A healthy diet, combined with visits to friends and family and activities such as reading or playing cards, may help cut the risk of dementia, research suggests. Taking part in writing, reading, playing cards or other games at least twice a week is another area of healthy behaviour. The people in the study were analysed according to how many healthy behaviours they had, with those with four to six healthy behaviours being put in the most favourable group. A healthy diet had the strongest effect on slowing memory decline, followed by cognitive activity (writing, reading, playing games) and then physical exercise. Overall, people with the healthiest (four to six healthy behaviours) or even average healthy lifestyles (two to three healthy behaviours) were almost 90% and almost 30% less likely to develop dementia or mild cognitive impairment relative to those who were the least healthy.
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