Mind Games Do Help Seniors

If your older parent or friend (or spouse) enjoys doing puzzles like crossword puzzles or sudoku, you might be best off going out and buying more of them to keep him or her busy. They do help many people keep their minds strong, say researchers.

Of course, this isn’t new news. We’ve read a few times about how “use it or lose it” also works for the brain, but a new study from New York has backed this up even further. The results were published in the most recent issue of the journal Neurology.

Researchers followed 488 people who were between 75 to 85 years and did not have any signs of dementia before the study began. The study subjects were to report regularly if they participated in any mind-stimulating activities, such as doing puzzles, playing games, reading, writing, and so on. Each activity was given a certain number of points based on how often it was done. The more often, the higher the score.

The researchers then compared when the subjects began showing signs of dementia – if they did – and plotted that against how many points they had accumulated doing the various mind-stimulating activities. What they found was that for every point that the participants racked up helped ward off, in general, memory loss by 0.18 years. So if a person participated in 11 activities per week, compared with someone who only did four, the first person could see a delay of 1.29 years before decline was noticed.

The researchers do point out, however, that this may also be affected by earlier life education and the person’s attitude and ability to participate in activities later on in life.

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