New research has shown that everyday health and lifestyle choices—like your weight, blood pressure, and level of education—can affect how quickly Alzheimer’s disease gets worse.
Scientists found that these factors can change how fast harmful tau tangles spread in the brain. Tau tangles are one of the main signs of Alzheimer’s disease and are closely linked to memory loss and problems with thinking.
The study was led by Dr. Merle Hoenig from the Juelich Research Center in Germany. It was presented at the 2025 Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Annual Meeting and published in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
This work builds on earlier research published in The Lancet in 2024, which said that up to half of all dementia cases could be prevented by changing certain risk factors.
In this new study, researchers focused on 162 people who already had signs of amyloid buildup in their brains. Amyloid buildup is one of the earliest changes seen in Alzheimer’s disease. Of these people, 77 were still mentally healthy, 55 had mild memory problems, and 30 had already been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Each person had a special brain scan called a PET scan. The scan used a tool called 18F-AV-1451, which lights up tau tangles in the brain. Scientists then looked at two things: how far the tau tangles spread in the brain (called “tau-speed”) and how much tau built up in specific areas (called “tau-level-rise”).
The team also looked at personal health and lifestyle details, such as body weight (BMI), education level, how bad their high blood pressure was, signs of mood or behavior problems, early levels of amyloid or tau, whether they had the ApoE4 gene (which raises the risk of Alzheimer’s), their age, and their sex.
The results were very clear. People who were overweight, had lower levels of education, or had more severe high blood pressure were more likely to have larger buildups of tau tangles in specific brain areas. This means these lifestyle and health factors may speed up brain damage in certain parts of the brain.
However, the speed at which tau tangles spread throughout the brain was more affected by things people can’t change, such as their genes and sex. For example, women and people with the ApoE4 gene saw tau tangles spread faster across their brains.
Dr. Hoenig said these findings offer hope. While we can’t change our genes or whether we’re male or female, we can control things like body weight, blood pressure, and how mentally active we are. Making these changes could slow down the progress of Alzheimer’s disease.
This study also introduces a new way of understanding how Alzheimer’s moves through the brain. By measuring both how fast the disease spreads and how much damage it causes in certain areas, doctors may be able to better test new treatments and create more personalized care plans in the future.
Dr. Hoenig also mentioned that this method of using PET scans to study both spread and buildup could be useful in other areas of medicine too, like cancer, where tracking how a disease spreads is just as important.
In short, this research gives us one more reason to live a healthy lifestyle. Keeping a healthy weight, managing blood pressure, and staying mentally active could all help slow down the changes in the brain caused by Alzheimer’s. It’s another reminder that small everyday choices can make a big difference for your future brain health.
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