Doing What You Love is Good for the "Heart": Participating in Favorite Activities Reduces Depression and Anxiety

📖 Literature Information and Abstract Translation

Engagement in favorite activity and implications for cognition, mental health, and function in persons living with and without dementia

Regier, Natalie G., et al. "Engagement in favorite activity and implications for cognition, mental health, and function in persons living with and without dementia." Journal of Applied Gerontology (2021): 0733464821999199.

🔗 DOI, PubMed, Google Scholar, HHS

✅ Prerequisite Knowledge: How were favorite activities identified?
- Participants, or their proxies if necessary, were asked several questions about their involvement in and preferences for activities (details unclear?).
- Activities that participants "liked" were identified and recorded.
- Engagement in favorite activities was assessed with the following question: "Since our last interview (1 year ago), have you done (favorite activity)?" Participants (or proxies) answered "yes" or "no".

[Background/Objective] Little is known about the impact of engagement in personally meaningful activities for older adults. Therefore, this study examined the effects of engagement in one's favorite activities on cognitive, emotional, functional, and health-related outcomes in older adults with and without cognitive impairment.

[Methods] Data were obtained from 1,397 persons living with dementia (PLWD) and 4,719 cognitively healthy persons (CHP) who participated in the second wave of the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS). Sociodemographic characteristics were examined by cognitive status.

[Results] Multivariate analysis of variance showed that in PLWD, participation in favorite activities was associated with greater functional independence and reduced depression. In CHP, participation in favorite activities was associated with improved functional independence, reduced depression and anxiety, and better performance on memory tests.

[Conclusion] These results suggest that participation in personally meaningful activities may provide significant and distinct benefits for both persons with and without dementia.

📕 Reference Paper: Battery for Assessing Exercise Preferences
Stroke Exercise Preference Questionnaire: Can be used in community rehabilitation settings
● Blennerhassett, et al. Physiotherapy theory and practice (2019): 1-8. >>> doi.

🌱 So What?: What did I find interesting?

For every keyhole, there is a key.
That is obvious.
Why is it that we find it obvious for objects (keys), but struggle to apply it to people?
Especially regarding the human heart.
For the keyhole of the person's heart, there is a key.
That is obvious.
Yet, when it comes to people's hearts, aren't we being uniform?
This study suggests the importance of prescribing activities that fit the keyhole of the individual's heart in interventions for activity and participation.

And the heart does not stop at the heart.
It is the origin, and reality is drawn around it.
For example,
it can cause cognitive decline (📕Zhu, 2022 >>> doi. ), or it can cause a decrease in physical activity (📕Marques, 2020 >>>
doi. ).Problems of the heart can have an epicenter that causes effects to ripple throughout the whole.

Therefore, starting only with activities that do not take the heart into account is like a clumsy puppet show.
To have them move on their own with "intrinsic motivation," you need an engine called the heart.
A top-tier puppeteer once said their script is always blank, and that"capturing the state of the heart is what I value most."Even in that job, which might be thought of as just creating movement, what is valued most is the
"heart."Medicine is even more so, and I think rehabilitation, which involves a lot of time with patients, is even more so.

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