Emotional Fitness and Dementia

Quality social relationships can reduce the risk of dementia, and Immersion's new Tuesday app can help you measure the positive emotional impact of those relationships. 

The Lancet Commission reported in 2020 that the quality of social relationships substantially reduces the risk of dementias. Social connection was one of the modifiable risk factors, along with hypertension, smoking, obesity, depression, and physical inactivity, that account for 40% of the incidence of dementias in a worldwide study. Indeed, social disengagement quantitatively is among the most important factors leading to Alzheimer's disease and other dementias but is among the hardest to measure.

Until now! 

Survey measures of social interactions typically count the number of interactions, but not their quality. The clerk at the store who says hello counts as a social interaction, but was it sufficiently valuable to reduce the risk of dementia? Only by measuring the neurologic value of social interactions can one be sure that the quantity and quality of social connections are enough to build emotional fitness.

We use the word "fitness" rather than "wellness" when capturing emotional states because wellness often implies you can stop participating because you're cured when you reach a certain point. On the contrary, the published scientific literature, like that from The Lancet, shows that building up the quality of social-emotional interactions works just like building up one's physical fitness. It takes effort to make and foster new social connections, but it also gets easier over time. That's one way that emotional fitness is built. The other is to lean in on high quality social connections, spending more time with those who truly care about us.

Immersion Neuroscience's free emotional fitness app, Tuesday, continuously and passively measures the value the brain gets from daily experiences and social interactions. Our AI-enabled goals for emotional fitness give users a ring to close every day to build emotional fitness in order to stave off dementias as well as other mental health disorders such as depression. Human beings need to socialize and connect with others to be happy, well-adjusted, and avoid the ravages of neurologic and psychiatric disorders. A balance of sleeping well, exercising, eating a healthy diet and, importantly, using Tuesday to take advantage of the power of social interactions, can all help to reduce your risk of dementia.

Bonus - you'll have a ball doing it because you'll be around people who naturally fill your cup with joy!  

Download Tuesday for free and try it yourself! 

Learn more about Tuesday here!