Want to reduce your risk for developing early Alzheimer’s? Try learning a second language.
That’s the key finding of a new study at Ghent University that found the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease appear about four to five years later in bilinguals, compared to individuals who speak only one language.
The study, tracked nearly 140 Belgian Alzheimer's patients — half of whom were bilingual — to determine when symptoms first appeared. The results showed that symptoms first appeared, on average, at age 71 among patients who spoke only one language, but at age 76 in bilinguals,
Medical Xpress reported.
Monolinguals also tended to be younger when diagnosed with dementia — at age 72 — than bilinguals (77).
These findings confirm previous research suggesting that bilingualism can slow down cognitive aging and that constantly and actively controlling two languages is “like a workout for the brain [that] challenges our grey cells and keeps them from degenerating,” the researchers said.
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