Maria Shriver Urges Women to Prioritize Brain Health Decades Before Alzheimer’s Symptoms

Only one in five women know that they’re more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than men, according to a recent survey. Maria Shriver wants that number to climb—and for women to start thinking about their brains decades before symptoms show up.

“When people talk about living longer, you’re seeing a lot about people in the gym,” Shriver said Thursday at the TIME100 Health Leadership Forum in New York. “But what about their brains?”

Shriver founded the Women's Alzheimer's Movement and co-founded the Comprehensive Women's Health and Research Center at Cleveland Clinic. She sat down with TIME deputy editor Kelly Conniff to talk about what women need to understand about brain health, and why the conversation can't wait until later in life.

She became passionate about brain health when her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2003. At the time, Shriver said, there wasn’t much information available to help families understand the disease or prepare for how their lives would change. She approached figuring that out as both a journalist and a daughter, while watching family members grapple with the diagnosis in different ways.

Her kids adjusted easily, she recalled, simply accepting the grandfather in front of them as he was. She had a harder time. The man she saw didn't match the father in her memory. Her mother, meanwhile, was losing something else entirely—a spouse, a confidant, a partner.

More than two decades later, scientists know more about how to detect Alzheimer’s early and what may help reduce the risk. Yet a striking disparity remains: Women account for about two-thirds of diagnoses.

One growing area of research focuses on how the brain changes during menopause, and whether interventions during that period could reduce Alzheimer’s risk, Shriver said. It’s unclear whether hormone therapy, for example, could help.

Yet “there’s more to women’s health than menopause,” Shriver added. Brain health, including mental health, is important to talk about throughout every stage of a woman’s life. She pointed to the recent trial of Lindsay Clancy as evidence that women are talking more openly about maternal mental health. She recently had a conversation with six or seven other mothers who discussed the case and began sharing their own emotional and postpartum experiences.

Clancy, a Massachusetts mother, was tried on charges of killing her three young children in 2023. Her attorneys argued that she was not criminally responsible because she was experiencing postpartum psychosis, a rare psychiatric emergency distinct from postpartum depression. Prosecutors maintained that she understood her actions were wrong. The trial ended in a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict.

“The fact that we’re talking about postpartum depression, the fact that we’re talking about maternal health,” Shriver said, represents a “huge advancement in my lifetime.”

The open discussion is part of the shift Shriver wants to see across brain health generally—starting with the basics. You shouldn’t have to overhaul your life to take care of yourself. Exercise, sleep, a decent diet, real social connection, and staying mentally engaged all move the needle on brain health. Shriver herself meditates twice daily to manage stress.

Still, she acknowledges these kinds of activities won’t all fit into everyone’s day. They might sound particularly unrealistic to women juggling busy careers or young kids, or taking care of their aging parents. When her four children were young, she said, she would have snapped at any well-intended suggestions to meditate: “You’re out of your mind. Go away. I didn’t even go to the bathroom.”

While it would be ideal if advances arrived even more quickly, Shriver sees the growing attention to women’s health and ongoing research as evidence that change is unfolding in real time. “I’m fully convinced they’ll find a cure for Alzheimer’s,” she said.