Understand & Improve
Your Brain Care Score
Even one small change makes a difference.
The Brain Care Score helps you understand how your daily choices affect your brain health. The results will help you find simple steps you can take now to strengthen your brain health for the future.
About the Brain Care Score
Prevention Starts with You
The Brain Care Score was developed by researchers from the Global Brain Care Coalition. It shows you where you stand — and what small changes can make the biggest difference. Improving your score can reduce the risk of dementia, stroke, and late-life depression, as well as heart disease, diabetes, and several types of cancer.
“This represents a change in how we think about the brain. Instead of waiting for disease to appear, we can help people protect their brain health throughout their lives. The Brain Care Score wasn’t built to label risk. It was built to give people options and to show them that small changes made today can matter years from now.“
By tracking your score over time and making small improvements, you’re taking powerful steps to protect your brain and body from disease.
How It’s Measured
Three Pillars of Brain Care
Your personal Brain Care Score is built around three key areas, each playing an important role in your long-term brain health.
Physical
Signs of a healthy body that healthcare providers or pharmacies can measure. These can improve with lifestyle changes in the other two pillars and with guidance from your provider.
Lifestyle
Daily habits and choices where small changes in lifestyle can make a big difference in your overall score.
What to Do Next
You Don't Have to Change Everything. Just Start.
Once you have your Brain Care Score, look for one area with room to grow. You don’t need to change everything overnight – just start with one meaningful step. Here are four good places to begin.
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions About the Brain Care Score
Your score is built up of different lifestyle and health factors that affect your brain health. These include your daily habits and social, emotional, and physical health. While it is not a diagnosis, the score helps you understand how different parts of your life support your brain health. Making progress in one area can often help you improve in others, too!
There isn’t a “pass” or “fail.” Higher scores suggest more protective habits, while lower scores show areas where support or small changes can help. The most important part is identifying opportunities for improvement, not the number itself.
No, you don’t need a doctor to take the Brain Care Score. You can do it by yourself or with help from someone in your community. Some questions about blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar, might be easier to answer if you ask a doctor or nurse.
The Brain Care Score is not a medical test and doesn’t give a diagnosis. It’s meant to help you understand what you can do to take care of your brain and lower your health risk.
Low scores highlight where lifestyle adjustments or follow-up with your healthcare team could help. You can pick one topic to work on to start and do what feels realistic for you. What’s great is that many areas overlap and progress in one area can help the others! Your score might not immediately improve – a bad week doesn’t set you back, the goal is to get you thinking about what you can do to protect your brain health.
Definitely! Even small, steady changes can lead to noticeable improvements in brain health over time. You can check your progress by retaking your score from time to time.
Yes. This is for your personal health. Your data would be combined with other people’s data, which makes it difficult to identify you. Please read our privacy policy for more information.
Yes! It’s a great way to track your health over time. Taking it in a few months might be helpful since making changes to your health can take time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions for Modifiable Risk Factors
Your A1C score is a measure that looks at your blood sugar levels over time. When blood sugar stays high, it can damage blood vessels and nerves — including the ones that support the brain.
Cholesterol travels through your blood. If there’s too much of the “bad” kind, it can build up in your blood vessels and make them narrow or clogged.
If blood can’t flow well to the brain, the brain doesn’t get enough oxygen and nutrients — this can increase the risk of stroke and memory problems later in life.
High blood pressure puts extra stress on your blood vessels. Over time, that can damage the tiny vessels that feed the brain. This can impact thinking and memory later in life.
When you don’t sleep well, it’s harder to think clearly, your mood can drop, and your brain doesn’t have time to rest and repair. Sleep helps us with our memory, focus, make decisions, and our mood.
Over time, poor sleep can raise the risk of problems like memory loss, depression, stroke, and dementia.
Adding fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein to your diet helps provide nutrients to your brain and protect brain cells from damage.
Yes! Genetics can play a role, but lifestyle behaviors like movement, sleep, food, and stress have a big impact on brain health. Even one small change can reduce your risk. What’s good for the body and heart is also good for the brain!
Research
Evidence You Can Act On
Are Genetics Destiny?
A study using a large population datasets found that people with strong genetic risk for dementia or stroke still benefited substantially from higher Brain Care Scores. In some cases, healthy behaviors reduced risk to similar levels as people without genetic risk.
Improvement Over Time Matters
A large real-world study of more than 155,000 adults found:
- Most people improved their Brain Care Score over time
- One-point increase was linked to up to a 4% lower risk of dementia, stroke, or late-life depression, depending on BCS focus area.
- Benefits occurred even for those starting with low scores
Potential Population Benefits
Research in large population datasets suggest that Brain Care Score improvements were associated with better outcomes:
- In men and women
- Across racial and ethnic groups
- In multiple countries
- In populations with elevated health risks
Identify the Most Powerful Risk Factors
A major review ranked modifiable risk factors contributing to brain disease burden worldwide.
High impact risks:
- High blood pressure, kidney disease, cardiovascular risk factors
Protective factors:
- Physical activity
- Social connection