Canadian Charity Creates iOS App to Help Combat Alzheimer’s

Women’s Brain Health Initiative (WBHI), a Canadian charity, launched the BrainFit app on iOS and Android in December 2022 to help people mitigate their chances of developing Alzheimer’s and other brain-aging and dementia-causing diseases (via Global News).

According to the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada, high blood pressure, obesity, lack of exercise, depression, and low levels of cognitive engagement can all put a person at increased risk of developing dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease.

Statistically, women are more susceptible to Alzheimer’s and dementia than men. However, BrainFit is a tool designed to help both men and women combat brain-aging diseases.

“Most people with late onset of Alzheimer’s disease, they tend to show symptoms in their seventies and eighties, sometimes their nineties,” said WBHI President and CEO Lynn Posluns.

“But what the science is now showing is that by the time symptoms occur, it’s likely that the damage has happened 20 to 25 years prior. So, it really means that diseases like Alzheimer’s are midlife diseases with symptoms that show up in old age.”

BrainFit’s goal is to promote brain health by suggesting daily and weekly habits that increase brain activity and mitigate your risk of dementia, and encourage you to make a more conscious effort to maintain and improve your brain health, explained Posluns.

“Optimize your brain health with BrainFit, a habit tracker to help guard against dementia by building habits in the Six Pillars of Brain Health,” reads BrainFit’s description on the App Store.

The six pillars of brain health include nutrition, exercise, mental stimulation, social activities, sleep, and stress management.

“And if you establish healthy habits in all six, you have a better chance of delaying and possibly preventing dementia because almost 40 per cent of all cases of dementia can be avoided through lifestyle,” said Posluns said.

BrainFit suggests and encourages users to adopt healthy habits — like drinking eight glasses of water every day, doing brain activity exercises, learning a new language, or even going bowling — that can help lower their risk of dementia.

“The earlier you start engaging in these lifestyle choices, the more protected you will be (from brain-ageing diseases),” added Posluns.

Kathy Kelaidis, a mom of two from Mississauga, Ontario, downloaded BrainFit a few months ago. Talking to Global News, she said she’s been using the app every day and has noticed a significant difference in her mental health.

If you’re interested in trying out BrainFit for yourself, download it for free on iOS or Android today.

Last year, researchers at the University of California San Diego made an app that could screen users for markers of neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s or ADHD by scanning their eyes. Back in 2019, an 18-year-old from Vancouver, B.C. developed an app to help detect whether a person might have Alzheimer’s by measuring and analyzing their gait.