City, suburbs, country: Who has the highest risk of dying from dementia revealed in new study

Manhattan, Westchester or the Hudson Valley?Where you call home could have a real impact on whether you’ll die of dementia, according to new research.“This is really a wakeup call,” Dr.Liron Sinvani told The Post.

“This study really puts numbers behind what many of us in geriatrics have long suspected: The neighborhood you age in shapes how well you age.”If you love the country or the big city, you’re in luck — dementia mortality drops in these categories, according to the study, published today in JAMA Network Open.Researchers found the most dementia mortality was associated with neighborhoods that are somewhere in the middle.Dementia, or decline in thinking or memory, is a symptom of other, often fatal diseases, like Alzheimer’s.

This kills cells and spreads, inhibiting critical functions like heart rate and breathing.“Most people assume that the highest risk for dementia would be in the most polluted, overcrowded cities or really isolated rural communities where there’s not much social interaction,” said Sinvani, a director of research and innovation at the Northwell Institute for Healthy Aging and professor of medicine at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research.“But this study flips that assumption on its head.”Does that mean suburbs are the worst for dementia mortality? Kind of.

Researchers in the UK found the highest mortality in areas that had 20-40 people per hectare.In freedom units, that’s 5,000-10,000 people per square mile — which in the US are cities, but are still car-centric.Some examples include the outer edges of Los Angeles city, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee.Sprawling cities like Atlanta and Phoenix are less dense and fall outside the danger zone indicated in the research.

Bigger cities like Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Manhattan in NYC would blow past the 10,000 per square mile number.Obviously, the densest cities and the most rural areas couldn’t be more different.Though both o...