La Voz de Galicia – March 14, 2025 →
“Cognitive reserve” is one of those concepts that fascinates me. Harvard Medical School defines it as “your brain’s ability to improvise and find alternate ways of getting a job done” and highlights six key pillars for cultivating it: “Eating a plant-based diet, exercising, getting enough sleep, managing stress, nurturing social contacts, and challenging the brain.” Research also shows that “people with greater cognitive reserve are better able to stave off symptoms of degenerative brain changes associated with dementia”. With all this in mind, I’ve been reflecting for quite some time on what it means to work on cognitive reserve, and without realizing it, I’ve been concerned about it for years. I suppose it’s because of my mother’s dementia and for what it meant for us to find ways to keep her as mentally active as possible to slow her decline. Or because of the fact that most of the people I love (friends and family) are older than I am. But for some time now, in my little family of two (Xan and Cris), we’ve come to understand that just as we take care of our overall health, we must also take care of our brain health.
And that’s where this column comes from, from what it means to embrace the idea that, if all goes well and we live to old age, we will likely experience some form of dementia, and about what it means to start investing in our cognitive reserve as early as possible to be able to delay the cognitive decline we may all eventually face. Harvard experts say that “cognitive reserve is developed by a lifetime of education and curiosity”. Education and curiosity—what two beautiful words!
