The increasing level of education now offers protection against developing dementia. If not fully eliminating the neural disease, it can definitely help in delaying the same. The disease, associated with cardiovascular health, has less impact on people enjoying better lifestyle and physical health.

The new study, looking for risk trend in dementia, reported highest decline in vascular dementia caused by cardiovascular problems. Another common form of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease, cases of which are falling too.

The study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday. The finding of the study is great help to health policy and research funding as it states that treating dementia would not cost as much as thought by health policy makers, as people would better deal with this mental problem on their own.

However, there can be limitations to their findings as it included only the white people living in suburban areas, so its result cannot be held true with all kind of people. To make their result more reliable, the researchers noticed a similar trend among African-Americans in Indianapolis. They concluded that new cases of dementia fell from 1992 to 2001.

The 2001 participants were more educated and prone to cardiovascular problems than the 1992 participants, but as they received medical treatment, they may have helped them to keep dementia at bay.

It is observed that education may help prevent or delay dementia, as it leads better economic opportunity, which again would give way to better access to medical care. Other factor states that learning develops cognitive function. “Whether education is beneficial in itself or whether education is a marker for other things like poverty and unhealthy lifestyle, we didn’t parse that out”, said Dr. Sudha Seshadri, a neurologist at Boston University Medical Center and a senior investigator with the Framingham Heart Study.