10-second finger test you can do anywhere can reveal your risk of dementia

A simple finger exercise has been claimed to support cognitive function and assess your risk of developing dementia.

More than 944,000 people in the UK are thought to have dementia, including one in 11 people over the age of 65.

According to the NHS, memory loss isn’t the only symptom of dementia, as patients report problems with thinking speed, mental sharpness, language, such as using words incorrectly, as well as movement and difficulties doing daily activities.

Now, some wellness influencers online have been promoting the ‘pinky test’ exercise, saying that it can help protect against Alzheimer’s disease.

It involves holding your hands in front of you, crossing your middle fingers over your index fingers, touching your ring fingers to your thumbs, and then moving your little fingers up and down for several seconds.

Like this:

TikToker Ana Lučić (@glucose.speaks) suggests that if you have difficulty moving your pinky fingers when doing the exercise, it may be linked to declining fine motor skills.

“If your pinky finger can move easily, it's 'a sign your brain is in great shape,” she says, because 'loss of fine motor control often mirrors cognitive decline'.

“Pinky time requires that you move your fingers in complex ways on both hands at the same time,” added Dr Michelle DiBlasi, chief of inpatient psychiatry at Tufts Medical center in Boston, to Good Housekeeping.

“When you do this, you’re helping both sides of your brain to communicate with one another, which deepens the connection between the left and right sides of your brain.”

While there is no scientific evidence that the exercise can diagnose or prevent dementia, experts say it is based on a real connection between hand movements and brain activity.

“'We don’t have enough evidence to show that pinky time has the strength to prevent Alzheimer's,” DiBlasi said.

“However, I do think that this trend is important. Pinky time reminds people that there are ways we can help to prevent Alzheimer's and cognitive decline.”

“The hands occupy a disproportionately large amount of the brain's motor and sensory cortex,” Dr Shaheen Lakhan, a neurologist and pain medicine specialist in Miami, explained to HuffPost.

“Activities that require dexterity, coordination, timing and learning can engage multiple brain networks simultaneously.”

Risk factors linked to dementia

Isabelle Glans, doctoral student at Lund University, said that the 'most modifiable risk factors' from a new study from the Lund University were 'smoking, cardiovascular disease, high blood lipids and high blood pressure'.

The risk factors 'were linked to damage to the brain's blood vessels and a faster accumulation of so-called white matter changes'.

"This damage impairs the function of the blood vessels and leads to vascular brain damage – and can ultimately lead to vascular dementia," Glans said.

"Diabetes was associated with increased accumulation of amyloid β, while people with lower BMI had faster accumulation of tau."

The study concluded that living healthily and changing the risk factors that can be changed may help to delay the onset of symptoms in Alzheimer's disease.