Maintaining brain health across the lifespan

Across the lifespan, the human body and brain endure the impact of a plethora of exogenous and endogenous factors that modulate individuals’ health outcome in old age. The overwhelming inter-individual variance spans between increased frailties with loss of autonomy to largely preserved physical, cognitive, and social functions. Understanding the mechanisms underlying the diverse aging trajectories can inform future strategies to maintain a healthy body and brain. Here we provide a comprehensive overview on the lifetime factors governing brain health. We summarise the evidence that unhealthy alimentary regime, sedentary behaviour, sleep pathologies, cardio-vascular risk factors, and chronic inflammation exert their harmful effects in a cumulative and gradual manner, and that timely and efficient intervention promotes successful aging. We discuss the main effects and interactions between these risk factors and the resulting brain health outcomes to follow with a description of current strategies aiming to eliminate, treat, or counteract the risk factors. We conclude that detailed insight about the modifiable risk factors should guide personalized approaches to maintain our brains healthy.