November is Alzheimer's awareness month.  Here are some new thoughts and research about ways to prevent cognitive decline from Alzheimer's.

There is research indicating that people who are conscientious may have a lower risk for developing Alzheimer's Disease. The participants in this study were elderly Catholic priests and nuns (average age of 75) who were given personality tests. The 997 participants were then tracked for 12 years and tested for cognitive decline.

Conscientiousness people tend to be thorough, careful, organized, deliberate, goal-oriented, and self-disciplined. Conscientiousness may lead to more success and greater resilience. The researchers from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago also found that those who scored the highest for the personality trait called conscientiousness had a 54% lower risk of Alzheimer's. I don’t know about you, but I think that is pretty awesome!

While the conscientious trait might help prevent folks from suffering the cognitive decline from Alzheimer's, it is not clear yet if it prevents the actual brain lesions associated with dementia. Autopsies showed that some of the high conscientious subjects, who showed no signs of dementia, did have lesions in their brain indicative of Alzheimer's.

The researchers suspect that being driven and conscientious may help protect the brain by increasing the number of neural connections. These increased connections may act as a reserve against mental decline.

Here’s what I take away from this research… we might be able to ward off cognitive decline by increasing our level of conscientiousness. While we need more research to understand fully the disease process, I say we start beefing up our conscientiousness now – it can’t hurt and it might help as we age. You can increase your conscientiousness by becoming more focused, organized, and disciplined. Learning better impulse control is another hallmark of conscientious individuals.