Playing the piano, especially in your senior years, can be good for your health. This isn’t a joke. There are definitely health benefits.
Before I get started, I just want to declare that I have no medical training whatsoever and I certainly can’t make any guarantees, but what I’m discussing could be considered as logical conclusions to well established scientific understanding.
First of all, if playing the piano in your retirement and beyond, is something that you really want to do, then obviously it is an enjoyable activity. I’ve witnessed retirees and older people really take a lot of enjoyment from playing the piano. The best emotion I can use to describe what I’ve seen is not happiness, but joy. This has to be good for mental health and considering that we are living through a pandemic where all of us have had our movements curtailed – adding happiness and joy to our lives in the midst of it all, has to be helpful with regards to maintaining good mental health.
As playing the piano involves a lot of processes in the brain such as; concentration, reading and interpreting another language (musical notation), hand – eye coordination, being able to co-ordinate both your hands in a very precise way and memory, then playing could be considered a good brain workout. Due to the fact that you need to be able to use both hands equally well, you are using both hemispheres of the brain at the same time. In children it is believed that learning the piano is excellent for developing a really thick corpus callosum (the connecting nerve tissue between the left and right hemispheres).
I don’t know if there have been studies specifically done on an adults learning the piano and how it positively affects the brain, but my theory would be that at the very least, it would surely assist in preventing loss of brain functionality in general. A quick google search suggests that there have been some scientific studies done that shows learning or playing a musical instrument could help delay the onset of alzheimer’s disease or dementia.
Arthritis can be a big issue for adults (unfortunately even some kids) and this might seem like it would preclude some adults for learning the piano. Even though arthritis is a painful condition, even debilitating at times, exercise of the affected body part is generally encouraged, so even if you had arthritis in your hands, you could take the view that playing the piano would be hand exercise (although checking with your doctor first would be a good idea).
If you did have arthritis in your hands and wanted to play the piano, or take it up again, I would also encourage you to find an experienced piano teacher because they could help you modify what you played or how you played it, so your arthritis pain isn’t exacerbated. Because playing the piano builds very strong finger muscles, maybe the pain level could even diminish over time.
I really believe that playing the piano, at any age is a good idea for many reasons, including maintaining good health.