HMN 2025: How Speaking more than one language may help the brain stay younger

Speaking more than one language can slow down the brain’s aging and lower risks linked to accelerated aging.

In a new study, researchers analyzed the Biobehavioral Age Gap (BAG) —a person’s biological age using health and lifestyle data, then compared it to their actual age—of over 80,000 participants aged 51–90 across 27 European countries. They found that people who speak only one language are twice as likely to experience accelerated aging compared to multilingual individuals.

Researchers suggest that the protective effect might arise from the constant ongoing mental effort required to manage more than one language. The findings of this study are published in Nature Aging.

Understanding the aging population

The global population is aging faster than before, as people are living longer thanks to better health care systems. WHO estimates that by 2030, one in six people will be aged 60 or older.

With an aging population comes the rise of disorders like cognitive decline and dementia. A better understanding of what causes them and what might help in preventing them has become crucial now more than ever.

Studies have found that age-related issues cannot be solely pinned on biology because several lifestyle factors also play a role in influencing how fast or slow aging happens. The ability to speak multiple languages emerged as a factor that has a positive impact on brain health. There have been reports suggesting being multilingual helped protect against faster aging.

However, many of these studies were conducted in clinical populations who were already showing signs of cognitive decline, such as people with Alzheimer’s disease or mild cognitive impairment. This means we lack enough long-term data from healthy individuals across large populations, which greatly limits how widely these findings can be applied.

To fill in these gaps, the researchers of this study used a new and reliable computational tool, BAGs, to measure faster or slower aging in a large group of 86,149 healthy adults from across Europe.

This model combines positive factors (like good thinking skills, education, and exercise) and negative factors (like heart problems, being female, and sensory issues) to estimate a person’s biological age and compares it to their chronological age. A greater than zero or positive BAG means a person is aging faster and their biobehavioral profile appears older than your actual age. A negative score means that the person is exhibiting delayed aging, which is actually a good thing despite the number being negative.

Brain gets a hearty workout

The study found that people who speak only one language or monolinguals were more likely to age faster than people who speak multiple languages.

In a cross-sectional studies where researchers evaluated BAGs of all participants at once, they found that multilingual people were two times less likely to show signs of faster aging. From a long-term perspective—people were followed over time—the study also showed that monolinguals were 1.4 times more likely to develop accelerated aging.

The team found that the protective effect was dose depending, meaning the more languages someone spoke, the stronger the protection against aging. They attributed this to the fact that even when someone is not using all the languages, they remain active in their brain. Each additional language increases the demand for attention, executive function, and memory, which builds up cognitive resilience over time.

The researchers hope these findings encourage policymakers to view multilingual learning not just as a communication skill, but as a tool for keeping the brain nimble and healthy.

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