Having a demanding job is also useful, Swedish researchers find.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Children who do well academically in school and eventually work in complex jobs involving data and numbers may be protected from dementia later in life, according to new research from Sweden.
In a presentation at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, scientists presented a study involving 7,574 people who were at least 65 years old and followed for 21 years.
Serhiy Dekhtyar, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and his colleagues found that the chance of developing dementia was strongly linked to the subject’s classroom grades from when they were younger.
“Childhood school grades, which we used in our study as a marker of early-life cognitive abilities, are related to dementia risk more than 50 years later in life, which is truly remarkable. We also find that continued intellectual engagement can further postpone dementia incidence,” Dekhtyar said, according to Medscape.
Those with the most protection in the study were people who had good grades during childhood and who ended up in demanding jobs; they lowered their risk of dementia by about 40 percent, reported Time. While having a complex intellectual job lowered risk of dementia by 23 percent, it couldn’t completely negate the effects of not being a good student in school.
Commenting on the findings for Medscape Medical News, Maria Carrillo, chief science officer for the Alzheimer’s Association, stated, “Once an adult, I can’t change my childhood, but what I can do today is try to be as active as possible and keep my mind as sharp as possible. But we should also think about our children and grandchildren. They should be as actively engaged as possible not only in school but in extracurricular activities. That’s really the bottom line. Lifelong experiences actually impact brain development and your risk for dementia.”