Can You Predict and Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease?

Friendships and exercise reduce our risk of Alzheimer’s Disease

Can you predict Alzheimer’s disease in advance? Now you can, according to Atlanta-based lifestyle medicine physician Dr. Gregory Charlop.

The new FDA-cleared p-tau217 blood tests can now help diagnose Alzheimer’s in people already showing early symptoms without invasive brain scans or spinal taps. Doctors can estimate when symptoms may begin, often 10–20 years out, with remarkable accuracy of +/- 3-4 years.

To be clear, these tests are not for healthy people, routine screening, or “see your future” predictions. Use them only after symptoms appear and following a full medical evaluation.

Why bother? We now have useful tools to prevent or delay Alzheimer’s. For example, there’s powerful evidence that regular exercise, coffee, a healthy diet, quality sleep, and meaningful social contact can help protect us from developing dementia. Thankfully, these are all tools we emphasize in lifestyle medicine.

If you’re at risk, now is the time to fight back against Alzheimer’s with common-sense lifestyle interventions.