If you’re a regular reader of this column, you may recall that last year I wrote about research from the Alzheimer's Society stating that 40pc of dementia cases were preventable. 

This was very big news at the time.

And I remember calculating that in the UK alone, were there to be an actual decrease of 40pc in the number of people contracting the disease, this would reduce the diagnosis figures annually by around 84,000.    

I find this staggering, don’t you? 

I think we tend to latch onto news stories about dementia because plenty of us have lost at least one parent to the disease.

My own mother had Alzheimer’s for 15 years and frankly I would do anything possible to avoid the end of life that she had. 

But now we are of an age where it’s not just older relatives who get dementia, but friends and siblings and colleagues of our own generation.

Not surprisingly, many of us find this trend frightening because deep down we dread cognitive impairment more than any other illness. 

New research emerged last week which claimed that the rate of preventable cases had gone up now to 45pc, which does suggest that what scientists are finding is that dementia is caused just as much by lifestyle choices as it is by genetic or other factors.  

Meanwhile, last week, there was some good news on the treatment front because it was announced that a new drug, called lecanemab, has been shown to slow the progress of early Alzheimer’s by around four to six months in some patients.

It’s far too soon to get excited about this but it could mean that in time the path of the disease could be altered. 

However, this drug is not going to be available via the health service yet, as NICE (the National Institute for Care Excellence) explained, “The benefits of the new Alzheirmer’s drug lecanemab are too small to justify the cost to the NHS”. 

Therefore, for now at least, it would seem that any improvements we can make in our lifestyle habits to prevent or delay dementia are rather more reliable than banking on a pharmaceutical cure.   

But is it too late at our age to make effective changes? 

From everything I’ve read, I believe it’s always worth having a go at getting rid of unhelpful and unhealthy lifestyle behaviour because  the alterations we elect to make now – in terms of diet, exercise and so on – could be useful in helping us delay the onset of dementia and may also be beneficial in terms of escaping the worst symptoms of cognitive decline as well as those of other illnesses.

Clearly though, it would be ridiculous to assume that at this stage in life we can guarantee to reverse all the harm we may have been inflicting for decades on our bodies and minds.  

For younger people though, it would be a very different picture and I’m sure we should all take it upon ourselves to make our children, and even grandchildren, aware of how lifestyle behaviour affects their chances of succumbing to Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. 

In the new research, there are 14 factors identified which experts believe make us more prone to the disease.

Some are connected to injury, education and childhood poverty and we don’t have the power to affect those, but here is a list of the conditions and situations that we might have a chance of changing: depression, diabetes, excessive alcohol consumption, hearing loss, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, inactivity, obesity, smoking, social isolation, uncorrected visual loss

Probably, it will strike you that most of these are relevant to avoiding heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses too, and it may well be you are already doing your best to pursue the health messages that should help you do that. Personally, I think it’s great that we don’t have to look at a whole raft of different strategies for dementia but can simply continue to work on the ones we know also help us avoid common chronic physical conditions.    

However, I particularly want to draw your attention to depression, hearing loss and visual problems. 

So often, these are the difficulties for which many people delay seeking help and struggle with alone. But accessing professional support to improve these conditions could really be a game-changer for long-term cognitive health.  

I also want to mention that if you’re a smoker or seriously overweight, you may have tried several times over the years to make substantial behavioural changes which have failed because you haven’t stuck with them.

Please consider trying again. because there are all sorts of new interventions that might make all the difference to you.

So, I genuinely think it would be worthwhile seeing your GP to discuss current methods of help for those habits that have lingered on in your life for far too long, and which you know are harming you. 

Alas, there are no absolute answers or guarantees when it comes to health but let’s make sure we’re taking responsibility for ourselves as much as possible and putting effort into improving what we can.