Neuroscientist Reveals The LIFESTYLE HABITS That Prevent COGNITIVE DECLINE! | Dr Tommy Wood

He says large population studies show many cognitive functions decline fairly linearly with age, but he argues the decline is modifiable because the brain can form new cells in some areas and new connections throughout life when it’s challenged.

He compares the brain to muscle: if you ask it to do new, difficult things, it adapts; if you repeat the same routines, you stop building and maintaining capacity, which he suggests contributes to decline beginning after the brain finishes developing.

He frames age-related dementia as strongly influenced by lifestyle, general health, and environment, contrasting it with rare early-onset familial Alzheimer’s driven by single-gene mutations, and emphasizes that the progression is continuous and begins decades before diagnosis.

He says earlier retirement is associated with earlier cognitive decline, especially in people whose jobs were cognitively stimulating, and he attributes this to losing a major source of daily mental challenge without replacing it.

He highlights multiple ways to add effective stimulus after retirement: learning a language, resistance training, coordinated movement (Tai Chi/yoga), and especially dancing, which combines coordination, music, and social connection and shows hippocampal changes on MRI in studies he describes.