Recently we have been saying that bingo may be good for your health. We are a bit biased about bingo, so it is good to have a third party view on the subject, and who better than Princeton University who have claimed that the pastime may have a positive effect on Alzheimer’s sufferers.
The Neurological Department released a paper entitled “Bingo vs. physical intervention in stimulating short-term cognition in Alzheimer’s disease patients” which notes the particular activities associated with playing bingo that may help sufferers.
The factors mentioned included hand to eye coordination, sharpened reflexes and thought, which are obviously not exclusive to bingo, but as anyone who plays bingo knows, it is not something you can do half asleep. Playing the game is a bit of a mental workout, which is exactly what is required. Whilst research methodology is always problematic, it is unlikely that a prestigious institute such as Princeton would release findings with positive assertions unless they believed them to be ‘true’ to some extent.
The downside to bingo since the smoking ban is pretty much restricted to issues of addiction, as although bingo can be termed ‘soft gaming’, it is gaming nevertheless, and the potential for addiction is there, although more so for online players than visitors to their local bingo hall which is more of a social engagement than hard gambling.
Again, this is not exclusive to bingo as addictive patterns of behaviour are visible in many areas of life, it is just a question of what the effect on the individual is. Definitions of addiction also vary, but whichever definition you go with, bingo is probably near the bottom of the list when it comes to harmful pastimes and excessive behaviour.
In short, the positive effects of playing bingo in our opinion definitely outweigh any potential negatives, so head on over to our Club Finder pages for a bingo hall near you.
