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MENTAL ACTIVITIES A 23 percent lower risk of dementia was found among participants whose pastimes included reading books, magazines or newspapers; watching television; listening to the
radio; doing calligraphy; playing cards or checkers; doing crossword puzzles or other puzzles; playing musical instruments; browsing the internet; painting; and engaging in handicrafts.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES A 17 percent lower risk of dementia was found among participants whose activities included walking for exercise, hiking, jogging or running, swimming, stair climbing,
bicycling, using exercise machines, playing ballgames or racket sports, participating in group exercises, doing qigong or yoga, performing calisthenics and dancing. SOCIAL ACTIVITIES A 7
percent lower risk of dementia was found among participants whose activities included attending an interest class, joining a social center, participating in volunteer work, meeting relatives
or friends, attending religious activities and participating in organized group discussions. “This meta-analysis suggests that being active has benefits, and there are plenty of activities
that are easy to incorporate into daily life that may be beneficial to the brain,” Lu said. He noted that the metanalysis had limitations, including that study participants were not followed
for very long. Over a third of the studies had a follow-up of less than six years. Future studies would benefit from involving a greater number of participants, with follow-ups done over a
longer time, he suggested. Lu also stated in the report that only a handful of studies in the analysis included social activities and that it was not possible to investigate the extent to
which participants engaged in all three types of activities, making it difficult to ascertain “the real impact” that participation in social hobbies has on lowering dementia risk. Other
researchers caution that the cause-and-effect relationship isn’t so clear. A study published in _The Lancet_ last year noted that “long before dementia is diagnosed, there is a progressive
reduction in various mental and physical activities, chiefly because its gradual onset causes inactivity, not because inactivity causes dementia.” _The Lancet _study included roughly 850,000
women in the United Kingdom who were followed for up to 16 years. Associations between nonparticipation in leisure activities and dementia did not hold up over time.