Should You Try Those Viral Hand Exercises for Dementia?

A viral trend sweeping social media suggests that moving your hands through a series of complex, opposing movements will help prevent dementia and cognitive decline. But experts say there are better ways to protect your brain health.

The hand exercises take you through alternating gestures: clapping your palms, then hitting the backs of your hands together; tapping your fingertips in sequence; pointing with your thumb and first finger on separate hands while switching, and more. The moves vary in complexity and can be tricky to do, especially on the first try.

Suzi Schulman, a New Jersey–based chiropractor who posted a video demonstrating one of these exercises, says coordinating movements between hands helps cognition. “If you stimulate areas of the brain you don’t normally stimulate, there’s going to be improvement,” she says. She’s also a fan of hobbies that require coordination, like knitting and crocheting. 

It makes sense that if you’re learning something new that’s hard to master, you’re probably building new connections in your brain, improving neuroplasticity. But you’ll probably learn these hand combos pretty quickly, and then the benefits will disappear.

“Once you figure it out, it’s no longer exercise,” says Dr. Charles DeCarli, codirector of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at University of California, Davis. 

Better ways to reduce dementia risk

Dr. Edward Huey, director of the memory and aging program at Butler Hospital and a professor at Brown University, recommends more challenging mental exercises, like studying a new language, taking a class, playing an instrument or other hard-to-tackle tasks.

“Hand exercises aren’t going to hurt,” Huey says. But he doesn’t want people to do hand exercises instead of other activities that have stronger evidence of effectiveness.

A literature review of studies mostly conducted among older adults in China suggests that hand exercises may be associated with better cognitive function, mainly in people diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. But the review, published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity — Integrative in 2023, noted that while there were improvements to patients’ mental capacity, the studies were mostly small and the intervention varied greatly. The review’s authors called for more rigorous studies.

“While there are no easy hacks to prevent dementia, there’s increasing evidence that people who engage in a variety of cognitive as well as physical activities [see the six pillars of brain health] are more likely to slow down cognitive decline over time,” says Dr. Joe Verghese, professor and chair of neurology at Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.