This Simple Change Could Slash Your Cognitive Decline by 50%—Are You Making It?

Addressing nutritional deficiencies via supplements, for instance, could improve cognition

CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU/AFP via Getty Images

A new approach to tackling mild cognitive decline and early-stage dementia highlights the potential of personalized treatment plans that combine medical interventions with lifestyle modifications. This innovative methodology targets various contributing factors, including exposure to mold, infections, and hormonal deficiencies, to create tailored strategies for improving cognition.

Dementia, encompassing several conditions that impair memory, thinking, and daily functioning, currently lacks a definitive cure. Treatments typically focus on symptom relief, but for Alzheimer’s disease—responsible for 60 to 70 percent of dementia cases—some medications like lecanemab aim to remove the amyloid plaques thought to play a role in the condition’s progression. Critics, however, argue that these drugs often fail to yield meaningful symptom relief.

Kat Toups, a practitioner at Bay Area Wellness in Walnut Creek, California, emphasizes that many patients haven’t seen improvement because treatments have not addressed the underlying causes of their cognitive decline. “Patients didn’t get well because we weren’t treating what was causing it in the first place,” she says.

Toups and her team have initiated a groundbreaking study exploring the efficacy of personalized treatment plans. “The approach is: let’s find all the things that are hurting the brain and get rid of those,” she explains. “Then let’s put back in whatever the brain and the whole body is needing as far as nutrients and hormones, and then let’s do things for neuroplasticity to help regain your brain.”

In this study, 73 participants—averaging 65 years old—were diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or early-stage dementia. Some met criteria for Alzheimer’s, while others were categorized as having MCI. The participants underwent extensive testing, including blood tests to assess Alzheimer’s biomarkers, inflammation levels, and potential hormonal, nutritional, or microbial deficiencies, to develop individualized treatment plans for 50 of them.

These personalized strategies included nutritional supplements to address deficiencies, a plant-rich diet, and a regimen of aerobic and strength training exercises six days a week, along with daily cognitive training games targeting memory, attention, and visual processing speed. Participants were also advised on optimizing sleep and managing stress.

In contrast, the remaining 23 participants continued with their standard treatment and lifestyle routines. After nine months, those in the personalized treatment group experienced an impressive overall cognitive score improvement of 13.7 points, while the standard-care group saw a decline of 4.5 points. The personalized group also noted significant gains in specific cognitive areas: memory improved by 10.6 points (compared to a 2.7 point decline in the control group), executive function increased by 9.8 points (versus a 2.2 point decline), and processing speed rose by 6.9 points (against a 1 point decline). “Over 90 percent of the patients in the precision-medicine approach had statistically significant improvements,” Toups adds.

Ana Daugherty from Wayne State University in Detroit finds these results promising, indicating a shift towards personalized methods that address the multifaceted risk factors associated with cognitive decline. “The precision-medicine approach can incorporate the many health and genetic risk factors and lifestyle resiliency factors that we’ve identified as a field over the last several decades,” she states. However, she cautions that these findings must be validated in larger studies.

This trial offers the most rigorous evidence to date for the potential of personalized medicine in tackling dementia, according to Christin Glorioso, a scientist at NeuroAge Therapeutics in San Francisco. But some experts, like Andrew Surmak, an independent imaging scientist in Baltimore, point out that while cognitive measures improved, biomarkers and brain scan indicators of dementia remained unchanged. “In many cases, improvements may reflect changes in functional or cognitive measures rather than true modification of underlying neurodegenerative pathology,” he explains.

The study also raises questions about the contributions of lifestyle changes versus the personalized interventions provided. Thomas Holland from Rush University in Chicago notes that disentangling the effects of individual components is challenging, suggesting that the cumulative impact of various strategies is likely what matters most. “It is likely the cumulative effect that matters most, rather than a single isolated component,” he adds.

Going forward, Glorioso suggests that future trials could benefit from blinding participants to specific interventions, such as whether they received supplements or a placebo. “The unblinded design, largely negative biomarker findings, and inability to attribute effects to specific interventions leave important questions unanswered,” she emphasizes.

Despite these complexities, Toups advocates for the immediate implementation of personalized treatment interventions. She notes that the control group was later offered six months of personalized strategies after the study concluded, but their progress was slower compared to those who began earlier. “The delay [is] hurting them. There’s no time to waste when your brain is degenerating,” she warns.