Study: Leisure Activities Can Decrease Risk of Alzheimer's

Participation in leisure activities can decrease the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to researchers at Columbia University in New York. The findings are relevant for people of any education or occupational level.

Reading, seeing a movie, going for a walk, visiting a friend or other leisure activities may reduce the risk or delay the onset of clinical manifestations of dementia, according to the study published in the journal Neurology.

"Even when controlling for factors like ethnic group, education and occupation, subjects with high leisure activity had 38 percent less risk of developing dementia," said Yaakov Stern, PhD, author of the study.

Researchers looked at 1,772 people aged 65 or older who were free from symptoms of dementia at the start of the study, and followed them for seven years. The participants were a representative sample of people from three census tracts from north Manhattan, New York.

The subjects reported their participation in 13 common leisure activities categorized as intellectual, physical and social pursuits.

The study showed that participation in leisure activities may have a cumulative effect with an additional 8 percent risk reduction linked with engagement in each additional leisure activity. Intellectual activities produced the highest risk reduction of the three categories.

"Our study suggests that aspects of life experience supply a set of skills or repertoires that allow an individual to cope with progressing Alzheimer's disease pathology for a longer time before the disease becomes clinically apparent," said Stern. "Maintaining intellectual and social engagement through participation in everyday activities seems to buffer healthy individuals against cognitive decline in later life."

Other sources: Neurology