TGIF! Another week is history. If time flies when you are having a good time, my life is apparently a laugh a minute!
According to a couple of articles I looked at, time flies when we are busy because we are focused and mindful of what we are doing. Time drags when we are focused on things that remind us of the passage of time. That would be something like watching the clock or focusing on your empty stomach while waiting for lunch.
fSo it appears being busy keeps our lives from dragging along, but does it do anything else positive? Turns out there are actually busyness benefits for us older sorts…good thing or I would be in large trouble!
Two years ago Frontiers in Aging ran an article entitled The Busier the Better: Greater Busyness is Associated with Better Cognition. When they looked at 330 people between the ages of 50 and 89 they discovered busyness was correlated with better processing speed, working memory, episodic memory, reasoning and crystallized knowledge.
Now since the study was correlational in nature, there was the chicken and the egg problem. Which came first? Are brighter people just busier or does busyness keep you sharper? However, the findings were consistent with the findings of the engagement research. To wit, if you are more frequently active and engaged in life, you are sharper. There is a myriad of studies that relate engagement in cognitive, social, and physical activities to better thinking skills.
Now, the Forbes article that took off from this study did make a couple of interesting points. The Forbes authors suggested older folks may have a healthier type of busyness than younger folks do. The Forbes folks suggested older people have more face-to-face social contact and engage in more physical activities. They also point out one of the key components of everything mentioned as good busyness was learning.
So how does this relate to age-related macular degeneration? Oh, it probably doesn’t. At least not much. I went off on another tangent. I found it interesting and I thought some of you might too. Maybe a reminder we are all not just failing vision and degenerating retinas. We have brains, too, and it is important to keep them healthy.
But if you really want to relate it to macular degeneration, well, come along and learn with us. Master new ways of doing old things…as well as some new things. Get out there and be an example of an involved VIP. Who knows? This visually impaired nonsense just may help you stay sharp!
Written April 27th, 2018