Staying active and keeping blood sugar in check during midlife may help your brain stay sharper decades later, according to a new study from UT Health San Antonio — and the benefits may look different depending on your background.
The research
Researchers at UT Health San Antonio, the academic health center of The University of Texas at San Antonio, followed 402 adults from San Antonio with a mean age of 57.9. Just over half (52%) were Hispanic, and 58.5% were women. The team tracked cardiovascular health factors using the American Heart Association's Life's Simple 7 (LS7) framework, which covers three behaviors (healthy diet, not smoking, physical activity) and four health measures (blood pressure, body mass index, total cholesterol, and fasting blood glucose), then measured how participants' thinking abilities changed over time.
The results, published July 23 in Alzheimer's & Dementia: Behavior & Socioeconomics of Aging, split along ethnic lines. For Hispanic participants, physical activity was especially tied to slower cognitive decline. For non-Hispanic white participants, lower fasting blood glucose mattered more. The study is among the first to examine how specific cardiovascular health factors relate to cognitive aging across different ethnic groups — a gap that matters because Hispanic older adults carry a disproportionate dementia burden. About 14% of Hispanic adults aged 65 and older have Alzheimer's, compared with 10% of non-Hispanic white older adults, and Mexican Americans also have higher rates of diabetes, obesity, and dyslipidemia.
"By improving cardiovascular health through modifiable lifestyle changes, there is a potential to meaningfully alleviate the public health burden of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, particularly in high-risk populations," said Claudia Satizabal, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at UT Health San Antonio and its Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer's and Neurodegenerative Diseases.
Satizabal co-senior authored the study with Chen-Pin Wang, PhD, also of the Department of Population Health Sciences. Together they note that nearly 40% of Alzheimer's cases may be connected to modifiable factors — which puts everyday choices squarely in the spotlight.
Why it matters
This isn't about a single magic habit. It's about the idea that the same things that protect your heart in your 50s and 60s may also protect your memory in your 70s and 80s. The fact that different factors showed up for different groups suggests that brain-protective strategies may not be one-size-fits-all. For anyone tracking their own cognition, it's a reminder that midlife is not too late — and that simple, measurable markers like blood sugar and weekly movement are worth paying attention to. It also points to why diverse research cohorts matter: what works for one population may not fully translate to another.
What you can do
- Move regularly — even a brisk daily walk counts toward the physical activity LS7 tracks.
- Ask your doctor about fasting blood glucose at your next checkup if you haven't had it checked recently.
- Keep the other LS7 basics in view: blood pressure, cholesterol, BMI, diet, and not smoking.
- If you want a baseline for your own thinking skills, a cognitive check-in now can help you notice changes later.
Source: ScienceDaily Mind & Brain
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