Dr. Paddy Barrett

And the reason we have seen that significant reduction more than likely is because we have done such a better job at managing all those core risk factors for the development of heart disease, which has had the spillover benefit of reducing the future incidence of dementia.

So that's an interesting question in terms of this is specifically the difference between incidence and prevalence.

And the answer is, is in most developed countries, no.

Which, again, surprises me.

We are.

And so if you, again, when we look at, say, longevity in terms of how long people live, average lifespans have improved, you know, dramatically over the last, say, one to 200 years.

But maximal lifespans actually haven't increased all that much over the last several hundred years.

So just more people on average are living into their, say, 80s and 90s.

But in general, we're doing such a better job

of managing things like blood pressure, people not smoking, getting good cholesterol control, et cetera, that the knock-on benefits to that is that, yes, people are developing dementia, but they're developing it much later in life.

Yeah, and one of the things you're bringing up here is the functionality and utility of brain training.

So this idea, I kept my brain active over time, which is why I kept my brain healthy.

And if you look at the literature here in terms of doing brain training, the evidence would suggest that doing brain training means that you get better at the test,

But the cross pollination of that in terms of other cognitive abilities is far less.

So it makes you better at the test, but not necessarily better at the other things that you may have wanted to get better at.

It's something that, you know, is advised in terms of it's useful to do it.

But in terms of the strength of that evidence, it actually hasn't turned out as strong as we would like.

Yeah, you have great holidays in China.

The evidence would suggest not.

Dementia is a bucket category for all of the features of dementia.