Learn English with the News: Study shows negative thinking linked to dementia in later life

A new study shows that having a “glass half empty” mentality could bring on dementia later on in life. Check out the accompanying ESL language exercises.

The news is a consistent source of entertainment, knowledge and discovery that never ceases to exist and always comes out with more and more material each day. Because it plays such a vital part in our lives and is so important to keep up with, it is without a doubt a piece of your everyday routine that can’t go ignored. 

Whether it is to understand the ramifications of recent legislation passed, to hear about recent events and grasp the potential consequences to your country, or simply hear about what is happening in other countries in order to compare them to what’s happening in yours, the news is certainly a staple in our lives and the most consistent way to get information.

This is why Scrambled Eggs has decided to unite two of your biggest worlds: learning English and keeping up with what is happening in the world. We hope our challenging daily exercises, composed of listening, vocabulary and comprehension exercises in English, will satisfy both of those above worlds in a satisfactory and also entertaining way.

So enough about introductions, let’s get to today’s Learn English with the News topic:

Adapted from this article.

Now that you’ve had a listen, let’s put your knowledge to the test with some of our vocabulary and comprehension exercises:

Full Text:

Are you a pessimist by nature, a “glass half empty” sort of person? That’s not good for your brain. A new study found that repetitive negative thinking in later life was linked to cognitive difficulties and a greater quantity of two harmful proteins responsible for Alzheimer’s disease. Negative thinking behaviors such as thinking too much about the past and worrying about the future were measured in over 350 people over the age of 55 during a two-year period. About a third of the participants also had a PET brain scan to measure the quantity two proteins which cause Alzheimer’s disease. The scans showed that people who spent more time thinking negatively had more proteins, worse memory and greater cognitive decline over a four-year period compared to people who were not pessimists. The study also tested for levels of anxiety and depression and found greater cognitive decline in depressed and anxious people, which echoes prior research. But protein deposits did not increase in the already depressed and anxious people, leading researchers to suspect repeated negative thinking may be the main reason why depression and anxiety contribute to Alzheimer’s disease. It is “important to point out that this isn’t saying a short-term period of negative thinking will cause Alzheimer’s disease,” said Fiona Carragher, who is chief policy and research officer at the Alzheimer’s Society in London. “We need further investigation to understand this better. The study’s final take-away is that optimists also tend to have better coping skills and are better problem-solvers. They are better at what we call proactive coping, or anticipating problems and then proactively taking steps to fix them.

And that’s it for today’s English lesson, where you can improve your English with the news and current events. Do you have any comments or special requests for us for the next edition of Learn English with the News? Be sure to leave any feedback you have in the comments section below, as we would love to help you on your quest to learn the English language!

For other Learn English with the News segments, be sure to check out the rest of our posts:

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