Healthy Aging and Cognitive Decline
Everyone ages, and with that comes wisdom and experience, but also some scary realities for many people. Near, or at the top of the list of harsh realities is cognitive decline. Cognitive decline happens naturally, as well as a result of some age related diseases, and to different extents for person to person.
Understanding Cognitive Decline
Cognitive decline is the worsening of brain functions, which most commonly takes the form of increased confusion and memory loss. It can be scary to deal with and heartbreaking to watch happen to loved ones, even if it is a natural part of life, so a natural desire is to know more about what can make it worse and how it can be slowed down. It may come as a surprise, but one thing that has connections with cognitive decline is our personality traits. In this blog post, we’ll explore what exactly is meant with personality traits, as well as how they connect to cognitive decline and what can be done with them to help slow it down.
What are Personality Traits?
Now, this may seem like a silly question. After all, we all know what a personality trait is, and we all have a multitude of personality traits. In official terms, our personality traits are the internal characteristics that remain consistent within us and are able to explain why a person makes the actions they make. Personality traits can even be used predictively as a way to anticipate future actions and reactions a person may have in a situation. There are five primary personality traits: agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness. Agreeableness relates to how helpful and kind a person is, conscientiousness is about a person’s discipline and organization, extraversion correlates with friendliness and how outgoing someone is, neuroticism is anxiousness, and openness pertains to a person’s level of curiosity and perceptiveness. With all of these, these traits exist on a gradient and interrelate with one another to form the unique mixture that makes each and every person unique.
How do Personality Traits Relate to Cognitive Decline?
While the connection may not seem obvious, personality traits can have a major impact on numerous aspects of health, including physical well-being. However, for the sake of this article, we’ll only be covering its connection with cognitive decline. Simply put, the way our personality traits make us think can cause our cognitive health to be better or worse. Studies have shown that having low levels of conscientiousness and high levels of neuroticism can have a dramatic effect on cognitive health and decline, in a negative way. For people who fall under this umbrella, these traits can increase the likelihood and rate of cognitive decline, as well as give them an increased chance of developing Dementia and mild cognitive impairment.
Of course, with information that can be quite stressful it would be wrong to give it without some positive news. While personality traits don’t usually change on their own, they aren’t set in stone and can be lessened through conscious effort. Going to therapy to help address issues with neuroticism, developing the habit of thinking in a positive, goal-oriented way, and increasing cognitive flexibility through mental exercises or mediation are all ways that can help lessen the degree to which you have neuroticism and low conscientiousness. This in turn can lower your risk of developing cognitive decline and associated conditions.