What can I do myself?

No proven cure

There is no training programme, diet or dietary supplement that has been shown to cure Alzheimer's.

But that does not mean that what we do ourselves lacks importance.

What we can influence

Exercise, vascular health, diet, sleep, social activities and continued intellectual use of the brain are all important areas for slowing the disease.

The ground-breaking FINGER studies have provided scientific evidence that Alzheimer's can be slowed through lifestyle changes.

The Finnish FINGER study (2015) was the first large randomised study to show that simultaneous measures in five areas – diet, exercise, cognitive training, social activity and control of cardiovascular risk factors – can improve and preserve cognitive ability.

The model has since been successfully repeated in the American U.S. POINTER study with 2,111 participants, published in JAMA 2025. It showed that a structured lifestyle intervention gave significantly greater cognitive improvement than a self-directed intervention, and that the effect was consistent regardless of age, sex, ethnicity or genetic risk. The South American follow-up study LatAm-FINGERS, in The Lancet 13 July 2026, included 1,065 participants in 11 countries, where the intervention group showed 55% better annual cognitive improvement than the control group.

Through the World Wide FINGERS (WW-FINGERS) network, the FINGER model is now being tested and optimised globally in more than 40 countries, including the USA, Japan, Germany and Latin America. Taken together, there is now robust scientific support for the fact that multimodal lifestyle interventions can slow cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease.