Blog For Your Brain

Great news from the world of medicine:

Participating in certain mental activities, like reading magazines or crafting in middle age or later in life, may delay or prevent memory loss, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 61st Annual Meeting in Seattle, April 25 to May 2, 2009.

...The study found that during later years, reading books, playing games, participating in computer activities and doing craft activities such as pottery or quilting led to a 30 to 50 percent decrease in the risk of developing memory loss compared to people who did not do those activities. People who watched television for less than seven hours a day in later years were 50 percent less likely to develop memory loss than people who watched for more than seven hours a day.

People who participated in social activities and read magazines during middle age were about 40 percent less likely to develop memory loss than those who did not do those activities.

There you go - reading, computer activities, socializing - clearly this is all about blogs.  Researchers apparently did not report separate results for writing and commenting on blogs but I have no doubt that this site would provide them with uplifting data.  Well, for commenting, anyway - I can't even remember how much I have forgotten.

AS AN ASIDE:  I know I shouldn't be shocked that researchers find large groups of people watching more than seven hours of television a day, but I am.  The real medical mystery is how those folks avoid brain damage.

Comments

[clarice]

I'm sure that's true. In April my mom who is completely independent and manages all her own affairs quite nicely lives to beat her fellow condo residents at Mah Jongg.

In old age, blog , bake your own bread , get a cat and exercise preferably with weights..that's my plan.

[boris]

Brain Ender

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/02/blog-for-your-brain/comments/page/666/#comments

[centralcal]

Clarice, I am with you on everything but the cat.

I have several stray cats in the neighborhood who seem to have adopted my yard as their kitty litter box. I think it is my patio fountain that lures them (provides a drink now and then). Will these cats count or do they have to be house cats?

[Danube of Thought]

CCal, if you put some food and a little dish of milk out there, over time they'll become your house cats if you want them to.

A jet-black kitten once wandered up my parents' driveway; my mother put out a dish of milk; it came back; came back again; it finally moved in.

That cat stayed with them for seventeen years and ate a pretty steady diet of lump blue crab, Smithfield ham, scrambled eggs, Haagen Dazs ice cream and just about everything else but caviar. I have always said no cat in history ever made a luckier choice of driveways.

[clarice]

Actually, I think that qualifies,cc. Just looking at them in their deep slumber naps makes me relax and watching their antics when they are awake makes me happy.

[Porchlight]

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. It is not necessarily the case that watching TV causes memory loss. It could be that older people who are already experiencing memory loss are drawn to TV because it is not as frustrating for them as say, trying to keep up with the trump suit in a game of bridge, or recalling what happened in the previous chapters of the book they're reading.

Another possibility is that the type of person who does not experience memory loss is also the type of active, engaged person who is not drawn to TV in the first place. It has been my observation that for the most part, mentally agile people are mentally agile from birth to death. The same applies to mental laziness. IOW behavior in youth is predictive - not necessarily causative - of behavior in old age. (Of course you can train your mind and behavior to some extent, it's not all nature.)

Anyway, just wanted to say, correlation and causation and all that.

[Neo]

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

[narciso]

If you wanted to see, what my early attempt at stand alone blogging was like, painful as it seems. Odd how no one really focuses
on that part of the speech, well it's one thing to have the other guy's axe gored, not your own

[Frau Jedöns]

Thanks, Neo. Just read yesterday in the article about Bill "What will I tell my children?" Moyers that Eisenhower and Truman were the two presidents who did not misuse the FBI.

"Millions for Defense, Not one cent for Tribute" Thanks, narciso and Decatur.

[kim]

Good for Eisenhower and Truman, but J. Edgar told Presidents what to do, not the other way around.
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[kim]

That's why Mark Felt was so pissed at Nixon, and the CIA so pissed at Bush. They were and are used to getting their way.
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[narciso]

Thanks Frau, that was an early attempt related to the first naval hero of the Post
Revolutionary era, Steven Vincent Decatur, who first fought the Revolutionary French government, than engaged in the famous war against the Barbary Pirates. Then he challenged the British in the War of 1812, and ultimately was sent to Dartmoor Prison.

For an example of someone really notgrasping
what we're facing, sadly I have cite Rick Moran, again, LUned below

[Daled Amos]

I blog--and if blogging is so good for my memory, why do I keep forgetting to go to bed. (my wife wants to know)

[BR]

That's funny, Daled. I won't say what I forgot during CBSgate :)

[kim]

One of my favorite cartoons has a man furiously pounding on the keyboard. From off stage comes a balloon with 'Come to bed, dear, it's late'. The balloon over the man's head says 'I can't, someone's WRONG on the internet'.
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