The Lifestyle Changes to Prevent Dementia I Started After Watching My Dad Forget Things He Never Used To

Introduction

My father always remembers everything. Birthdays, old family stories, right where he parked his car three weeks ago. So when he started forgetting the little things—a name in the middle of a sentence, did he tell me something? — I became more anxious than I expected. Nothing dramatic. It’s just that I sit down and pay close attention.

There’s a certain kind of concern when you see parents slipping into small details. It’s not panic at all, because there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for everyone’s mistake. Sometimes everyone forgets the name. Everyone repeats their story from time to time. But when you notice the pattern growing, instead of ignoring each instance separately, you find it hard to look away. I watched silently for a few weeks, before I said anything directly, partly out of fear of overreacting and partly out of fear of not reacting at all.

That’s why I first considered lifestyle changes to prevent dementia. I’ve always believed that dementia is mainly due to genetics and bad luck, which is either you throw it away or you don’t. The investigation told a completely different story. The 2024 Lancet Commission on Dementia found that 45% of dementia cases worldwide are linked to 14 modifiable risk factors; that is lifestyle changes to prevent dementia are not mere wishful thinking. They have some of the most rigorous studies on dementia.

I am not a doctor or neurologist, and nothing here can substitute for medical advice. But as someone who undertook this research out of genuine personal concern, I wanted to share what really changed in our house once I understood the tests, and what I would say to my friend if he asked me directly.

Why Lifestyle Matters More Than I Realised

The Lancet Commission’s findings genuinely reframed how I think about this. Their 2024 report increased the estimated proportion of preventable dementia cases from 40% in 2020 to 45%, and added two new risk factors — untreated vision loss and high LDL cholesterol — bringing the total to 14 across the life course.

Nearly half of all dementia cases worldwide are linked to factors that can, at least partly, be influenced by daily habits and medical care. That statistic alone changed how seriously I took this.

I’d grown up assuming dementia was something that simply happened to people, with no real room for agency. Reading through this research properly was the first time I understood that wasn’t accurate. There’s no guarantee, and genetics still plays a real role, but the idea that close to half of cases trace back to modifiable factors gave me something concrete to actually act on, rather than just worry about.

What struck me most was learning that this isn’t a fringe finding from one small study. The Lancet Commission triangulates evidence from extensive meta-analyses and intervention studies conducted by leading dementia researchers worldwide, and the Commission itself has been refining this same risk model since 2017. The fact that the number kept climbing across each update, from 40% to 45%, suggests researchers are still uncovering more preventable pathways rather than running out of them.

It also reframed how I thought about responsibility within our family. This wasn’t a conversation about anyone having done something wrong. It was simply new information that hadn’t been widely available or discussed when my dad was younger, and the most useful thing I could do with it now was act on it rather than dwell on what might have been different decades earlier.

The Lifestyle Changes That Made the Biggest Difference to Me

Getting Serious About Physical Activity

Physical inactivity sits firmly on the Lancet Commission’s list of modifiable risk factors. I’ve written in more depth before about the specific link between exercise and dementia prevention, including newer research suggesting that even concentrated weekend exercise sessions offer meaningful brain health protection for people who can’t fit in daily workouts.

For my dad specifically, this meant trading some of his sit-down hobbies for a daily walk, something small enough that it didn’t feel like a chore he’d eventually abandon. He’d never describe himself as someone who exercises, and getting him to accept a daily 20-minute walk took more persuading than I expected from a man who’s usually fairly open to suggestions.

What helped was framing it around something he already enjoyed rather than presenting it as exercise for exercise’s sake. He’s always liked observing the changes in the garden through the seasons, so the walk became an extension of that interest rather than a separate health task layered on top of his day. We now do it together most Sunday mornings, which has the added benefit of being one more form of regular social engagement, another factor the Commission links to lower dementia risk.

Treating Hearing Loss as a Brain Health Issue, Not Just an Ear Issue

This was the one that genuinely surprised me. Hearing loss is one of the most significant single risk factors identified by the Commission, likely because untreated hearing loss leads to reduced social engagement and extra cognitive strain as the brain works harder to fill in gaps.

My dad had been quietly avoiding getting his hearing checked for years, treating it as a minor inconvenience rather than anything worth addressing properly. Reframing it as a brain health issue, not just an ageing inconvenience, was what finally got him into an appointment.

Looking back, I think part of his reluctance was tied to what wearing a hearing aid seemed to represent, almost a visible marker of getting older that he wasn’t ready to accept. Once I stopped framing the conversation around hearing loss itself and started framing it around protecting his memory specifically, the resistance softened considerably faster than I expected.

Managing Blood Pressure and Cholesterol Properly

High LDL cholesterol is one of the two newly added risk factors in the 2024 update, alongside hypertension, which has been recognised as a risk factor for longer. I’ve covered cholesterol management in more detail separately, and it’s worth understanding that this isn’t only a heart health conversation. The same vascular damage that raises heart disease risk also affects blood flow to the brain.

My dad had been on blood pressure medication for a few years already, largely unrelated to any cognitive concern, but learning about this connection gave him a renewed reason to stay consistent with it rather than treating it as just another pill to remember. Sometimes a different angle on the same advice is what actually makes it stick.

Taking Mental Health Seriously — Not Just “Pushing Through”

Depression is listed as a modifiable midlife risk factor for dementia, and this is the one that hit closest to home for our family. I looked into this connection properly in a separate article on whether depression can cause dementia, and the research suggests the relationship may run in both directions — depression appears to be both an early symptom and a genuine risk factor in its own right.

This was a difficult one to bring up directly, partly because my dad’s generation tends to treat low mood as something to quietly push through rather than discuss openly. Connecting it explicitly to memory and brain health, rather than framing it purely as an emotional wellbeing conversation, made it easier for him to take seriously.

Protecting Sleep Quality

Sleep doesn’t appear as its own standalone item on the Commission’s list, but it threads through several of the other factors, particularly depression and cardiovascular health. I’d already researched the connection between insomnia and depression for another piece, and that overlap made it clear sleep wasn’t a separate box to tick. It was quietly supporting or undermining several other risk factors at once.

My dad’s sleep had been inconsistent for a while, partly due to an evening habit of falling asleep in front of the television rather than going to bed properly, which left him waking at odd hours overnight. A small, unglamorous change — moving that wind-down routine to the bedroom instead of the sofa — made a noticeable difference within a couple of weeks.

What Surprised Me About the Research

Two things stood out as I read further. The first was how recently vision loss and high LDL cholesterol were added to the list — both new in the 2024 update, which shows how quickly this field of research is still evolving.

The second was the emphasis on midlife, not old age, as the window that matters most. Several risk factors, including smoking, depression, physical inactivity, and diabetes, were reclassified from late-life to midlife factors between the 2020 and 2024 reports.

By the time memory symptoms become noticeable, the most useful window for prevention may already be decades in the past. The Commission’s research points squarely toward acting in your 40s and 50s, not waiting until your 70s.

This detail genuinely changed how I think about my own habits, not just my dad’s. I’m not in my seventies, and for a long time that made conversations about dementia feel like something distant and future-tense, relevant to worry about later rather than now. Learning that midlife habits carry this much weight removed that excuse fairly quickly.

What I’ve Actually Changed in My Own Life

Watching my dad go through this made me look harder at my own habits too, since several of these risk factors apply across the life course rather than only to people already in their seventies. I’ve started taking my own physical activity more seriously, paying closer attention to sleep, and booking a hearing check of my own, mostly out of curiosity rather than concern.

I’ve also become noticeably more consistent about my own blood pressure checks, something I used to put off for months at a time simply because nothing felt urgent enough to prioritise it. Knowing what’s actually at stake beyond the obvious heart health framing gave that small admin task a different weight than it had before.

None of this felt like a dramatic life overhaul. It felt more like finally taking seriously a handful of things I’d been vaguely meaning to address for years, the kind of habits that are easy to keep deprioritising indefinitely until something personal forces the issue.

What I’d Tell Someone Worried About a Parent or Themselves

This isn’t about blame, and it’s important to say that clearly and say it early. Genetics, age, and factors entirely outside anyone’s control still play a significant role, and plenty of people who do everything right will still face this condition. Lifestyle changes to prevent dementia are about shifting odds, not guaranteeing outcomes.

I think this distinction matters enormously, both for how you approach a conversation with a parent and for how you treat yourself if you’re the one making changes. Framing this as a guarantee sets everyone up for unnecessary guilt or false reassurance. Framing it as meaningfully shifting the odds in your favour feels both more honest and, oddly, more motivating than a promise that was never realistic in the first place.

If you’re noticing small changes in someone you love, my honest advice is to treat it as a prompt for a proper medical conversation, not a verdict. Memory lapses have plenty of explanations beyond dementia, including stress, poor sleep, certain medications, and thyroid issues, and a GP is far better placed than either of us to work through which explanation actually fits.

And if you’re simply trying to be proactive for your own future, the research suggests starting earlier rather than later is what actually moves the needle. None of the changes covered here require a complete life overhaul. They’re the kind of ordinary, slightly boring habits that are easy to keep putting off indefinitely, right up until something personal makes them feel urgent. I’d rather you act on the urgency now, while it’s still preventive, than wait for a reason that arrives too late to matter as much.

Frequently Asked Questions

This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a doctor for any concerns about memory or cognitive health.

Faizan Ahmed

“I am a health content writer who started this journey the same way many readers arrive here — searching for clear, honest answers at the wrong hour, and finding content that was either too complicated or too vague to help. Pure Vitality Tips was built out of that experience. Every article published here is researched first — drawing from peer-reviewed studies, WHO, CDC, NHS, NIH, and leading clinical journals. I am not a doctor, but I take the responsibility of writing about health seriously — because I know first-hand how much accurate information matters.”