older we get, our chances of developing dementia does increase, if it were just due to the aging process, the rates of dementia and Alzheimer’s would be pretty constant across the globe.
So that means, something else must be going on as we age, and most likely, that something is also connected to our heart health.
That’s good news, because we already know that there are positive steps we can take to maintain good heart health.
And that means, there are positive steps you can take to maintain your brain health, as well.
So drawing on insights from countries with the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s disease, you don’t need to feel helpless or powerless by the thought of developing dementia as you age.
You can do something about it.
You don’t have to resign yourself to Alzheimer’s as a fate.
And you don’t have to let it become a part of you, to rob you of all that you hold dear.
