Practical approaches to lifestyle interventions for enhancing brain health in older adults: A selective narrative review

• Older adults are concerned about mental functioning, but unsure what to do. • Providers may be unsure how to assess and educate patients on brain health. • This review illustrated several ways clinicians can help patients develop more brain healthy lifestyles. • We provide an overview, a conceptual model, and suggestions for implementation. • We also provide a path diagram that highlights intervention mechanisms and potential barriers. As the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias increases worldwide, it is increasingly important to help middle-aged and older adults develop brain health lifestyles. We conducted a selective review of studies on the use of shared decision-making, psychoeducation, and behavior change techniques to promote healthy behaviors in adults. We then synthesized results into a model that can be implemented in clinical practice to promote brain healthy lifestyles. Selected research supports the usefulness of these techniques in promoting health behaviors. The integrative model allows us to generate specific hypotheses about implementation strategies, testing of which could help in the development of a practical intervention. Shared decision-making, psychoeducation, and behavior change techniques each could provide valuable support for individuals’ efforts at developing brain health lifestyles. The integrative model proposed here may be useful in generating specific hypotheses that can be tested in the process of developing an intervention that could be clinically implemented.