Retirement may mean more time and less stress but it also puts people at risk of dementia.
A study which tracked 3,400 civil servants found that short-term memory declined nearly 40 per cent faster once they retired.
The lack of regular stimulation takes a heavy toll on cognitive function and speeds up memory loss, researchers said. The only way to prevent the onset of dementia was to keep physically and mentally active and to interact with people, a team from University College London and King’s College London found.
About 850,000 people in Britain have dementia.
Volunteers for the study underwent regular memory tests over a 30-year period covering the final part of their careers and the early years of their retirement. The results, published online in the European Journal of Epidemiology, found that verbal memory, which declines naturally with age, deteriorated 38 per cent faster once volunteers had retired.
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Cary Cooper, an expert in organisational psychology at Manchester Business School, said that the study confirmed previous research suggesting inactivity in retirement was bad for the brain. “It makes it more likely that dementia will set in earlier,” he said.