Young adults with good blood pressure and a healthy diet will retain better thinking and memory skills in midlife, as compared to their peers with higher blood pressure, says a new study from the University of California, San Francisco.

The findings support the belief that cognitive diseases like Alzheimer's develop throughout a person's lifespan, and may be triggered in early development.

Ultimately, says senior author Kristine Yaffe, a medical doctor and professor in the departments of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the university, the research offers younger generations hope that they may be able to lower their risk of developing dementia through diet and exercise, not to mention medications.

"These cardiovascular risk factors are all quite modifiable," said Yaffe in a university news release. "We already know that reducing these risk factors in midlife can decrease the risk of dementia in old age...If it turns out that the damage begins before middle age, we may need to expand our focus and work on reducing heart disease risks in earlier stages of life."

The findings, published March 31 in the journal Circulation, were based on data from more than 3,300 individuals aged 18 to 30 years recruited into the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study, which began enrolling thousands of participants nationwide in the mid-1980s to study how heart disease develops in black and white adults.

Cardiac risk factors were measured every two to five years for 25 years, after which study participants underwent a series of tests that measured their executive functions, cognitive processing speeds and verbal memory skills.

The study recruits whose blood pressure and glucose levels exceeded recommended guidelines during the 25-year study performed worse on all three tests; high cholesterol was only linked to poor verbal memory.

The authors of the study included in their report a number of ways elevated blood pressure and glucose could hurt cognition in middle age: reducing blood supply to the brain, causing changes in brain structure and increasing inflammation and oxidative stress, which can damage neurons.

The study also asserts the aforementioned risk factors may interfere with the clearance of amyloid proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease.