Solve crossword and jigsaw puzzles. Read novels. Take a class. Learn something new.

Throughout the years, I’ve read several articles that claim doing these things as you age keeps your mind active and Alzheimer’s at bay. That advice makes sense to me.

Reading that Dr. Annette Benert died this June at the age of 78 and “her dementia-related decline of the past several years was heartbreaking for her and all who loved her” doesn’t.

What I remember most about Benert was how she could find worth in seemingly inane literature class comments. While many of her students were rolling their eyes at a classmate’s off-the-wall interpretation of a line of poetry or a one-in-a-million explanation of a character’s motivation, you could read Benert’s body language and realize her mind was racing to find a bit of merit in what was said.

Somehow she would, yet her words would do more than clarify. They would illustrate to all - including the eye rollers- the value in keeping an open mind.

To know a mind like that had been heartbreakingly addled when it still should have been mentally vibrant just doesn’t seem right.

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For those keeping score, this is the second Debbie Downer intro in a row - and for good reason. Doctors still don’t know how to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and its incidence is increasing.

But the situation isn’t as bleak as these intros may make it seem. You can take steps to reduce your odds of getting the disease, such as the suggestion featured last week: to eat fruits and vegetables full of flavonols, plant compounds that work in your body as antioxidants.

Apples, pears, berries, beans, kale, spinach, broccoli, tomatoes, oranges, olive oil, as well as tea and cocoa are some of the best sources.

While it stands to reason if eating “good” foods helps, eating “bad” foods hurts, a study published in the April 2020 issue of Neurology suggests an interesting twist. French researchers at the University of Bordeaux believe that certain “bad” foods may not really increase the risk of Alzheimer’s unless they’re eaten along with certain other “bad” foods and “good” foods are generally lacking throughout the diet.

They reached this conclusion at the end of an ongoing study of 627 men and women living in the cities of Bordeaux, Dijon, and Montpellier in France, whose collective age at the study’s start was 78. None had any form of dementia when they initially filled out detailed food questionnaires.

Within five years, though, 209 of the 627 had been diagnosed with some form of dementia, sometimes Alzheimer’s.

When the diets of those afflicted were compared to the others, the researchers found relatively little difference in the amount of processed meat both groups consumed. A difference was discerned, however, in the other foods consumed along with the processed meats.

Those who developed dementia were more likely to eat “unhealthy foods ... like potatoes, alcohol, and snacks like cookies and cakes” according to the study’s author, Dr. Cécilia Samieri of the University of Bordeaux in France, in an article for the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation.

Samieri also noted that those who had not developed dementia had a “greater inclusion of a variety of healthy foods in their diet.” Though her study didn’t consider if the excess weight that often results from unhealthy eating also increased the odds of dementia, one done at the University College in London and published in June by the International Journal of Epidemiology did.

Lead researcher Dr. Dorina Cadar and her colleagues analyzed data from nearly 6,600 people aged 50 and older who were part of a British study on aging and linked obesity to dementia, particularly abdominal obesity in women. Through follow-up studies done for a bit more than a decade, women with abdominal obesity were found to be 39 percent more likely to have developed dementia than those studied whose weight was normal.

Another “right action” to help reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s: regularly perform the sort of exercise that promotes cardiovascular health. A study released in August of 2018 by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that doing so nearly doubles your odds of avoiding all types of dementia.

In this study, the cardiovascular health of more than 6,600 senior citizens was assessed seven different ways. About nine years later, 7.1 percent of those who had initially recorded the best scores had some sort of dementia; the rate for those who had recorded the lowest total scores was nearly double: 13.3 percent.

Moreover, a study published this August in the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience of senior citizens already diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) found a lack of cardiovascular health - specifically high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, high triglyceride levels, or coronary artery disease - was the greatest cause for MCI developing into full-blown dementia.

After six years, in fact, the subjects with two or more of the aforementioned afflictions were more than three times as likely to be diagnosed with dementia as the others.