Creativity Can Be a 'Fountain of Youth' for Your Brain
Dr. Joseph Mercola - Take Control of Your Health
Briana Mercola
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
- Engaging in creative activities like music, dance, art, or gaming helps your brain stay up to seven years biologically younger than your actual age
- Even short periods of creative learning, such as 30 hours of focused practice, improve brain function and reduce biological brain age by about three years
- Creativity strengthens communication between brain regions responsible for attention, coordination, and problem-solving, helping maintain clarity and focus as you age
- You don't need to be an artist to benefit — everyday creative choices like journaling, cooking intuitively, or designing your space keep your brain flexible and resilient
- Regular creative engagement supports better mood, stronger memory, and faster thinking, offering one of the simplest and most enjoyable ways to preserve long-term brain health
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When was the last time you tried something new and felt your mind truly wake up? |
| 0:04.3 | Was it a dance step, a song, a sketch, or even a strategy game that pushed you to think faster and focus harder? |
| 0:12.2 | Welcome to Dr. Mercola's cellular wisdom. |
| 0:15.0 | Stay informed with quick, easy-to-listen summaries of our latest articles, perfect for when you're on the go. |
| 0:20.4 | No reading required. Subscribe for free atmer Mercola.com for the latest health insights. |
| 0:25.8 | Hello and welcome to Dr. Mercola's cellular wisdom. I'm Ethan Foster. |
| 0:30.5 | And today we're looking at how regular creative activity can keep your brain |
| 0:34.7 | biologically younger than your calendar age, sharpen your thinking, |
| 0:38.9 | and maintain the networks you rely on for attention, coordination, and problem solving. |
| 0:44.0 | I'm Alara Sky, and we'll walk you through what recent research shows about creativity's |
| 0:49.1 | impact on brain function, including how long-term practice and even short-term learning can reduce your brain's |
| 0:56.0 | predicted age by years. You'll also hear how to turn everyday choices into a routine that supports |
| 1:01.5 | focus, memory, and mood. The research examined creative experts, tango dancers, musicians, |
| 1:08.7 | visual artists, and real-time strategy gamers, against non-experts |
| 1:12.9 | matched for age, education, and other factors. |
| 1:16.8 | Using brain imaging and machine learning, brain clocks. |
| 1:20.4 | The investigators estimated biological brain age and compared it with chronological age to |
| 1:25.5 | calculate a brain age gap. A negative brain age gap meant a younger-looking brain. |
| 1:31.3 | Across the creative groups, the gap was consistently negative. |
| 1:35.3 | Tango dancers showed the largest effect, with brains appearing about 7.1 years younger. |
| 1:41.3 | Visual artists averaged about 6.2 years younger, musicians around 5.4 years |
| 1:47.0 | younger, and strategy gamers about 4.1 years younger. The signal was robust across creative |
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