Don’t drop the ball on this one.
Boosting your brain health can be a real balancing act — one that involves regular exercise, a good diet, healthy amounts of sleep and plenty of mentally stimulating activities.
But there’s one little trick that’s been shown to help you stay sharp as you age, and while it’s associated with the circus, it’s far from clownish.
According to a growing body of research, juggling carries loads of cognitive benefits.
“Juggling changes how quickly you react to objects, how well you coordinate between two hands, and how you keep your posture under control. It also improves hand-eye coordination,” Dr. Amy J. Bastian, a neuroscientist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, told Brain and Life.
“It’s good for people who want to improve the precision and timing of their movements.”
One 2024 study found that juggling had “positive effects on cognitive abilities and postural stability in healthy, physically active older adults.”
Juggling has also been found to promote neuroplasticity — the brain’s remarkable ability to adapt to new stimuli — which may in turn help improve cognitive function, according to a 2022 review of 11 studies in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
However, scientists note that the benefits seem to fade once you drop the habit — literally.
In one study, about half of the brain changes disappeared just a month after participants stopped juggling.
Bastian is now researching whether juggling could have therapeutic potential for people with movement disorders like cerebellar ataxia — a condition that affects coordination and balance.
“It does test our systems in a way that might be potentially therapeutic,” she said.
Juggling has also gone high-tech: Bastian and Dr. Noah Cowan, the director of the Locomotion in Mechanical and Biological Systems lab at Johns Hopkins, have developed a virtual reality system to study movement and balance.
Their research has found that even tiny disruptions in timing can throw people off — and juggling could help train the brain’s timing systems, including those needed to walk without stumbling.
It’s not as hard as it looks, either.
“Nearly everyone can learn to juggle two balls, and many can learn three,” Janet Brodie, an arts therapist who works at Yale New Haven Psychiatric Hospital in Connecticut, told the outlet.
“It’s a good tool to get people involved in an activity and to help them become aware of their coping mechanisms.”
That tracks with a 2022 study that found that a group of 20 healthy seniors all learned to juggle three balls after just 12 lessons — and saw a boost in mood to boot.
So if you’re looking to stay sharp, coordinated and maybe even a little more joyful — go ahead and throw your hat in the ring.
Just don’t forget: Drops are part of the process.
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