Surround yourself with affection, cultivate social commitment: they are recipes for living happily, but also for living healthily and protecting the brain from dementia. It is the invitation contained in a study published on Lancet Healthy Longevity, who found that sharing everyday life with someone and being involved in community projects are the two most important social factors in preventing cognitive decline. In one sentence, e maybe it was that simplenever feeling alone is a sensation associated with a slower deterioration of mental skills.
The brain loves company. The fact that the lack of interactions with others, close circles of friends and an old age in solitude are risk factors for cognitive decline is so well established that it is estimated that only focusing on combating social isolation would prevent 4% of the worldwide cases of dementia. However, most of the studies on this topic have focused – as often happens in scientific surveys – on the population of Europe and North America, also mixing various variables that indicate good sociability. In short, it was difficult to understand what exactly were the most important social behaviors to prevent dementia.
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Divide the roof and get busy. Scientists from the Center for Healthy Brain Aging at the University of New South Wales in Sydney (Australia) analyzed a wide range of parameters for measuring social connections in approximately 40,000 people and in 13 studies across six continents, with the ‘goal to understand the association between different activities and the annual rate of change in cognitive functions.
They discovered, and in a finally representative study, that sharing the home and life with one or more people and engaging in a weekly community activity are the factors that most of all are associated with less cognitive decline. Also – and not surprisingly – an association has been found between never feeling alone and a slower and more gradual aging of the brain.
Let’s take this into account. On the other hand, they do not seem to make a difference for brain health (even if they do for the quality of life), the degree of social support (the network of contacts ready to help), having a steady confidant, or satisfaction with one’s own relations. The result of the study is relevant to public health: if taken seriously it could be exploited for the social prevention of Alzheimer’s and other dementias, and be implemented in senior age support programs.