Stay sharp, keep connected and love your heart: the new brain health self-assessment

Alzhimer's Research UK have developed a short online questionnaire aimed at brain health promotion and dementia prevention.

Referred to as a 'brain health check in tool', it asks questions around the known risk factors for dementia and provides simple information on that risk factor. This is spread across three sections: staying sharp, keeping connected, and loving your heart.

'Staying sharp' asks questions around how you stay cognitively active, your wellbeing and your sleep (fig 1). 'Keeping connected' looks at your relationships and interactions, whilst 'loving your heart' asks about nutrition and movement, as well as health conditions like diabetes.

Free, simple and short to complete (6-10 minutes maximum), this tool could be a helpful thing to signpost patients to, encouraging self-management and brain health promotion at any age.

There are choices to input personal details and an optional section on ethnicity to help Alzheimer's Research UK understand the populations they are struggling to reach with the tool, but the entire quiz can be completed without providing any of this.

At the end of the quiz, the user is given brief information about areas they could improve on alongside some simple tips on how they might do this and links to support or help with this area found elsewhere online (fig 2).

Find out more at https://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/brain-health/check-in/