Speaking two languages can delay Alzheimer's by four years

Learning and speaking more than one language could be the beginning of dementia, delay by no less than four or five years. In a recent study, researchers from the University of Ghent, the average age of diagnosis for patients with Alzheimer's disease who did speak a language 73. bilingual, age was 77. For some multilingualism delayed the onset of five.

From March 2013 to May 2014, researchers at the Belgian University studied the medical records of 69 monolingual and bilingual patients 65 patients, all in the treatment of probable Alzheimer's disease. The analysis revealed that both the event and the diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease occurred four to five years later to the Belgians, who spoke more than one language.

"These findings support previous research suggesting that bilingualism can slow cognitive aging and contribute to cognitive reserve," the researchers wrote in a news release announcing the release of their new self-published study. "It seems that constantly and actively manage two languages is like a workout for the brain. These are our gray cells and prevents it from escalating. "

Previous MRI studies have shown that the brains of bilingual people have higher densities of both gray and white matter. Learning another language is also considered as a factor leading to greater "cognitive reserve" isolated "the effectiveness of neurons," the researchers wrote in their paper.