Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/PUVfy3CCAVY

 

Frequent contact with friends helps 50 and 60 somethings avoid the scourge of later dementia. A team from University College London draws that conclusion after tracking more than 10,000 subjects over a 32 year period.

 

The participants documented the number and frequency of their social contacts via interviews.  Their mental status was captured via cognitive testing.

 

Daily social contacts were particularly valuable for those in their 60s with a significant 12% drop in dementia incidence.  The same trend held for those in their 50s and 70s with the numbers failing to reach statistical significance.  

 

We can now add a card game a day or a meal with friends a day to that proverbial apple if you want to keep the doctor far away!

 

Andrew Sommerlad, Séverine Sabia, Archana Singh-Manoux, Glyn Lewis, Gill Livingston. Association of social contact with dementia and cognition: 28-year follow-up of the Whitehall II cohort study. PLOS Medicine, 2019; 16 (8): e1002862 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002862

 

#Socializing #dementia #middle age