BOCA RATON, Fla. – A newly launched brain health center at Florida Atlantic University is focusing on early intervention and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
Neurologist Dr. Richard Isaacson, Director of the center at FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine said Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases start in the brain decades before symptoms appear.
He said that leaves ample time to help people make brain-healthy lifestyle choices to reduce their risk.
“The cornerstones of good health like exercise, a healthy diet, sleep modification, and maintaining a balanced life with low stress are super important. But the medical and biological factors controlling blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, and some of those other precise factors can only be really identified in a clinic setting, that’s what we intervene on,” Isaacson said.
He said the program is individually tailored and is available to people at any age from their twenties through their sixties and beyond.
Isaacson said research has shown that program participants had improved cognitive function after 18 months of following a targeted plan.