Can our leisure activities help to prevent cognitive decline?

As our society ages, especially the baby boomer generation, many are asking, “What can we do to postpone the effects of getting older?” This question applies not only to the obvious changes in how we look but also to our cognitive, or thinking, abilities.

Minor incidents such as misplacing keys or glasses, temporarily losing the car in a parking lot, or momentarily forgetting a friend’s name happen so often that we worry that our mind is failing. A good joke to cover up one of these minor glitches is that this is just “old timer’s disease.” Yet underneath this humor is the fear that, indeed, as we age, we may lose our mental abilities. So what can we do about it? What, if anything, can be done to prevent or delay cognitive decline that may go along with aging? See About Brain Health below.

In the current issue of Neurology, a group of researchers from China, led by John Y.J. Wang,¹ posed just such a question. Their results are intriguing. More than 5,000 people, aged 55 years or older, and living in nine randomly selected communities in Chongqing, China, took part in the study. The subjects were interviewed concerning age, sex, education, occupation, smoking and drinking habits, medical conditions, and medication use. To test their thinking abilities they were given a well-known screening test called the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Scores were adjusted for educational level. Additional measures were used to look for signs of depression and to assess the level of independence in caring for one’s own daily needs, called activities of daily living (ADLs).

Detailed information was collected regarding leisure activities. The researchers wished to know how often these people participated in leisure time activities, for how long, and the nature of the activity. Activities such …