These Habits Could Reveal Your Risk of Cognitive Decline

An older man looks confused or surprised while looking at his laptop at home.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

"What's good for the heart is good for the brain." That's the message from experts on reducing the risk of dementia, and it means following the rules for a heart-healthy lifestyle: Regular exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, no smoking and so on.

The risk factors for dementia are complex. While lifestyle factors can be modified, others are impossible to change, such as your age and genetic makeup.

Although doctors can use tools to determine a patient's risk of heart disease, at present, there's no reliable tool for predicting someone's dementia risk. Symptoms can also be mistaken for other conditions.

From just $107.88 $24.99 for Kiplinger Personal Finance

Become a smarter, better informed investor. Subscribe from just ~~$107.88~~ $24.99, plus get up to 4 Special Issues

CLICK FOR FREE ISSUE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/y99mlvgqmn1763972420.png

Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free Newsletters

Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more - straight to your e-mail.

Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice - straight to your e-mail.

How can we be on the lookout for cognitive decline in our loved ones? A recent study suggests a surprising answer.

According to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open, our banking habits and our household bills could provide early warning signs of cognitive decline. If we're alert to those signs, it could make timely intervention — including heart-healthy lifestyle changes — possible.

Here's what the research showed, along with some details about signs of spending shifts that you and your loved ones might want to look out for.

Signs of financial incapacity

The researchers looked at anonymized banking records from more than 66,000 individuals. They also reviewed the banking habits of 16,742 individuals who registered a power of attorney as a result of financial incapacity.

Those records were compared with a control group of 50,226 individuals with no indications of lost mental acuity.

The research found some very clear patterns. Specifically, among those who registered a power of attorney, bank records showed the individuals were:

More likely to report fraud
More likely to report that a bank card had been lost or stolen
More likely to ask for their PIN to be reset
Less likely to log into their bank accounts, with one fewer login occurring each month
9.6 percentage points less likely to spend money on travel in the five years before registering a power of attorney
7.9 percentage points less likely to spend on hobbies, such as gardening

Those who experienced these changes were also more likely to spend money on items that were associated with increased time at home. For example, both electricity and gas bills increased in the five years leading up to the power of attorney registration.

The researchers also found that differences in spending habits increased gradually as the account holder moved closer to the date the power of attorney was registered.

Cognitive decline and your loved ones

Researchers came to a few key conclusions based on this data, including that:

Declining financial capacity might result in a disengagement from outside activities and a retreat to the comforts of home
Those beginning to experience lack of financial capacity might be more susceptible to scams, both because they're at home more and an easier target for phishing attempts, and because they might not be as well positioned to detect signs of fraud
An increase in household bills could be an indicator both of more time spent at home and increased forgetfulness, such as failure to shut off household appliances

Monitoring for these behavioral changes could help researchers — and individuals — better detect some of the earliest signs of cognitive change. It could also encourage those experiencing signs of decline to seek medical help or engage in behaviors that help stave it off, such as:

Increasing physical activity
Adopting a healthy, balanced diet rich in Omega-3s
Getting out to meet friends and family more frequently
Making quality sleep a priority
Getting enough cognitive stimulation, including doing puzzles or other activities that stimulate the brain

Family members who notice older loved ones taking far less interest in hobbies or travel should help them assess their financial fitness and begin guarding their finances before fraud occurs. As the old saying goes, prevention is better than cure.

Christy Bieber is an experienced personal finance and legal writer who has been writing since 2008. She has been published by Forbes, CNN, WSJ Buyside, Motley Fool, and many other online sites. She has a JD from UCLA and a degree in English, Media, and Communications from the University of Rochester.