It’s important for everyone to keep up with healthy habits as you get older. Taking care of your physical and mental well-being can help keep your body and joints functioning for longer, maintain bone health and muscle strength, reduce frailty, and even lessen the risk of certain health conditions, like type 2 diabetes and heart disease. A little TLC can also protect your brain health—which, it turns out, is especially important for women.
While women are at lower risk than men for many conditions like heart disease and lung cancer, they actually experience much higher rates of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD). “At this point, about two thirds of the people who have Alzheimer's disease are women,” Jessica Caldwell, PhD, director of the Women’s Alzheimer's Movement Prevention and Research Center at the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, tells SELF. On top of that, research suggests that women with AD also tend to decline faster than men.
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