People With This Rare Talent Stay Sharp Into Their 70s And Beyond, Says Study
Rido | Shutterstock The field of longevity has exploded in recent years, with so many people wondering how they could possibly add a bit more time to their lives. With that comes the idea that people also want to slow down the aging process and keep their brains as young as possible.
There’s been a lot of research and speculation about what can keep someone’s brain sharp even in their senior years, which are typically characterized by cognitive decline. New research revealed that there is one talent you can pick up that will keep your brain sharp for decades.
People who speak multiple languages are more likely to stay mentally sharp, even in old age.
Researchers Xinyu Liu and Christos Pilatsikas explained why being multilingual is so beneficial for senior citizens. Apparently, being able to speak more than one language means you engage in a form of “brain training” every time you speak. This is because there are multiple languages that exist in your brain, and your brain must choose the correct one to form ideas for that particular conversation.
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Much of the research on the subject up to this point has focused on bilingualism and has proven to be a bit inconclusive. However, a new study published in Nature Aging found that the more languages you speak, the better. Scientists studied 86,000 adults from 27 different European countries and determined a “biobehavioral age gap” for each, which was the difference between their actual age and the age that they appeared to be based on their cognitive functioning.
The researchers found that countries with a history of multilingual citizens, such as the Netherlands and Finland, consistently showed signs of lower rates of aging among their citizens. Meanwhile, in countries where it is common to only speak one language, like the U.K. and Hungary, citizens were often “more likely to appear biologically older than their actual age.”
Speaking more than one language isn’t just beneficial for the elderly, though.
A 2017 study published in the journal Foreign Language Annals analyzed the advantages of multilingualism throughout one’s lifetime. While researchers confirmed that it does “provide protection against cognitive decline” in old age, you don’t have to wait until you’re a senior citizen to reap the rewards.
For example, researchers stated that it was easier for children who knew one language to learn another, which was particularly helpful for children who moved to the U.S. from other countries who needed to learn English.
Additionally, they found that knowing more than one language was like a great equalizer for children in the world of education. While students with a lower socioeconomic status tend to struggle more in school, being at least bilingual made them more prepared to learn.
As more people seek to communicate across borders, learning multiple languages has become increasingly common.
According to a report from tutoring platform Preply, quite a few people across the world are bilingual. They noted that it is “more of a global necessity today than a bonus skill,” which accounts for why at least half of the world speaks more than one language. It’s a bit of a different story in the U.S., though. Only 22% of Americans over the age of 5 speak a language in their home that is not English.
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Of course, as Preply pointed out, someone can be bilingual and not actually speak the second language at home, so the results aren’t a perfect representation of bilingualism in the U.S. Still, it is interesting to note how different the statistics are here in the U.S. compared with those across the world.
The World Health Organization said that global life expectancy rates increased by over six years from 2000 to 2019. Liu and Pilatsikas also noted that people are living longer than ever before, which is why it’s so important to stay in shape cognitively. The older you are, the greater your chance of developing age-related cognitive issues. One way to combat that is by picking up another language.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
