Alzheimer’s terrifies me, so I got a top professor to tell me how to fight it
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Sleeping more, drinking less alcohol: here’s what I learnt about reducing my Alzheimer’s risk in midlife. Copy link. twitter. facebook. whatsapp. The single-leg balance test doesn’t sound like a test at all. It involves standing upright, closing your eyes and then lifting one foot. How hard can it be?.
Very hard, as it turned out when I tried it for the first time several weeks ago. I could barely hold a foot aloft for a few seconds before listing heavily to the side, like a torpedoed warship. I laughed at first, bemused at how such a simple task could be so difficult. The laughter stopped when I learnt that the “flamingo test”, as it’s called, assesses neurological function and can indicate a higher risk of developing dementia.
While there is no history of Alzheimer’s in my immediate family – plus I don’t smoke, I keep fit, I’m a normal weight and I eat a healthy diet (all risk-reducing factors) – at 55 I’d be lying if I said the thought of getting the disease in the future didn’t worry me.
The failed balance test led me to take the Think Brain Health Check-In, an online questionnaire developed by Alzheimer’s Research UK. It takes around 10 minutes to complete and asks a series of simple questions about everyday life and behaviours which are then assessed to provide a report on any brain health areas which can be improved.
The free tool has already been used by more than 340,000 people, and that’s important because research shows that up to 45 per cent of dementia cases can be prevented by changing behaviours. Indeed, with no treatments currently available on the NHS that can stop or slow dementia, sparing a few minutes to help identify, understand, and develop interventions against risk factors is a no-brainer.
