Tips For Healthy Aging: Becom... Video Transcript

Participants

, Michael F. Roizen MD

Summary

We all know that it is important to keep your body active and healthy to live a long life. But the old adage "use it or lose it" is also true. Discover some of the many ways people can continue to keep their minds keen and continually growing.

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: We all know that eating a well-balanced diet and keeping physically active can help you live a longer and healthier life. But it may surprise you to know that the simple act of challenging your mind is also important.

MICHAEL ROIZEN, MD: Learning new things makes you younger. That is, it decreases your rate of aging and it's a substantial decrease. Why should it do that? We don't know.

The activities that are most important or best at keeping your mind young are activities you like. So it doesn't matter whether it is reading a book, or doing a crossword puzzle, or intellectually debating someone, or playing chess, or doing one of the spatial games on the web, whatever it is, that keeps your mind young.

So it is just keeping active intellectually keeps you young. Reading books, watching even intellectual programs on TV keeps your mind young.

ANNOUNCER: Keeping your mind active can help enable a person to continue doing what they love for a longer time.

MICHAEL ROIZEN, MD: Most people fear loss of driving so can you play games to maintain your driving skills? So there are spatial games you can play. Driving simulators. There are physical agility games you can play, and reaction times. So whatever those things are that you would hate to lose, those are the most important for you to keep practicing and keep doing.

ANNOUNCER: So while it's nice to relax with advancing years, keeping your brain active is a plus.

MICHAEL ROIZEN, MD: People who don't keep learning lifelong, die younger and die with a lower quality of life. Have longer periods of disability, longer periods of physical inactivity, longer periods of mental inactivity, longer periods of disability and disablement and a lower quality of life.

Learning helps you live younger, helps you live with a higher quality of life and in our sense, it reduces your real age or makes your real age younger. And that's a component of higher quality and longer life.

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