The Department of Society, Human Development, and Health at Harvard School of Public Health has conducted a study on the elderly and has found some interesting facts. Their research, published in the American Journal of Public Health, underlines the importance of social integration in preventing memory loss.

The Health and Retirement Study has looked at 16,638 Americans over 50 for 6 years. Even though at the start of the test period people with high social integration and low social integration had similar memory scores, that changed in a few years. Those who were more lonely were associated with a memory degradation twice that of those who socialized frequently.

"Our results suggest that increasing social integration may be an important component of efforts to protect older Americans from memory decline," the authors wrote in the May 29 online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

Also, recently, researchers found out evidence that painkillers such aspirin and ibuprofen lower the chance to develop Alzheimer’s disease. The new research examined data from six studies involving 13,499 people without dementia and concluded that those who used aspirin, ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin and other brands) and naproxen (Aleve and other brands), all known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), had a 23 percent lower risk for Alzheimer’s compared with people who did not use these drugs.