The study found that Australians over 70 years of age who always listened to music had a 39% lower risk of having dementia than those who never to only sometimes did.
Now, you have even more reason to keep playing “Baby’s Got Back” on loop well into your 70s, 80s and 90s. That’s because fellas (yeah,) fellas (yeah) and ladies (yeah), ladies (yeah) a new analysis recently published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry found that those over 70 years of age who always listened to music had a 39% lower risk of having dementia than those who never, rarely or only sometimes did. And playas, meaning those who played a musical instrument, had a 35% lower risk of having dementia than those who didn’t. Both Listening To And Playing Music Were Associated With Lower Likelihoods of Dementia
The analysis was conducted by a research team from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, (Emma Jaffa, Zimu Wu, Alice Owen, Aung Azw Zaw Phyo, Robyn L. Woods, Suzanne G. Orchard, Trevor T.-J. Chong and Joanne Ryan) and Rush University (Raj C. Shah) and Hennepin Health (Anne Murray) in the U.S. The team looked at data on 10,893 older Australians from the ASPirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly (ASPREE) study and the ASPREE Longitudinal Study of Older Persons (ALSOP) sub‐study. While this study didn’t ask participants specifically about whether they listed to that Sir Mix-a-Lot song, it did inquire about their music listening and playing habits in general.
Here are some other results that weren’t necessarily newly radical. Those with the music in them—meaning they were always listeining to music—had a 17% lower rate of cognitive impairment, along with better scores in overall cognition and the ability to recall everyday events.
