Should You Worry About Being A Worrywart?

If you're middle-aged and tend to ruminate about stressful events in your daily life, here's one thing you might not have to worry about: An Israeli study of 9,000 men found that those who obsessed about daily struggles during their 40s and 50s were less likely to develop dementia in their 80s than those who did not worry as much during mid-life.

If you think this is a strange topic to investigate, the findings actually were accidental. The longitudinal study was about Israeli male civil servants and heart disease risk; one of the areas they assessed when the men were middle-aged was rumination, or the tendency to focus repeatedly on hurtful incidents instead of just forgetting about them.

When the men were examined in old age, the researchers found that those who had worried were 30-40% less likely to develop dementia in later life than those who took a more laid back approach to daily stressors.

Worriers and non-worriers were not significantly different in regard to blood pressure, cholesterol levels, presence of diabetes, or tobacco use. What might account for the findings? The researchers think that the worriers may have been worrying in an adaptive way, meaning that they were analyzing stressful events and exercising their brains through problem solving.

While these findings are intriguing, I wouldn't recommend searching for things to worry about. Instead, exercise your brain by challenging yourself with puzzles, new hobbies, and interesting reading. But if you are a worrier, perhaps this is a good opportunity to relax and embrace your worrying ways.

For more information:

• How to Keep Your Mind Active
• How Rumination Affects Your Life

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