Study: Older Adults With Positive Outlook on Aging May Recover Better From Mild Cognitive Impairment
The reason for the link isn’t entirely clear.Issues with memory and thinking are more common as you get older, but it’s not a given that everyone will experience them. With that, it’s understandable to want to do what you can to get better if you find you’re suddenly being forgetful or struggling to think clearly.suggests that positive thinking about aging may help people better recover from mild cognitive impairment than those who don’t have as sunny an outlook.
The researchers also found that people who had normal cognition at the start of the study and had positive views on aging were significantly less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment over the next 12 years than those who had negative thoughts about getting older. There are a few different things that can cause mild cognitive impairment, including vitamin B12 deficiency or thyroid disease, along with certain medications, Dr. Sachdev says. “It is not surprising that MCI could improve,” he adds.It’s important to point out that the study didn’t find that positive thinking about aging made a person’s mild cognitive impairment go away.
Paul Newhouse, M.D., director of the Vanderbilt Center for Cognitive Medicine, agrees. “People who feel more positive about the aging process may have better health overall and less likely to develop cognitive impairment,” he says. “It’s a bit of a chicken versus egg problem.” The researchers wrote in the study that this is thought to be the first to consider whether someone’s beliefs about aging can influence their recovery from mild cognitive impairment, so Gallagher points out that there’s still a lot of research to be done in this area.Given that mild cognitive impairment can be caused by a range of things, the NIA points out that there’s no standard of care for it. Meaning, there’s not a pill or drug you can take that will make it better in every situation.
If you’re struggling to think positively about getting older, Gallagher recommends acknowledging the way you think about aging and trying to tweak it. “Just because you feel a certain way about something, doesn’t mean that’s the way it is,” she says. “Some of the negative things we think about aging is cultural, and we need to work hard against internalizing some of these beliefs.”
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