At-home ‘brain quiz' reveals your risk of heart disease, stroke, dementia and 3 types of cancer
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AN at-home 'brain quiz' can reveal your risk of dementia, as well stroke, heart disease and three common types of cancer.
It suggests that taking better care of your brain could boost your overall health, researchers said.
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Factors such as blood pressure, exercise and sleep can affect your risk of dementia, as well as heart disease and cancer
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Developed at Mass General Brigham - a hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School - the McCance Brain Care Score (BCS) is a tool designed to assess modifiable risk factors that influence brain health.
The quiz's 21 questions evaluate someone's physical health, lifestyle, as well as social and emotional factors.
All together, these can pain a picture of someone's risk of brain diseases that come on with age.
But researchers found the quiz could also shed light someone's risk of non-brain related diseases, such as heart disease or cancer.
That's because neurological diseases such as stroke, dementia, and late-life depression, as well as cardiovascular diseases —including ischaemic heart disease, stroke, and heart failure —and cancers are often driven by the same risk factors.
These include things like unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, smoking, excessive drinking, high blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.
Psycho-social factors like stress and social isolation are also drivers of disease.
In fact, at least 80 per cent of cardiovascular disease cases and 50 per cent of cancer cases can be linked to these factors, researchers claimed.
Senior author Sanjula Singh, of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital, said: "While the McCance Brain Care Score was originally developed to address modifiable risk factors for brain diseases, we have also found it's associated with the incidence of cardiovascular disease and common cancers."
'These findings reinforce the idea that brain disease, heart disease, and cancer share common risk factors and that by taking better care of your brain, you may also be supporting the health of your heart and body as a whole simultaneously.'
10 second one leg stand test
The quiz will generate a score of 0 to 21 - the higher your score, the more brain-healthy habits you practice.
Researchers used data from the UK Biobank to analyse health outcomes in 416,370 people aged 40 to 69 years using the test.
They found that a 5-point higher BCS score at baseline was associated with a 43 per cent lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease - including ischaemic heart disease, stroke, and heart failure - over 12 and a half years.
For cancer, a 5-point increase in BCS was associated with a 31 per cent lower rate of lung, bowel and breast cancer.
How to do the quiz
Before you take the test, you'll need some information from your health records, such as your latest blood pressure reading, you haemoglobin A1c score, your cholesterol levels and BMI.
The test - available on the Mass General Brigham website - starts off by asking people about their blood pressure, cholesterol levels and BMI, as well as smoking, exercise and sleep habits.
It also asks patients about social relationships - whether they're close to anyone outside of spouses and children - and if they feel that their "life has meaning".
Once you've answered the questions, the quiz will generate a score between 0 and 21, and ways to improve your brain health.
The aim is to achieve the highest score possible.
The score will be made up of three categories – physical, lifestyle, and social-emotional health – and it measures what you are already doing to protect your brain and prolong your brain health.
This can include exercise, sleep, social interactions, lowering blood pressure and more.
"Your McCance Brian Care score is a tool you can use to measure and improve how well you care for your brain throughout your life," according to Mass General Brigham.
"Small adjustments, like finding some time to walk more in your day or making it a priority to call your best friend, can have a major improvement on your overall score and brain health over time.
"Achieving your highest score and keeping your highest score month after month, year after year, will ensure you are taking the best care of your brain as you grow and thrive."
Study authors said that previous research suggests that some individual components of the BCS quiz - such as smoking, lack of exercise and high blood pressure - can raise the risk of dementia or heart disease.
But they said that their study can't prove that the BSC components can cause disease - only that they are strongly linked.
Researchers also noted that the quiz can't be used to predict whether someone will get a specific disease.
Instead, it can serve as a framework to help people identify achievable lifestyle changes that support the health of their brain, as well as the rest of their body.
Lead author Jasper Senff said: 'The goal of the McCance Brain Care Score is to empower individuals to take small, meaningful steps toward better brain health.
'Taking better care of your brain by making progress on your Brain Care Score may also be linked to broader health benefits, including a lower likelihood of heart disease and cancer.
'Primary care providers around the world are under growing pressure to manage complex health needs within limited time," he went on.
'A simple, easy-to-use tool like the McCance Brain Care Score holds enormous promise - not only for supporting brain health, but also for helping to address modifiable risk factors for a broader range of chronic diseases in a practical, time-efficient way.'
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