The Washington Post recently published “A Guide for Making the Most of Old Age.” What stood out for us at Engage As You Age were the first two items in the guide:
- Exercise your brain
- Strong social ties can also help
For the brain fitness or exercising your brain section of the article it cites a 2009 Neurology journal article that studied 500 men and women over the age of 75. The elders or senior citizens (depending on which term you’re partial to) in the study that engaged in mentally stimulating activities like reading, doing puzzles or writing delayed cognitive decline compared to those that didn’t participate in activities like the aforementioned ones. We’re not clar on the specific article. Please get in touch with us if you’ve got a link to it. We’d love to read it!
For the strong social ties for seniors section of the article it cites the Harvard study (also referenced on Engage As You Age’s “Why Engage” section of our website) of the 1990s that found that those who were more socially engaged with family, friends and volunteer work were least likely to show declines in memory tests.
While this article doesn’t highlight any new findings, it does point towards the benefits of seniors being socially engaged with stimulating people and activities. That’s why Engage As You Age was created. We’d love to hear from anyone that can point towards a study that highlights the benefits of non-seniors engaging with elders in socially stimulating activities and conversation. Please contact us if you know of any studies that highlight that. We hear it every day from our activity specialists but haven’t read it in a scholarly article.
