Approved Research

Interactive effects between environmental and behavioural factors on aging-related health outcomes

Lay summary

Age-related health issues such as mild cognitive impairments and dementias are becoming increasingly common worldwide. These health problems impose great health and social costs to inflicted individuals, their families and healthcare systems. There is a great need to come up with the most effective strategies to reduce our risk of these problems. Studies have shown that health promoting behaviours such as regular physical activity and good sleep may reduce our risk of developing cognitive problems. However, there is a lack of understanding of whether and how different environmental factors such as air pollution, noise or green space may offset or elevate the beneficial effects of these health behaviours. To this end, we need more evidence of how individual health behaviours and environmental exposures may interactively affect individual's risk of developing cognitive problems. This project asks a few specific questions: (1) does air pollution (e.g., PM2.5, PM10, NO2) reduce the beneficial effects of physical activity (e.g., walking, moderate activity, vigorous activity) against cognitive decline and dementia? (2) does air pollution (e.g., PM2.5, PM10, NO2) reduce the beneficial effects of physical activity (e.g., walking, moderate activity, vigorous activity) against different types of dementia such as vascular dementia? (3) does noise exposure reduce the beneficial effects of sleep against cognitive decline and dementia? Our results will help individuals to modify or adjust their health behaviours according to the quality of their residential environments and inform public health agencies to design policies to address the impact of both behavioural and environmental factors. The project duration is 3 years.