If you didn’t know that high blood pressure can be connected to dementia or cognitive impairment, you probably could have guessed it, right? The heart and the brain are the two most important organs in the body so it’s not surprising that heart health and brain health are connected! What’s surprising is that there haven’t been very many scientific studies or clinical trials specifically aimed at understanding the link between controlling or lowering blood pressure and incidences of dementia or cognitive impairment. However, a systematic review and analysis of data from various different studies and clinical trials conducted from as early as 1994 up to 2019 reveal some very interesting things about blood pressure and dementia. And if you think it’s just a matter of lowering blood pressure to reduce dementia, read on because you might still learn something new.

A team of nine medical research doctors poured over 1,543 different data sources that included terms such as “dementia, cognitive decline, cognitive impairment, blood pressure, hypertension, anti-hypertensive, and randomized controlled trials”, they then narrowed down their sources to 163 “potentially relevant” articles which, after a close reading, provided 12 studies they could analyze. The researchers were specifically looking for the correlation between lowering blood pressure with medication (antihypertensive agents) and the development of dementia, cognitive impairment, or change in test scores so they made sure to exclude studies that specifically recruited participants who already had dementia.

You might say that 12 studies doesn’t sound like a lot, but those 12 studies reported on over 92,000 participants with a mean age of 69 (which is rare because most 69 year olds I’ve met are pretty nice), about 42% of which were women. The mean blood pressure was 154 over 83.3 (which the American Heart Association classifies as stage 2 hypertension). In general, the studies followed up with the participants for about 4 years periodically reassessing blood pressure and cognitive function. Analysis of the data showed that of those approximately 92,000 participants, nearly 5,500 had been diagnosed with dementia or cognitive impairment on follow-up, but that participants who had taken medication for hypertension were significantly less likely to have developed dementia. 

It was already understood that hypertension can be a significant risk factor for dementia, so it makes sense that taking hypertension medication help decrease the risk of developing dementia. But the researchers pointed out that taking hypertension medication was only effective in lowering dementia risk if it was taken during midlife. In other words, you need to be heart health conscious between the ages of about 40 and 65 if you want to avoid the risk of developing dementia. 

The researchers called for more studies specifically geared at understanding this correlation to be carried out. In the meantime, make sure to stay heart healthy by maintaining a healthy diet, exercising regularly at least 3 times a week, and tracking your blood pressure. Make sure to discuss your blood pressure with your primary care physician or cardiologist and stay on top of your hypertension medication.