Common Activities to Reduce Your Risk of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)

If you’re having occasional trouble with your memory or attention span, you may consider it a normal part of aging.

While it’s true that aging often brings some cognitive decline, it’s not something you have to accept as part of growing older.

In fact, research shows there are a variety of common activities you can do to reduce your risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

What is mild cognitive impairment (MCI)?

Broadly speaking, cognitive impairment refers to a decline in the mental processes that affect memory, language, and judgment.

According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) includes things like occasional memory issues, struggles to find the right word, trouble making decisions, and difficulty following conversations.

It’s important to note that in MCI, these challenges are present, but do not significantly affect your ability to function in your daily life.

What are some common activities to help reduce your risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI)?

Research by Krell-Roesch et al. (2019) revealed that for individuals age 50 and older, common activities like computer use, crafts, social activities, and playing games can help reduce the risk of MCI.

Next time you have some time to yourself, skip the scrolling endlessly through your phone or half-watching another season of a show and consider trying one of the following activities to help you stay sharp:

1. Paint or draw
2. Garden, whether indoors or outdoors
3. Find and try a new recipe
4. Play a card game, either by yourself or with a friend
5. Reminisce about the past by looking through and sharing old photos
6. Write a song, a story, or a poem
7. Put on some music and sing along with your favorite tunes
8. Try out the latest virtual reality games
9. Read/write emails or other correspondence (digitally or on paper)
10. Write reviews of movies you’ve seen or places you’ve recently visited

How do these activities reduce your risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI)?

The activities above help address MCI by stimulating your brain with planning, memory, attention, organization, understanding language, and using language.

Let’s take a closer look at one of these activities to show how it can be more stimulating than it appears.

Imagine you’re at home on the couch, watching a television show or movie you’ve already seen several times.

Instead of watching it again, you decide you’re going to get in touch with your artistic side and paint a picture.

Here’s how that would likely play out:

1. To get started, I have to gather paints, brushes, water to clean my brushes, paper towels, and a canvas or some paper to paint. (Planning)
2. While I’m searching for the items mentioned above, I run through a mental checklist of what I have so far and what I need to find. (Memory, Attention)
3. I sit down to start painting, but am unsure of what I want to paint. I start brainstorming some idea: a beach scene, maybe my dog. This is the process of organization. (Understanding, Use of Language, Word Finding)
4. I start painting my beach scene and realize I don’t have the blue color I want. What colors can I combine to get that perfect color? (Planning, Memory, Problem Solving)

As you can see, the simple act of painting involves a surprising amount of cognitive activity, which can help reduce your risk of MCI.

Treatment for different forms of cognitive impairment

While the activities we discussed can help reduce your risk of MCI, there may be times where MCI requires further treatment.

If you find that your problems with planning, organization, memory, attention, or word finding are causing challenges in your daily life, speak to your primary care provider (PCP).

Your PCP may recommend a visit with a speech-language pathologist (SLP), who can be a great resource for addressing MCI.

SLPs can teach you strategies to organize your thoughts, create plans, and support word finding when having conversations with friends or family members.

Your SLP will work with you to identify areas of need and create a unique care plan to help you address them.

Jaime Cascarano, MA, CCC-SLP is Senior Speech-Language Pathologist at South Shore Health.

Learn more about Speech Therapy at South Shore Health.

References

Krell-Roesch, J., Syrjanen, J.A., Vassilaki, M., Machulda, M.M., Mielke, M.M., Knopman, D.S., Kremers, W.K., Petersen, R.C., & Geda, Y.E. (2019). Quantity and quality of mental activities and the risk of incident mild cognitive impairment. Neurology. https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000007897.