There is now a  new tool that may help you  lower your risk of dementia or stoke . It’s called the  Brain Care Score, or BCS.

The 21-point Brain Care Score refers to how a person fares on 12 health-related factors concerning physical, lifestyle and social-emotional components of health, according to the study published December 1 in the journal Frontiers in Neurology.  The authors found participants with a higher score had a lower risk of developing dementia or having a stroke later in life.

“Patients and practitioners can start focusing more on improving their BCS today, and the good news is improving on these elements will also provide overall health benefits,” said the study’s senior author Dr. Jonathan Rosand, cofounder of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In the United States alone, 1 in 7 people have dementia, and every four minutes someone dies from a stroke, according to the study.   Prevention efforts can help substantially reduce deaths, but the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8, the authors said, was developed without input from patients.

“In order to engage patients, we sought to develop a tool that responded to the question we received most frequently from our patients and their family members: ‘How can I take good care of my brain?’”  Rosand said.

The Brain Care Score (BCS) is a new tool to measure brain health with a total of 21 possible points depending on physical, lifestyle, and social-emotional parameters.  Each five-point improvement in the BCS was associated with a 59% lower risk of developing dementia and a 48% lower risk of experiencing a stroke among adults younger than 50 years old when they enrolled in the study.

Experts explained that people in midlife may particularly benefit from taking the BCS.

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