When dementia runs in your family, it’s hard not to wonder about yourself

You forget someone’s name halfway through a conversation. You walk into a room and can’t remember what you went in there for. You spend ten minutes looking for your phone while it is sitting beside you.

Normally, these are the kinds of things you might laugh off. Then your mum or dad develops dementia, and suddenly they feel different.

You start noticing every lapse. You think back to when your parent’s symptoms first appeared and wonder whether there were signs you missed. You compare things they used to do with things you’re doing now. And somewhere in the background is a question you might not particularly want to ask:

Could this happen to me too?

If dementia is part of your family story, it’s understandable that you would think about your own future. When you’ve seen the condition up close, it is no longer an abstract health risk. You know what it can mean for someone’s independence, relationships and everyday life.

That can make it difficult not to see your parent’s experience as a glimpse of what might be waiting for you.

Family history matters, but it doesn’t tell you your future

Genes and family history can play a role in dementia risk, but the relationship is much more complicated than simply having a parent with dementia and assuming you will develop it too.

Most dementia is not directly inherited. There are rare genetic forms of dementia that can run strongly through families, particularly some forms of younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia. For most families, though, having a parent with dementia may influence risk without determining what will happen to you.

That distinction matters.

There is a big difference between risk and inevitability, even though fear can make them feel like the same thing.

If there is a particularly strong pattern of dementia in your family, especially dementia occurring at younger ages, it is worth discussing that family history with your GP. Genetic counselling may sometimes be appropriate. For most people, however, genetic testing is not a simple crystal ball that can tell you whether you will or won’t develop dementia.

It is also easy to start watching yourself too closely

Once dementia has entered your family, ordinary forgetfulness can take on a new significance.

You lose your train of thought and wonder whether you should be concerned. You struggle to find a word and immediately think of your mum. You have a foggy day at work and find yourself mentally filing it away as evidence.

For women in midlife, this can be especially unsettling because poor sleep, stress, overload and menopause can all affect concentration and memory. When you’re also caring for a parent, you may be running on less sleep and carrying more mental load than you realise.

None of this means you should dismiss changes that genuinely concern you. If you notice persistent or worsening changes in your memory, thinking or ability to manage everyday tasks, talk to your GP.

It does mean you don’t need to interpret every forgotten name or misplaced set of keys as a prediction of your future.

There are things you can influence

One of the more hopeful developments in dementia research is our growing understanding that dementia risk is shaped by more than genetics alone.

The 2024 Lancet Commission identified 14 potentially modifiable risk factors across the life course, including high blood pressure, hearing loss, high LDL cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, physical inactivity, social isolation, untreated vision loss and excessive alcohol use. Dementia Australia now uses the same framework in its brain-health guidance.

That doesn’t mean dementia can always be prevented. It certainly doesn’t mean someone who develops dementia has done something wrong.

Risk is not the same thing as cause, and health is never completely within our control.

What it does mean is that there are worthwhile reasons to look after your brain and body throughout midlife and beyond.

Brain health looks a lot like looking after your overall health

You don’t need a highly specialised brain-health routine.

Many of the things associated with reducing dementia risk are the same things that support your cardiovascular, metabolic and general health: moving regularly, managing blood pressure and cholesterol, not smoking, looking after diabetes if you have it, protecting your hearing and vision, staying socially connected and keeping engaged with life.

In other words, looking after your brain often looks remarkably ordinary.

It might mean finally making the GP appointment you’ve been putting off. Getting your blood pressure checked. Going for a walk most days. Following up on hearing changes rather than ignoring them. Seeing friends even when caring has made it easier to stay home.

None of those things offers a guarantee.

They do support your health now, as well as potentially influencing your health in the future.

The difficult part is that caring can make all of this harder

There is an uncomfortable irony here. Caring for a parent with dementia can make you think much more seriously about your future health at exactly the same time that it becomes harder to look after yourself.

Your parent’s appointments come first, so yours get pushed back. You miss exercise because something comes up. Meals become whatever is easiest. Sleep gets interrupted. You see less of your friends because you’re tired or because leaving the house takes more organising than it used to.

You tell yourself you’ll concentrate on your own health when things settle down.

The trouble is that dementia often doesn’t offer a neat period when everything settles down. The caring role changes, sometimes gradually and sometimes very quickly, and waiting for life to become uncomplicated can mean waiting for a very long time.

Your health may need to sit alongside caring rather than somewhere after it.

Try not to let fear become another job

Once you know there are things that may influence dementia risk, it is surprisingly easy to turn them into another list of things to worry about.

Did I exercise enough this week? Am I eating the right foods? Am I sleeping badly enough to damage my brain? Should I be doing puzzles? Am I drinking too much coffee? Was forgetting that word normal?

That is not a particularly kind way to live.

You don’t need to spend the next 30 years trying to earn certainty about your brain. You couldn’t, even if you wanted to.

A more useful approach is to think about the health you want to protect now.

Move because your body benefits from movement. Look after your blood pressure because it matters to your heart and brain. Protect your sleep because everything feels harder without it. Stay connected because relationships are part of a healthy life. Get medical advice when something concerns you rather than carrying the worry alone.

These things are worthwhile regardless of what eventually happens.

Your future is bigger than dementia

When you’ve watched dementia change someone you love, it can become difficult not to imagine your future through the same lens.

There is another way of looking at it.

Your family history is information. It can encourage you to pay attention to your health, ask good questions and make choices that support your wellbeing. It doesn’t have to become a story about what is inevitably going to happen to you.

There are still relationships to enjoy, places to go, things to learn, strength to build and years of life that have nothing to do with dementia.

So instead of asking yourself, How do I make sure this never happens to me?, perhaps start with a question you can actually answer:

What is one thing I can do now that supports the health I want for my future?

That is a much more useful place to begin.