Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, constituting between 60% and 70% of the total cases in the world. Fighting against it and trying to delay its progress as much as possible is something that the science He has been working tirelessly for years.
Recently, the FDA has approved a new drug named Leqembithe second in a new category of medicines approved for Alzheimer’s disease that address the fundamental pathophysiology of the disease.
Leqembi was approved through the Accelerated Approval route, under which the FDA can approve drugs for serious conditions when there is a medical necessity and a drug is shown to have clinical benefit for patients.
However, science once again goes a step further and just proved that there is something more powerful than this drug: Duolingo.
Duolingo has already been shown to be more effective against Alzheimer’s than drugs
It sounds crazy, but this has been shown by several studies that compare this application or the learning of new languages in general with the treatment of Alzheimer. To be fair, We are not talking about these apps solving the problembut a large number of published studies have shown that speaking two languages offers remarkable protection against this disease.
To first clarify what we are talking about, in case anyone is lost, Duolingo is a well-known application for phones that helps users learn other languages, doing simple and entertaining exercises every day to practice.
Ellen Bialystok, a research professor in the Department of Psychology at the York School of Health, and her team tested (successfully) the theory that bilingualism can increase cognitive reserve and thus delay the age of onset of Alzheimer’s disease symptoms in elderly patients.
In a nutshell, They affirm that learning another language, even if it is not mastered, helps to stimulate brain health. In another study, a group of adults between the ages of 65 and 75 were specifically followed who were assigned 16 weeks of learning Spanish with the Duolingo app.
The results were compared with those of a control group that did not perform the task, confirming that the brain health of the former improved compared to the latter.
“In addition to the cognitive benefits, learning a second language can enrich the lives of older adults in other important ways, for example, by making new friends or opening the door to a new culture or travel, helping them experience the life to the fullest,” they explain.
These results contribute to the growing body of evidence demonstrating that bilinguals are more resistant to neurodegeneration than monolinguals. They function at a higher level thanks to cognitive reserve, which means that many of these individuals will be independent for longer, coping better with Alzheimer’s.
