Why Researchers Are Looking in New Directions

As of 2026, there are 10 FDA-approved prescription medications or medication combinations specifically indicated for Alzheimer’s disease or its cognitive or behavioral symptoms. Eight primarily address cognitive or behavioral symptoms, while only two, Leqembi (lecanemab) and Kisunla (donanemab), have been shown to slow progression of early Alzheimer’s disease.

Even these newer treatments offer only partial benefit. In major clinical trials, lecanemab slowed cognitive and functional decline by about 27% over 18 months, while donanemab slowed decline by about 29% over 76 weeks on a commonly used measure of cognition and daily function. They can also carry significant treatment burdens and risks, including infusion reactions and amyloid-related imaging abnormalities, or ARIA, which can involve swelling or bleeding in the brain and, in rare cases, can be serious. 

That combination of modest benefit, potential side effects, and ongoing monitoring helps explain why researchers are exploring additional directions. Nutritional compounds, vaccines, sensory stimulation, heat exposure, and other lifestyle or non-drug approaches could eventually broaden the options available for preventing or treating Alzheimer’s disease.

The Shingles Vaccine: An Accidental Natural Experiment

One of the most compelling findings came from an unusual situation created by the rollout of the shingles vaccine in Wales. When the vaccination program began in 2013, eligibility depended on an exact date of birth. People born immediately before the cutoff were ineligible, while people born shortly afterward could receive the vaccine. This created what researchers call a natural experiment, allowing them to compare groups expected to be very similar except for their likelihood of receiving the vaccine.

The 2025 study, published in Nature, included more than 280,000 older adults. Researchers estimated that actually receiving the live shingles vaccine reduced the probability of receiving a new dementia diagnosis over seven years by 3.5 percentage points, or about 20% in relative terms. The effect was stronger among women.

Follow-up research published in Cell in late 2025 provided another intriguing finding. Using the same natural-experiment approach, researchers reported fewer new diagnoses of mild cognitive impairment among people without prior cognitive impairment, as well as fewer dementia-related deaths among people already living with dementia. The researchers cautioned that some estimates had wide confidence intervals, so the exact size of the effect remains uncertain. 

The original Wales research involved the older live shingles vaccine, Zostavax. Separate research involving the newer recombinant vaccine, Shingrix, has also found an association with lower dementia risk. A 2024 Nature Medicine study found that recipients of the recombinant vaccine experienced 17% more time without a dementia diagnosis than matched recipients of the older vaccine.

These findings are increasingly compelling, but researchers are still working to determine the mechanisms involved and whether vaccination directly changes dementia risk.

Lithium Orotate: An Unexpected Piece of the Puzzle

Lithium is best known as a prescription medication for bipolar disorder, but trace amounts of lithium also occur naturally in the body and environment. New research suggests those small amounts may play a role in brain health.

In a 2025 study published in Nature, Harvard Medical School researchers found that lithium availability was reduced in brains affected by mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. They also discovered that amyloid plaques appeared to trap lithium, reducing the amount available to surrounding brain tissue. 

When researchers reduced lithium in mice, several changes associated with Alzheimer’s accelerated, including amyloid buildup, phospho-tau accumulation, inflammation, damage to synapses and myelin, and cognitive decline.

The researchers then compared 16 lithium salts and found that lithium orotate had reduced binding to amyloid compared with lithium carbonate, allowing it to better bypass the amyloid sequestration seen in the Alzheimer’s mouse models. At very low doses, lithium orotate reduced amyloid and phospho-tau pathology, decreased inflammation, protected synapses and myelin, and prevented or reversed memory problems in the mouse models. Lithium carbonate at the same low dose did not produce the same effects.

Though these findings do not establish lithium orotate as a definitive treatment or cure for Alzheimer’s disease, they have been compelling enough to prompt a registered human trial. A Johns Hopkins Phase 1/2 trial has been registered to evaluate lithium orotate in 40 adults with biomarker-confirmed early Alzheimer’s disease, focusing on safety, tolerability, and how the compound behaves in the central nervous system.

Creatine: A New Focus in Brain Energy and Cognition

Creatine is widely known for its role in muscle strength and exercise performance, but it also plays an important role in how cells store and rapidly regenerate energy. This has caught the attention of Alzheimer’s researchers because impaired energy metabolism is one feature of the disease.

In a 2025 pilot study, 20 people with Alzheimer’s disease took 20 grams of creatine monohydrate per day for eight weeks. At the end of the study, total brain creatine had increased by approximately 11%. Participants also performed better than they had at baseline on several cognitive measures, including total cognition, fluid cognition, working memory, and other individual tests.

A 2026 analysis of the same study found increases in ATP and ADP in blood cells after supplementation, supporting the theory that creatine may influence cellular energy availability. Some measures of mitochondrial respiration also increased among female participants, while two brain metabolites measured in the study did not significantly change. The study was small, involving only 20 participants over eight weeks without a placebo or control group, so the results need to be confirmed in larger randomized trials. Still, the combination of increased brain creatine, improved cognitive scores, and later evidence of changes in cellular energy metabolism gives researchers a strong reason to keep investigating creatine as a potential tool for supporting brain function in Alzheimer’s disease.

Scent Therapy: A Surprising Connection to Brain Health

Some of the most unexpected findings involve something as simple as scent exposure.

A small Japanese study examined whether daily exposure to rose essential oil could produce measurable changes in the brain. Researchers studied 50 healthy women. Twenty-eight participants wore rose essential oil on their clothing each day for one month, while 22 served as controls.

MRI scans taken before and after the intervention showed increased gray matter volume in the rose-scent group, including changes in the posterior cingulate cortex, a brain region involved in cognitive and memory-related processing. 

Although the study lasted only one month and did not test whether rose scent prevents cognitive decline or Alzheimer’s disease, it raises interesting questions about how ongoing sensory stimulation may affect the brain.

Another study from the University of California, Irvine offers an additional clue. Researchers randomly assigned 43 adults ages 60 to 85 to receive either enriched or minimal scent exposure for two hours each night over six months. The enrichment group rotated through seven different scents. Researchers reported a 226% difference between the groups on one verbal learning and memory measure, along with changes in a brain pathway involved in memory. 

These studies do not establish essential oils as an Alzheimer’s treatment, but they suggest that the connection between smell, memory, and brain function deserves further investigation.

40 Hz Light and Sound: One of the Most Fascinating Areas to Watch

Some of the most unusual Alzheimer’s research involves stimulating the brain with light and sound pulsing 40 times per second, or 40 Hz. Forty hertz falls within the gamma range of brain-wave activity, which plays a role in attention, memory, and communication between regions of the brain.

Researchers at MIT have spent years investigating what happens when the brain is exposed to synchronized 40 Hz light and sound. In a 2024 Nature study using an Alzheimer’s mouse model, researchers found that multisensory 40 Hz stimulation increased movement of fluid through the brain’s glymphatic system, which helps remove metabolic waste. Interfering with this process also reduced the stimulation’s amyloid-clearing effect. 

Early human research has also produced intriguing findings. A randomized pilot study involving people with mild Alzheimer’s disease found that three months of daily 40 Hz light and sound stimulation was well tolerated. Compared with controls, the treatment group showed less ventricular enlargement and hippocampal atrophy, stronger functional connectivity, and better performance on one memory test. The clinical portion of this pilot included only 15 people, making the findings preliminary. 

Researchers later followed five people with mild Alzheimer’s who continued daily stimulation for approximately two years. Three participants with late-onset Alzheimer’s showed less decline on several cognitive and functional measures compared with matched historical controls. 

Five participants is far too small a group to establish effectiveness, but the findings have been strong enough to support larger clinical trials designed to determine whether 40 Hz audiovisual stimulation can meaningfully affect cognition, brain structure, or disease progression. At this stage, 40 Hz stimulation is primarily being studied as a potential treatment rather than a prevention strategy, but it represents one of the more intriguing new directions in Alzheimer’s research.

Sauna Use: Decades of Finnish Data

Long-term research from Finland has found a striking association between frequent sauna use and lower rates of dementia. In one study, researchers followed 2,315 middle-aged Finnish men for a median of more than 20 years. Compared with men who used a sauna once per week, those who reported four to seven sauna sessions per week had a 66% lower risk of dementia and a 65% lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease, even after researchers adjusted for several other health factors. 

The findings were reinforced by a separate Finnish study that followed nearly 14,000 men and women for as long as 39 years. That study also found that more frequent sauna bathing was associated with a lower risk of dementia.

Researchers have proposed several possible explanations, including benefits related to cardiovascular health, circulation, blood pressure, inflammation, and the body’s response to heat. Because both studies were observational, they cannot prove that sauna use itself caused the lower dementia rates. Still, the consistency of the findings across two large, long-term populations makes sauna use an intriguing area for further study.

While the findings are encouraging, sauna use is not appropriate for everyone. Because heat exposure can affect blood pressure, hydration, and cardiovascular function, older adults should consider their overall health, medications, and medical history before making sauna use part of a regular routine.

Meditation: A Tool for Cognitive Health

Meditation is best known for reducing stress, but a growing body of research suggests its benefits may extend to memory, attention, and overall cognitive health.

A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis examined 25 randomized controlled trials involving 2,095 people with subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment, or Alzheimer’s disease. Across the studies, meditation was associated with improvements in global cognitive performance, sleep quality, and overall health measures.

Individual trials have also found measurable brain and cognitive changes. In one randomized study of 54 adults with mild cognitive impairment, a mindfulness program improved working memory and divided attention and was associated with changes in cortical thickness. Another study found that older women practicing Kundalini yoga, including a 12-minute daily Kirtan Kriya meditation, experienced greater improvement in subjective cognitive impairment than those receiving memory enhancement training.

Together, these findings suggest meditation may offer benefits that extend well beyond relaxation, making it an increasingly relevant area of research for memory and cognitive health.

What Does the Strongest Evidence Tell Us Today?

As fascinating as these individual studies are, Alzheimer’s prevention may ultimately depend less on discovering one breakthrough intervention and more on addressing several areas of health at once. The 2025 U.S. POINTER randomized clinical trial followed 2,111 older adults at increased risk for cognitive decline. Both groups focused on areas including physical activity, nutrition, cognitive and social engagement, and cardiovascular health, but one group followed a more intensive, highly structured program. After two years, global cognition improved in both groups, with statistically greater improvement among participants following the structured intervention. Researchers noted that longer follow-up is needed to determine the clinical significance and durability of the difference. 

The 2024 Lancet Commission on dementia prevention identified 14 potentially modifiable risk factors and estimated that addressing them could potentially prevent or delay about 45% of dementia cases worldwide. They include hearing loss, high LDL cholesterol, hypertension, physical inactivity, smoking, diabetes, social isolation, untreated vision loss, and others. 

That estimate applies to dementia broadly, not specifically to Alzheimer’s disease, and it does not mean that every case associated with a risk factor can actually be prevented. Still, it reinforces an increasingly important idea: long-term brain health appears to be connected to many of the same systems that influence the health of the rest of the body.

A New Era of Alzheimer’s Research

There is still much to learn about why some people develop Alzheimer’s disease while others do not. Age and genetics remain important risk factors, but the range of possible prevention and treatment strategies under investigation is expanding rapidly.

A vaccine designed for shingles. A trace mineral. A familiar nutritional supplement. The scent of a rose. Light and sound pulsing at a precise frequency. Regular sauna use. Meditation. They may seem unrelated, but each is helping researchers explore a different piece of an extraordinarily complicated disease.

Some of these findings may eventually lead to new ways to reduce risk or slow disease progression. Others may point researchers toward entirely different discoveries. What is clear is that Alzheimer’s research is moving into new territory, and some of the most promising questions are coming from places few would have expected.