Middle-aged adults and seniors who participate in adult education reduce their risk of developing dementia conditions such as Alzheimer’s by 19% within five years.
Yes, according to researchers from the Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer of Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan who have shown for the first time, in a new study in“Here we show that people who take adult education classes have a lower risk of developing dementia five years later,” said Dr Hikaru Takeuchi, the study’s first author. “Adult education is likewise associated with better preservation of nonverbal reasoning with increasing age.
Importantly, results were similar when participants with a history of diabetes, hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, or mental illness were excluded. This means that the observed lower risk wasn’t exclusively due to participants with incipient dementia being prevented from following adult education by symptoms of these known co-morbidities.
Takeuchi proposed that a randomized clinical trial be done to prove any protective effect of adult education.