Controlling blood pressure and cholesterol is essential to prevent dementia, a terrible disease that is difficult to reverse once it develops.
Controlling your blood pressure reduces your risk of developing dementia. A research team from UNSW University in Australia analyzed data from 28,008 hypertensive patients and found that lowering systolic blood pressure by 10 mmHg and diastolic blood pressure by 4 mmHg reduced the risk of developing dementia by an average of 13%. It is good to receive high blood pressure treatment as soon as possible, because the lower the current blood pressure and the younger the age, the greater the effect of reducing the risk of developing dementia.
When you control your blood pressure, you also need to control your cholesterol. This is because there is a very close link between blood pressure and cholesterol. When cholesterol builds up and narrows blood vessels, blood pressure rises, and when high blood pressure damages blood vessels, cholesterol easily builds up again. High blood pressure and high cholesterol levels increase the risk of serious diseases such as myocardial infarction, angina pectoris, and stroke, as well as dementia. Cholesterol itself is also a direct risk factor for dementia. A study of over 1.8 million people in the UK found that people with LDL cholesterol levels above 190 mg/dL had a 59% higher risk of developing dementia than those with very low levels (less than 100 mg/dL).
A representative health functional food ingredient that helps control blood pressure and improve cholesterol is policosanol cane wax alcohol-Cuban sugar. It has been confirmed that taking 20 mg of policosanol extracted and refined from Cuban sugar cane wax per day increases HDL, known as good cholesterol, by 29.9% (National Institute of Science of Cuba). High HDL helps control blood pressure as well as preventing dementia. This is because HDL acts as a cleaner that cleans cholesterol that raises blood pressure and beta-amyloid plaques in the brain that increase the risk of dementia.
