Maintaining a healthy brain is important for doing your best in various aspects of life, including your job, relationships, and daily activities. It improves your ability to think clearly, make decisions, and solve problems easily. More importantly, maintaining a healthy brain can help protect against serious health conditions.

To address the growing concerns of brain health, Mass General Brigham researchers developed the McCance Brain Care Score™ (BCS), a tool that measures efforts to protect brain health and offers guidance on how to improve it. They previously validated the Brain Care Score for helping patients and clinicians identify lifestyle changes that may help people reduce their risk of dementia and stroke. Now, with collaborators from Yale University, new findings published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry also show a higher BCS score is associated with a lower risk of late-life depression.

“This paper provides compelling evidence that raising your BCS is not only likely to make your brain healthier and more resistant to diseases like dementia and stroke, but that it also offers the hope of protection from depression,” says Jonathan Rosand, MD, MSc, author and co-founder of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital and the lead developer of the Brain Care Score.

Corresponding author Christopher D. Anderson, MD, MSc, chief of stroke and cerebrovascular diseases, adds, “Dementia, stroke, and depression are leading causes of human suffering as we age. This study highlights an extraordinary opportunity to prevent these conditions from developing in the first place.”

The alarming rise of dementia, stroke, and depression

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), dementia affects millions of people worldwide, with as many as 5.8 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease in 2020, a number projected to nearly triple to 14 million by 2060. Stroke is another significant condition. Research from the American Heart Association shows a troubling rise in stroke rates among Americans aged 18 to 45, with hospitalizations increasing by over 40 percent in the past several decades, despite a decline in the general population. Similarly, mental health is a growing concern. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), an estimated 14.5 million U.S. adults aged 18 or older experienced at least one major depressive episode with severe impairment in 2021.

As these conditions become more common, it’s important to find and change risk factors early to help lessen their impact. The Brain Care Score is a useful tool that helps you understand and improve your brain health by focusing on important areas you can change to lower the risk of these serious health problems.

This story originally appeared on massgeneralbrigham.org. Read the full article to learn more and find out your McCance Brain Care Score.