Tidbits on Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease

A few years back I attended a lecture given by the director of geriatrics and memory / wellness program at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She began the program by asking the audience for a show of hands as to how many doctors and health care providers were suggesting that their older patients try brain teasers and brain games and puzzles to keep their geriatric patients mentally sharp and stave off dementia.  Everyone’s hand shot up indicating that we all were trying this method to stave off memory loss. She responded with, “Your patient’s will all be great problem solvers when we diagnose their dementia.”   She delivered a message of the importance of older patients maintaining a social network of friends and family that provided the stimulation rather than relying on computer games and brain teasers.  Like everything else in medicine, time and research modify your approach as to what works.

Two studies published in the Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry promoted the use of regular puzzle attempts by seniors. The first by Helen Brooker, Ph.D. from Exeter in the United Kingdom showing that older adults who regularly use word and number puzzles have higher cognitive functioning than those who do not.  She looked at 19,000 plus cognitively healthy individuals aged 50-93 years.  Participants self-reported their frequency of playing word puzzles.  Their frequency of performing word puzzles correlated positively with 14 measures of cognitive function.  They then compared individuals who used number puzzles against those who did not and found similar positive results for the puzzle participants.

Clearly being able to enjoy solving puzzles is correlated with beneficial cognitive performance. It is probably one piece of a larger puzzle including socialization, healthy lifestyle choices, genetics and human interaction that contributes to overall health.

Leave a Reply


WordPress.com Logo


Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: