What can you do to reduce risk of having a stroke? There are a few ways – exercising and trying not to smoke, but there is also a possibility to reduce a risk if the person is able to speak more than one language.

Scientists reported that bilingual stroke participants of the study were twice as likely as the participants who speak only one language to have normal cognitive functions after a stroke.

The feature of the brain known as “cognitive reserve” appears to be the reason for the difference.

Dr. Thomas Bak, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and a co-author of the study said that “people with more mental activities have more interconnected brains, which are able to deal better with potential damage”.

When stroke occurs, brain lacks cells of oxygen because blood flow to the brain is cut off. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and smoking are major risk factors.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – stroke affects about 800,000 Americans annually and is a leading cause of death in USA. Many stroke victims suffer from speech problems, dementia, depression, paralyzed limbs and other disabilities depending on the region of the brain that was damaged.

Dr. Suvarna Alladi, a professor of neurology at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, India, examined patients with the stroke in the city called Hyderabad where people speak two or more languages no matter of what education level they have and their social status. He followed 608 patients for two years after a stroke occurred. Researchers also compared the 353 bilingual patients with the 255 monolingual patients in the study.

The comparison showed that 40 percent of the bilingual patients had normal cognitive functions following a stroke, while same results happened in less than 20 percent of single-language patients.

The researchers also found that bilingual patients performed better when their abilities to pay attention and organize information were measured.

The first author on the study Alladi said that bilingualism makes people switch from one language to another, what makes them activate one language to communicate as they inhibit another one. More neural connections in the brain are built as the switching takes place.

It does not mean that single-language people did not recovered while bilingual people did. The outcomes varied from complete recovery to lasting dementia in both groups, stated Alladi.

A stoke expert and brain surgeon at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine near Chicago – Dr. Jose Biller called the study “intriguing” and “well designed”. However, more studies are needed to be done in order to prove that bilingualism may actually lessen the cognitive decline related to aging.

Alladi said that fluency in more than one language is common in India, while it tends to be more common in immigrants and better-educated Americans and so bilingualism in Hyderabad may not reflect bilingualism in the USA.

Alladi stated that it is not possible to see cognitive benefit in places where people do not have an extensive need to function in two or more languages.

Bilingualism is not associated with performing better language skills after a stroke. Both bilingual and monolingual patients were equal in experiencing aphasia, a loss of ability to understand and express speech.