Found at WSJ.com, Research Finds Volunteering Can Be Good for Your Health, behind the paywall. Here's the key part:
A recent study of 2,705 volunteers age 18 and older from UnitedHealthcare and VolunteerMatch found that 75% of those who volunteered in the past 12 months said volunteering made them feel physically healthier.
A much larger study—one involving more than 64,000 subjects age 60 and older from 1998 to 2010—has found results suggesting that volunteering slows the cognitive decline of aging.
The author of that study, Sumedha Gupta, an assistant economics professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, used data from the long-running University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study to reach her conclusions. After dividing respondents into three categories—volunteers, nonvolunteers and individuals who switched back and forth—she found that an individual who is volunteering 100 hours a year scores on average about 6% higher in cognitive testing than a nonvolunteer.
“The effect is significant. It’s consistent,” Dr. Gupta says. As people age, their cognitive scores drop, but those who volunteer score higher at every age.
Of course, it could be that people with the inclination and energy to work for free may be less inclined to get dementia, anyway. But it's nice that someone actually put it into a study that sounds scientific. That said, there's some rationality backing it up. To wit:
The reasons behind volunteering’s boost to cognitive health, Dr. Gupta says, have to do with the unique characteristics of such activity.
For starters, unlike paid work, there is a “different subjective well-being” or “warm glow” that a volunteer experiences from helping people. Volunteering is also unique “because it supplies mental, physical and social stimulation in one package,” Dr. Gupta says. “You have to move around, you interact with people, you think about activities.” Whereas doing a Sudoku puzzle offers one type of intellectual stimulation, she says, volunteers get all of these types of stimulation simultaneously.
Makes sense. But take a look at this prediction from New Alzheimer’s Association Report Reveals Sharp Increases in Alzheimer’s Prevalence, Deaths and Cost of Care:
By 2025 – just seven years from now – the number of people age 65 and older with Alzheimer’s dementia is estimated to reach 7.1 million – an increase of almost 29 percent from the 5.5 million age 65 and older affected in 2018.
Baby boomers had better get busy with those volunteer jobs.
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1:19 PM 4/24/2018