Do you Google answers to a lot of questions? You may be risking dementia

LONDON: Using Google frequently to search for information, rather than using our brains, may increase the risk of dementia, a UK researcher has warned.

The researcher has described the practice as an "experiment" we are conducting on ourselves.

"It's important to promote good brain health and to do that is to use it, but these days we seem to outsource our brain to the internet," said Frank Gunn-Moore, from the University of St Andrews in the UK.

"If we want to know something, we look it up online rather than trying to recall the information from our memory," Gunn-Moore was quoted as saying to The Sunday Post.

"It's an experiment the human race is running and we will have to wait and see if this outsourcing affects dementia prevalence," he said.

Gun-Moore will be speaking at the annual Alzheimer Scotland Christmas event in Edinburgh on December 14.

"There are several factors that could result in Alzheimer's - environment, stress on the brain, genetics," he said.

In 2015, the number of people with dementia reached almost 45 million, two times more than in 1990, according to a rough estimate.