Grant: CIHR Café Scientifique Program

The issue of healthy aging, particularly healthy brain aging, is an important one to Canadians. Media outlets often headline the latest scientific breakthroughs in this area, and mass-market advertisements to promote programs and products that claim to protect our brains from age-related deterioration and decline. But beyond these mass media messages, maintaining vascular health indeed has important implication on brain health, as it is associated with risk for negative health outcomes such as dementia, stroke and Alzheimer's disease. Vascular disease may manifest in subclinical, or 'silent' strokes, characterized by progressive cognitive decline. In fact, central to the recently released Canadian Best Practice Recommendations for Stroke Care related to Stroke Prevention and Cognition were recommendations regarding the prevention of first stroke or transient ischemic attacks and maintenance of vascular health through the "promotion of healthy lifestyles to minimize vascular risk, education to the general public, stroke survivors and their families, aggressive risk factor management and timely access to specialized stroke prevention services"(Coutts et al., 2012; Eskes et al., 2012). This proposal aligns with these best practices to offer a Café Scientfique entitled: "How to keep your brain healthy as you get older". This Café will focus on the description of the issue of keeping the brain healthy as we age, and will include discussion of the scope of this health issue, impact on Canadians, current state of evidence, and strategies for prevention and management of these issues.