Investigation of the effect of green walking and intelligence games on the cognitive skills of individuals between the ages of 50–70 survived COVID-19 disease: A randomized controlled study

Background: Mild cognitive impairment can be considered as the preclinical stage of Alzheimer's disease. With the addition of COVID-19 disease to the cognitive decline that occurs with aging, it may cause dementia with severe cognitive losses such as Alzheimer's disease in some people. Physical activity and brain-occupying practices can significantly improve the risk factors for cognitive disorders and Alzheimer's disease. Objective: The aim of study was to examine the effect of green walking and intelligence game on the cognitive skills of individuals aged 50–70 years with COVID-19. Methods: The randomized controlled study was completed with 40 individuals, 20 in the experimental and 20 in the control group. Individuals in the experimental group green walking for 30 min three days a week for one month in two groups of 10 people, accompanied by the researcher. In addition, these individuals played intelligence games (brain games-memory thinking and brain exercise) via their smartphones for 15 min every day for a month. Results: The cognitive skills and cognitive dimensions of “attention, concentration, memory, language and orientation” of the individuals in the experimental group were significantly increased compared to the control group individuals (p < 0.05). Conclusions: It was found that green walk and intelligence game practice increased the cognitive skills of individuals aged 50–70 years who had outpatient COVID-19. © The Author(s) 2024. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).