Luminosity, the famous “brain game” company, has made a name for itself by claiming to sharpen your mind with online activities. The company has even claimed that a daily dose of those games could help you avoid Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
But can they really back up those claims? Apparently not.
The FTC recently took aggressive action against Luminosity for what it insists is false advertising. That battle came to a head this month, when Luminosity finally agreed to shell out $2 million in FTC fines and to immediately end all dementia-related advertising.
Specifically, the FTC-Luminosity settlement prohibits claims relating to athletic or academic performance, age-related cognitive decline, age-related memory loss, mild cognitive impairment, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, ADHD, PTSD, Turner syndrome, traumatic brain injury (TBI), stroke, and chemotherapy. You can access the full settlement in PDF on the FTC’s website.
To be fair, Luminosity wasn’t totally out of step with science. As we’ve reported here on our own website, new research has shown a strong link between daily mental exercise and diminished rates of dementia. But the link between Luminosity’s games and dementia was apparently too tenuous to pass FTC muster.
The truth is that we still know relatively little about how to prevent dementia. New research rolls out every month, but a cure is still a long way off — and may never come.
For now, experts’ focus remains on advance long-term care planning so that families can affordably care for dementia patients, should the disease ever strike them without warning. Those are the kinds of preparations our office aids in every day. If you’d like to talk about protecting your own family, we invite you to give us a call. It might be a better use of your time than another hour on Luminosity!
