Even if you’re 80, using your brain wards off dementia

Even if you’re 80, keeping your brain active can ward off dementia or Alzheimer’s by a further five years.

Reading, writing letters and playing cards or puzzles several times a week protect our brain, say researchers at Rush University Medical Centre.

And it’s never too late to start.  The researchers involved nearly two thousand people with an average age of 80 who didn’t suffer from dementia at the start of the trial to see what happened over the following nine years.

Those with the highest cognitive scores—which means they weren’t showing any symptoms of dementia—were reading or playing cards or puzzles several times a week.  But those who were exercising their brains less frequently, often as little as a few times a year, had the lowest cognitive scores.  After nine years, 457 of the group were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or dementia when they were around 89—but those who were the most mentally active didn’t start showing signs of dementia for a further five years when they were 94 years of age.

(Neurology, 2021; doi: 10.1212/WNL.00000000000012388)

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