Public health campaigns like ‘your five-a-day’ should be used to to encourage Britons to learn another language to ward off dementia.
Experts say that the British are notorious for being monolingual and really don’t try that hard to learn foreign languages. Top neuroscientist, Thomas Bak, co-director of a bilingualism centre at Edinburgh University, said that older people should be mentally active and as concerned about brain ability as they are about walking 10,000 steps every day.
Learning a language or musical Instrument could help to delay the onset of dementia, he said. Bilingual people generally developed it about five years later than their monolingual peers.