How And Why You Should Create Your Own Brain Health Pyramid

Plus, what to know about the U.S. POINTER study

Hello brain health ambassadors. I’m writing to you fresh off my talk to the U.S. POINTER study participants at the Butler Hospital Memory and Aging Project in Providence, Rhode Island at Brown University. It was truly an honor! Talk about brain health ambassadors—these people have devoted two years of their lives to help further our knowledge of how lifestyle habits shape dementia risk. I’d like to welcome all my new POINTER friends to BHK as many will be joining our community here.

As promised, I am happy to share some of my slides from the talk: Creating Your Own Brain Health Pyramid. Think of it as your backstage pass! But first, let’s go into what you need to know about the U.S. POINTER study. How does it differ from the FINGER study, a similar one that came before it? I’ll get into that, below, along with 5 top takeaways from the talk.

What To Know About The U.S. POINTER Study

U.S. POINTER stands for the U.S. Study to Protect Brain Health Through Lifestyle Intervention to Reduce Risk. It’s a large-scale clinical trial of 2,000 participants aged 60 to 79 at five centers around the country. In order to qualify as a POINTER participant, one must be free of dementia but have one or more cardiovascular risk factors, such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol. The researchers are aiming to find out if these lifestyle interventions can protect cognitive function in older adults. And, if so, to what degree?

If you’re a regular reader of BHK, then you’ll probably recognize these as familiar building blocks of brain health.

• Diet—following a MIND (Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Decline) diet (find the MIND guidelines below)