It seems that every elderly person today is developing Alzheimer's. Chances are that you know someone who has dementia - possibly even a family member. Alzheimer's is a disease that affects not only the person who endures it, but all those who have a relationship with that person. The loss of memory often results in that person forgetting favorite memories or even a person altogether, even a close family member such as a daughter or husband. These devastating consequences have caused Alzheimer's to be one of the most dreaded diseases, and the fact that there is no cure yet for this disease makes the prospect of developing dementia that much more unpleasant. But, don't give up all hope of remembering your loved ones for the rest of your life - even though the scientific community has not uncovered a cure, it has learned that certain things can lessen the chance that your life will be severely affected by Alzheimer's.
A recent article from Discover Magazine called "Alzheimer's Study: Bilingual Brains are Dementia-Resistant" relates the new discovery that bilingual people have a greater chance of coping better with dementia than monolingual people. Psychologist Ellen Bialystok performed a study on 200 people, half of which were bilingual and half were monolingual, and presented the results of this study at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington D.C. recently. These people all had about the same level of mental capacity, but the bilingual people were diagnosed with Alzheimer's about four years later than the monolingual people. While speaking two languages doesn't mean that you won't contract the disease, it does prolong it for years, years that could be precious and invaluable for you and your family.
Bialystok also performed CT scans on these 200 patients, and even found that the dementia had affected the brains of the bilingual people more so than the monolingual people. This means that the disease had been more destructive in the brains of people who spoke multiple languages. Although one might think that the bilingual people might have reacted worse to the disease because of this, the opposite is true - the brains of the bilingual people, whether it was because of the extra 'brain exercise' or development from speaking two languages, allowed them to cope better with the disease, even though it was more advanced in their brains.
Babies who grow up speaking two languages are even better off than people who learn a second language later in life. While they enjoy the advantages of being better off if they end up contracting Alzheimer's, they also develop other very useful skills because of this bilingual knowledge. If a person who has spoken two languages all of his life looks at two people speaking different languages, he can determine which is speaking what language by simply watching him, without even hearing the words that the person is speaking! People who grow up deciphering between body languages and mouth movements of different languages can carry this knowledge over to other languages as well, which can prove to be a very useful life-skill.
Learning of these potential health benefits to speaking more than one language pushes me more than ever before to learn another language. I wish that I had known of these health benefits and social benefits earlier - if I had, I might have put more effort into my high school Spanish classes, with the hope that I would be able to cope with Alzheimer's more efficiently if I ever get this disease when I am older. Because of the benefits of speaking more than one language, I believe that everyone should push themselves to learn another language - he would be able to have many social benefits such as being able to talk to people who speak only that language, and then that person would be able to battle Alzheimer's better in their older life. Such a discovery even makes me think about teaching my children another language from a very young age so that they will develop all of the benefits associated with being bilingual.
Image Source: http://biopsyreport.com/2008/03/10/dementia-happens/
No comments:
Post a Comment