[00:00] If your pinky can move this easily, it's a sign that your brain is in great shape. Just 7 to 10 seconds of this exercise can help protect against Alzheimer's and increase brain plasticity. Is this finger exercise really going to reduce your risk of Alzheimer's disease?
[00:13] Well, not based on any current evidence that we have. At least when we're talking about this specific finger exercise. Now, it is genuinely difficult because it combines attention, fine motor control, and an unfamiliar movement pattern. It will create some neuroplasticity, but most of that adaptation will simply make you better at performing this specific exercise.
[00:31] However, finger exercises have been studied more broadly. In one randomized trial on 232 older adults with mild cognitive impairment, performing structured finger exercises for 30 minutes twice a day for 30 days did result in improvements in cognitive scores compared to a control group.
[00:47] But that is one hour of structured finger exercises every day in people with already existing cognitive impairment. If you want to challenge your brain with a movement that generally has evidence that it might do something good for your risk of dementia, then check out this particular study.
[01:01] In the active randomness control trial, older adults were assigned to memory, reasoning, or speed training. Then they were followed for 20 years. Those who did speed of processing training and received booster sessions every few years had about 25% lower risk of dementia.
[01:16] Those who did standard memory and standard reasoning training didn see any risk reduction Speed of processing training alone didn do it either It did so only with booster sessions So what is this speed of processing training In the active study speed of processing training was designed to make people get faster at noticing visual information
[01:33] dividing attention, spotting something important in the center while also noticing things in the periphery, and just reacting to things very fast. The participants would see very brief visuals on a screen, and they had to identify or locate targets faster and faster as the task got harder.
[01:48] In the real world, you can incorporate speed of processing training with racket sports or fast ball sports like tennis, pickleball, ping pong, or even basketball. Fast-paced visual games, such as some computer games, can also do this.
[02:00] Dancing or choreographed training and just fast kind of reaction drills. Similar to your muscles, if you don't use your brain, you lose it, including processing speed. So this finger trick can be a fun exercise, but it's probably not going to reduce your risk of Alzheimer's.
[02:13] It just becomes too easy after a few minutes. The 2024 Lancet Commission estimated that if you address 14 modifiable risk factors, you could prevent or delay approximately 45% of dementia cases.
[02:25] That's a more important point. Protecting your brain is about the bigger picture. It's about your metabolic health, your fitness, your sleep, your blood pressure, your body composition, and many other risk factors. If you want to see where your own health currently ranks for your age,
[02:38] take my 3-minute health percent assessment. It gives you your health percentile, identifies your biggest health bottlenecks, and shows you what you should focus on improving first. click the link below and start now.