As if we don’t have enough reasons to dislike high blood pressure. Now research from the National Institutes of Health is directly linking blood pressure to dementia.

A handful of scientists observed a group of people’s brain scans to see how hypertension fuels a type of scarring that is linked to development of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias later in life. These scars begin to build up in middle age, long before memory problems start to appear.

“If you look … for things that we can prevent that lead to cognitive decline in the elderly, hypertension is at the top of the list,” -Dr. Walter Koroshetz, deputy director of NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

“This is a silent disease in the brain,” explained lead researcher Dr. Lewis Kuller “It’s evolving over time and it leads to very bad outcomes.”

As the population ages and dementia numbers continue to rise, every little bit or research is relevant. Continued research on the effects of blood pressure and dementia will be telling as to just how much dementia increases can be slowed.