Health
Alzheimer's disease is a common companion of old age. Everyone can get this disease, but it turns out that the development of the disease can be slowed down. To do this, you need to… learn a foreign language and speak it. Scientists from York University in Toronto have shown that bilingualism (bilingualism since childhood) and knowledge of a foreign language help contain the development of symptoms Alzheimer's disease.
The study by Canadian scientists involved 450 patients with the first symptoms of the disease. For the purity of the experiment, patients with the same level of education were selected. Half of the volunteers spoke only one language, while the other half of the participants spoke another language. It turned out that people who speak more than one language fall ill on average 4 years later than those who speak only one language. In addition, multilingual people develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease much more slowly. The explanation for this phenomenon is simple: the brains of people who speak two or more languages are constantly active, switching from one language to another.
If you haven't been bilingual since childhood, but want to stay sane and have a good memory for many years, learn foreign languages and make foreign friends. It is also known that any other mental activity in old age helps prevent Alzheimer's disease or curb the development of this disease. It is useful for older people to read, solve crosswords or tasks, in general, do everything that helps keep the brain active.