As you grow older, your health may be impacted in a number of ways. Heart disease in its many forms often crops up with age, and dementia is another ailment that can affect an older leaning demographic. But what if we told you these two may actually be connected.

According to a new study conducted by The Lancet Healthy Longevity, people who have multiple heart conditions appear to be more likely to be diagnosed with dementia than even those at a higher genetic risk. This large study (200,000 people of 60 and older) looked at data from those suffering from stroke, a heart attack, or cardiometabolic diabetes, and found that the more of these conditions someone had, the more likely they were to also develop dementia down the line.

Over the course of more than 10 years, authors of the study analyzed data of participants from the U.K. Biobank of England, Scotland and Wales who began the assessment without dementia. However, these participants all had either a stroke, heart attack, cardiometabolic diabetes or a combination of the three. Throughout the duration of the study it was revealed that those who had more than one of these heart conditions were even more likely to be at risk for dementia than people who had a genetic predisposition to the condition. 

Additionally, while those who were at a higher generic risk of dementia only experienced deterioration in one area of the brain, people with one or more of the above heart conditions experienced a broader impact of damage within the brain. This was revealed from brain scans of 12,000 of the 200,000 participants.

As this is an observational study based on data from the U.K. Biobank, the authors of this study note that “the association between cardiometabolic multimorbidity and dementia risk cannot be taken as causal.” Additionally, those within the Biobank cohort are also “more likely to be from less deprived areas and have fewer health conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, than the general population,” so an even wider ranging study may reveal this risk to be even higher.

With all that being said, the study posits that “future interventions targeting cardiometabolic risk factors might in turn prove effective in preventing dementia, regardless of genetic predisposition.” So, how can you support your own heart health?

A study published earlier this year revealed that sleep ties directly to your cardiovascular wellness, with irregular sleep patterns impacting your heart health in the short and long term. Moral of the story: try to set a consistent sleep and wake time each day to keep your heart well-being in check. Taking a high-quality sleep supporting supplement may also be beneficial (here are our favorites).

A plant-based diet has an array of wide-ranging health benefits, one of which is heart health support.

In fact, a study published by the Journal of the American Heart Association showed that in a group of 5,000 healthy adults, 289 of them had developed heart disease by the 32-year-follow-up. Those who followed a plant-based diet, however, made up the 52% of people less likely to develop this disease. Even if you don’t plan on giving up meat full time, having plant-based days or mornings can make all the difference when done consistently.

Your morning cup of coffee can actually help you out in more ways than just giving you a vital boost of energy each day. It’s actually packed with antioxidants that, while not causally connected to improved heart health, seem to have a correlation to reduced risk of heart disease. Black coffee for the win!

Taking care of your body in a holistic way is vital to preserving your overall health throughout the years, and outside of a genetic predisposition to dementia you'll benefit from focusing on positive habits to keep strokes, diabetes, and heart attacks at bay. While dementia can stem from many causes, supporting your health wherever you can will make the aging process easier and keep your mind sharp, particularly with the tie between heart diseases and dementia.