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Playing Chess Reduces Alzheimer’s Risks

August 23, 2003

Scientists have shown a link between playing chess and reducing the risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s and other mental illnesses.

In a study reported in the June 19th issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, officials said that people over age 75 who engaged in leisure activities suchw as chess were less likely to develop signs of dementia than others.

Playing games such as chess stimulates areas of the brain that would normally atrophy with age. This aging process, which is combated by thought processes involving temporal reasoning is actually slowed down by activities like watching TV.

People who reported playing board games such as chess were 35% more likely to develop dementia than those who said they engaged in those activities only rarely.

It has long been known that the game of chess is the pastime of geniuses. From Napoleon to Karl Marx, thinkers have long been captivated by the one on one struggle between opponents that takes place across a chess board. The battle planning involved in a chess game makes use of certain portions of the brain that decode temporal relationships. The workings of these relationships are similar to exercises for the mind.

Just like exercising the body, exercise helps build-up the mind too. Each game of chess requires the human mind to go through rigors it would normally not encounter on a normal basis. The exercise that chess gives the brain helps to work the “gray matter” that would normally remain stagnant and unworked.

The study's main author, Dr. Robert Freidland, claims people who don't exercise their gray matter stand a chance of losing brain power.