Want to Avoid Dementia? MOVE
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
Once again, a deeply divisive, misleading headline promising better health if you move
In my case, since I moved to the Pacific Northwest, this indicates I made the wrong decision. But that’s only if I glance at the picture, and don’t bother to dig into the details.
There are clearly times when moving does indeed lead to better overall health, including mental and physical. But hoping to avoid dementia? Alzheimer’s?
I love articles like this. They give me a chance to point out how fear-mongering and our collective lack of critical thinking lead us down the garden path.
Here’s the article from Kiplinger:
Dementia Hot Spots: Is Your Region Raising Your Risk?
At first glance, if all you did was scan, you’d think HOLY SHIT I NEED TO SELL AND MOVE TO WASHINGTON DC.
So now, based on a light read, we may suddenly believe that moving close to the Beltway and all that insanity is going to improve life for us. While the research, conducted on US veterans, would indicate that folks living in the Mid-Atlantic region of America fare better concerning dementia, the claim falls down upon a deeper reading.
There are plenty of other factors afoot. We’ll come back to that in a moment.
I posted another, similar article which suggested that simply moving to certain parts of the US would improve our life spans. That article remains my most popular. It’s also the least understood. People often didn’t read between the lines, they didn’t question the research, and they didn’t take the time to poke holes in some of the breathless assertions.
Let’s do that here.
While it’s very tempting indeed to believe that all-you-gotta-do to avoid getting dementia is to sell and move, nothing is that simple. The research was on aging veterans, who represent a somewhat different cohort than the American population at large.
We veterans deal with PTSD, war chemicals and more. We may perhaps provide a different kind of baseline, but even so, as the study suggests, the disparities persist.
Here is where digging out the devil in the details can help. The two key paragraphs from the Kiplinger story which caught my eye:
Still other studies have shown that the difference in diagnosis rates can be largely explained by differences in health systems rather than by an actual disparity in dementia rates — meaning that just because more people are diagnosed in a particular location does not mean that more people have the condition, just that more people are likely to seek help or doctors are more likely to identify the issue.
Untangling geography as a risk factor is challenging, even in small hot spots. For example, Starr County, Texas, near the Mexican border, has a dementia rate that is double that of the U.S. average of those on Medicare, affecting about one in five people, according to The Atlantic. It's unclear whether the county's exposure to pollution is responsible or if the numerous risk factors that accumulate in a poor community with a strained health care system are to blame. (Author bolded)
Differences in health care systems, which may lead to more people being diagnosed. More people educated enough to seek care when symptoms arise, and better-skilled doctors able to diagnose the condition.
You can argue, not without merit, that there are likely lots of other factors involved. Like lifestyle habits common to a given area. Access to decent food, exercise, social services, the like.
However, as with all journalism, the publication’s need to publish something that grabs eyeballs (and balls for that matter) often overwhelm the need for thoughtful, intelligent reporting.
Health journalists love to grab that tiny bit of near-truth (CHOCOLATE IS A HEALTH FOOD, EAT YOUR M&Ms) and blow it up to gargantuan proportions. I question this reporting as well.
No, you’re not likely to live a lot longer it you move, unless you happen to live in a war zone. No, you’re not likely to reduce your risk of dementia just by moving to another part of the country.
This is an addendum to the article dated 7/12/2025. AARP did another article on this research and they bring up some new insights worth considering. Here is that piece.
From that AARP article, this underscores more effectively what I was hoping to clarify about the study above: it was very, very limited in scope. Not just to veterans but this:
In the new study, researchers randomly selected more than 1.2 million veterans age 65 or older who received care at a VHA medical center between 1999 and 2021 and followed them for an average of 13 years. The cohort was 98 percent male and nearly entirely white. (author bolded)
They also tended to live in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
So kindly, while the headline gets your attention, the devil is in the details.
What can you do?
You can indeed better manage your risk of dementia doing the same things that I and many other writers keep discussing. Happily, after all the unnecessary hoopla, the Kiplinger article lists those, too:
Complete your secondary education.
Address hearing loss by getting a hearing aid.
Lower your cholesterol if it is elevated.
If you have been diagnosed with depression, get treatment.
Avoid traumatic brain injury by wearing helmets, seatbelts and avoiding falls.
Aim for 75 minutes (at the very minimum) of aerobic activity per week.
Avoid type 2 diabetes or get treatment for diabetes and pre-diabetes.
Don't smoke, or quit if you are a smoker.
Treat high blood pressure.
Maintain a healthy weight.
If you drink, do so only in moderation.
Avoid social isolation and loneliness.
Keep your eyes and vision healthy.
Reduce your exposure to air pollution by monitoring your local air quality index and limiting your outdoor activities on days with poor air quality.
Those of us who pen pieces on healthy living bark about these same things all the time. The message is consistent. Trying to chase down a simplistic answer for a deeply complex, nuanced problem is foolish and potentially deadly.
If you want to avoid dementia, even if you have the gene, you can vastly reduce the likelihood by simply taking care of yourself.
Keeping up on research, which is delivered without the scare tactics, also helps. Here’s one example from
discussing intermittent fasting, what’s in your medicine cabinet and more:
Meanwhile, you can likely stay put and stop worrying about packing up and selling the house. Dementia likely doesn’t know a region in the sense implied by the article.
Or, if you’re like
, she just wants to move where she can enjoy the sight and sound of water:I’m at a stage in my life where location is a major player in my wants. I don’t need to move somewhere new, but I want to relocate. I want to live near water, and when I say near it, I mean I want to hear a babbling brook outside my bedroom window. Or a river flowing or an ocean roaring.
What’s your ideal location?
If a move gives you joy, knowing that green and blue spaces add to our overall health, then yes, moving may well be healthy. This is how I ended up in Oregon, in the woods and close to the ocean.
But kindly don’t be boondoggled into thinking that simply by packing up and moving you can prevent dementia if you aren’t willing to change your lifestyle habits.
Clickbait titles aside, let’s read between the lines. Live smarter.
Let’s play.
Thank you to my readers and subscribers who seek out topics other than the insanity that demands our attention full time. I hope I offer something worth reading.
I put this in the category of, "Coffee is bad!" / "Coffee is good!" | "Wine is bad!" / "Wine is good!" and on and on it goes...(sigh).
Thank you.