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A comment on Thoughts on Growing Old. Parent comment

Re:Thoughts on Growing Old by _feda_ on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @05:13PM (#3622723)
That old adage that you can stave off memory loss and general degeneration of cognitive ability by keeping your mind active always seems strikingly obvious to me, and I think it's pretty much true for people at any age. And anyway, what the heck are you doing if you're not keeping your mind active anyway? Watching paint dry ;-)
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Re:Thoughts on Growing Old by bryanlarsen on Thursday February 23, 2012 @04:58AM (#3624398)
As far as I'm aware, to stave off cognitive decay you need to keep your mind active in ways that are different from the way you usually keep it active. Studies show that sudoku prevents brain decay, but only in people who don't play sudoku or games like it.

So if you're a programmer, learning new programming skills might help your career but it probably won't help your brain. Learn a new language or a musical instrument or something else completely different.

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Re:Thoughts on Growing Old by adavies42 on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @05:29PM (#3622787)
the first sign of getting old is forgetting things. the second is repeating them. the fourth is repeating them.
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