NON-PHARMACOLOGICAL TREATMENT OF COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT- AN OVERVIEW

Background: With increasing proportion of geriatric population, late-life co-morbidities including dementias, heart disease, arthritis and cancers are also increasing steadily. Cognitive impairment, mainly affecting the geriatric population, is condition when a person has trouble remembering, learning new things, concentrating or making decisions that affect their everyday life, and is often considered a precursor to more serious diseases such as depression/dementia/Alzheimers disease. As per World health Organization (WHO), globally more than 55 million people live with dementia and annually 10 million new cases are added into this pool. Alzheimers Disease International estimated that world-wide 75% people with dementia remains undiagnosed and this can be as high as 90% in LMICs.

Methods:The literature search utilized PubMed, Google scholar, and ResearchGate databases, with a period limit of January 2018 till November 2022.

Discussion: Non pharmacological interventions (physical exercise, cognitive training, diet, meditation) have significant effect on the brain health (cognitive status) of the elderlies having cognitive impairment.

Conclusions: Cognitive impairment being a complex disorder with multiple risk factor, a multimodal strategy will bring out maximum beneficial effect. Such modalities are safe, economical and simple which can be easily adapted by senior citizens and thus should be publicized to promote healthy ageing.