Want to know how best to protect yourself against dementia symptoms? Dr Thomas Bak’s new blog post for the British Medical Journal explains why language lessons might bring unexpected benefits.
In his blog, Dr Bak outlines recent evidence suggesting that regularly using more than one language can have health benefits across the lifetime, from doubling the chances of cognitive recovery from stroke, to delaying the onset of dementia symptoms by 4 – 5 years – more than any available drug.
Throughout the post, Dr Bak draws on his medical expertise (he is still a practising clinician and a clinical research fellow at the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic) to consider bilingualism as if it were a drug: What are the side effects? How robust is the evidence for its efficacy? What sort of “dose” or amount of language use would be required to see benefits?
(The answers, in case you were wondering, appear to be [1] A small disadvantage in accessing their vocabulary; the difference is reliable, but in the tens of milliseconds, so unlikely to cause difficulties outside the lab; [2] Mixed; not all labs find differences, but where differences exist, they are always in the same direction; [3] More research needed – but preliminary results suggest a minimum of 5 hours a week).
For the full story, read Thomas’s British Medical Journal blog.
More information:
Thomas Bak interview on Edinburgh University radio