|
Head Games: Brain Push-Ups Prevent Dementia
By Christine Haran For ABC News Published on: July 08,
2003
Everyone knows that regular exercise can help keep the
body in good shape. But many assume that there's nothing
they can do about becoming forgetful in their old age.
Now, evidence suggests that older people can preserve
their mental acuity by exercising their brains.
Dr. Joe Verghese is an assistant professor of neurology at
the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the lead
author of a recent New England Journal of Medicine study
on the impact of leisure activities on dementia in the
elderly. Below, Dr. Verghese discusses how leisure
activity that involves some mental effort might protect
older people from dementia….
Why did you decide to
examine the relationship between leisure activity and
dementia in the elderly?
There's been a great deal of interest about the so-called
"use it or lose it" theory in cognitive aging. Generally
what we do in dementia research is look for risk factors
associated with developing dementia, things that are bad.
Cognitive activities, on the other hand, seem to have a
positive effect on preventing dementia, so that's one of
the things that drew me to it.
What did your study find?
When we analyzed the results after following the
participants for 21 years, we found that increased
participation in cognitive activities was associated with
a reduced risk of dementia… The third of people who were
engaged in the most mental activity had 63 percent reduced
risk of dementia…
Among the mental activities, there were three activities
in particular which had a significant association. Those
were reading, playing a musical instrument and playing
board games, such as chess or checkers, or playing card
games like bridge…
The above is an excerpt from the cited article. To
read the full text of the article,
click here. |
