A team of researchers discovered that people who are bilingual are twice as likely to recover from a stroke compared to people who are unilingual.
It may seem irrelevant to physical health, but experts said having the ability to speak two or more languages appears to protect the brain against damage. Previous studies found that being bilingual may help delay the onset of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and dementia.
In a report featured in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke, researchers at the University of Edinburgh examined 608 ischemic stroke patients from the Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) registry in India and looked into the influence of bilingualism to post-stroke cognitive impairment.
Bilingualism was defined in the study as having the ability to speak two or more languages. More than half of the stroke patients were bilingual.
Researchers took note of contributors such as age and blood pressure levels, as well as history of smoking and diabetes to make sure that the results of the study were not affected by healthier patient lifestyles.
The study found that following a stroke, about 40 percent of patients who were bilingual had normal cognitive functions, while only about 20 percent of patients who only spoke one language had normal mental functions.
In the post-stroke tests that assessed attention as well as the ability to organize and retrieve information, patients who were bilingual performed better than unilingual patients.
Surprisingly, researchers found there was no difference between bilingual patients and unilingual patients in the chances of developing aphasia. This is a neurological disorder that causes post-stroke difficulties in reading, writing and speaking.
The authors of the study explained that the ability to speak more than one language enables people to switch the usage of languages. While inhibiting one language, these people also activate another to converse with people.
Dr. Thomas Bak, co-author of the study, said that the switching offers constant brain training to the stroke patients which may help them recover.
Still, Dr. Suvarna Alladi, lead author of the study, said the findings may not universally apply to all bilingual people. Alladi explained that in multicultural cities such as Hyderabad, languages such as Hindi, English, Urdu and Telugu are being spoken, and the residents of this city are used to switching languages constantly.
"The cognitive benefit may not be seen in places where the need to function in two or more languages isn't as extensive," added Alladi.
The study was funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Photo: J.E. Theriot | Flickr
