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Sir Jackie Stewart was shocked to discover that dementia has no cure

Sir Jackie Stewart was stunned to discover that there was no cure for dementia.

The former Formula 1 world champion's wife Helen was diagnosed with the disease in 2014 and the motor racing star was shocked that nothing could be done to halt the condition despite it being commonplace around the world.

Jackie, 82, told The Sun newspaper: "When I was told Helen had dementia and there was no cure, I thought, ‘This is ridiculous, especially when you look at the number of people in the world who have it’.

"For every person born in the world today, one in three will develop dementia."

The sports star - who won the Formula 1 championship three times - admits he had no idea that Helen had dementia and things only began to become clear after she had an unexplained road accident.

Jackie said: "We had no idea Helen had dementia. But certain things started to happen. She had a road accident, for example. No one else was involved and it was on a fairly safe stretch of road and the weather was good. There was no reason to crash.

!Helen was my original pit-lane girl, my professional stopwatch and would time my laps to the millisecond. She was one of the most beautiful women in the world, and still is.

!I have watched her change before my eyes over the past few years. Her razor-sharp mind was one of the things I fell in love with. But it is her mind that is vanishing."

Stewart set up the Race Against Dementia charity in a bid to find a cure to the disease and scientists - backed by a £1 million grant from inventor Sir James Dyson - believe they are a decade away from a drug to halt the condition.

He said: "I created Race Against Dementia to break new ground. I didn’t want to be involved in yesterday’s technology. I wanted to look at things in a different way.

"In Formula One, problem-solving is done faster than anywhere else. A car can get fixed at lightning speed. In my day, if I had a puncture it could take two minutes to fix. It now happens in 1.7 seconds. That is Formula One. This is the culture I want to bring to the medical world."

Reference: Bang Showbiz -