Brain plasticity was also maintained through regular exercise. This means that if one part of the brain starts to fail another part of the brain will take over.
Mentally Activity
In 1986 a study was begun using 678 Catholic nuns ranging in age from 74 to 106. This research has been called the Nun Study. The researchers studied autobiographical essays that the nuns had written when they were in their twenties. They found that those nuns whose essays had what they termed “greater idea density” or many thoughts packed into few words were less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in later life. An example the author cites follows:
Sister Nicollets wrote: “After I finished the eighth grade in 1921 I desired to become an aspirant at Mankato but I myself did not have the courage to ask the permission of my parents so Sister Agreda did it in my stead and they readily gave their consent.”
Contrast Sister Nicollets’ sentence with another nuns’ in her nineties and receiving increasingly poor scores on memory tests. “After I left school I worked in the post office.” The theme of this seems to be work on increasing the complexity of your thinking.
Other researchers have found that participation in leisure activities that engage the mind can stave off dementia. The types of activities they have found helpful are: board games, reading, and playing musical instruments.
Along the same lines, the Nun Study and others discovered that obtaining higher levels of education was also helpful in decreasing the chances of becoming demented. The sisters in the Nun Study who had completed sixteen years or more of formal education were four times less likely to have dementia.
Positive emotions in early life
The Nun Study found that living longer and healthier definitely correlated with the expression of positive emotions in the autobiographical essays written decades before. Previous studies have found that there is a link between depression and cardiovascular disease, which can cause vascular dementia.
