Brittany Luce

It is my love language.

I want to hear it.

Okay.

So it's true that I want to be able to talk to my husband's family and their primary language.

But as I get older, I've also started thinking a lot more about my health, gut health, joint health, and especially brain health.

And can I tell you, I wasn't at all surprised that the challenge of learning a new language is good for your brain, but I was surprised that once you get fluent, those benefits stick.

That's Fiorica Marian.

She's a psycholinguist and cognitive scientist who teaches at Northwestern University.

She also wrote a book called The Power of Language.

She spoke to my producer, Liam.

Just so I can feel really good about myself today, what are those benefits?

Well, Viorica says being bilingual or multilingual can help the brain build cognitive reserve.

I had to look this up, but basically that means your brain's agility.

I also found out that the concept of cognitive reserve came out of the 80s when researchers discovered that some people's brains looked like they had advanced Alzheimer's, but the people they studied had no symptoms.

Whoa.

Right.

So the researchers theorized this was because some people have enough cognitive reserve for their brains to kind of build around damage and just keep going as usual.

It really is like being like buff as hell, but on the inside.

I'm just amazed hearing this.

Because I hadn't thought about the brain health part, you know?