A new study suggests that taxi and ambulance drivers have a significantly lower risk of dying from Alzheimer's disease compared to over 400 other occupations. The research points to the mental exercise of route planning as a key factor in reducing Alzheimer's risk.
Research shows that taxi drivers and ambulance drivers have a significantly lower risk of dying from Alzheimer's disease compared to over 400 other occupations. This trend was not observed in other transportation jobs that don't require map navigation, such as pilots or ship captains. This led researchers to believe that the mental exercise of planning routes is crucial in reducing Alzheimer's risk.
They theorize that the hippocampus, responsible for memory, also plays a role in sense of direction and navigation. Previous studies have shown that taxi and ambulance drivers develop particularly well-functioning hippocampi, even as they age. Dr. Anupam Jena, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and the study author, suggests that understanding how occupations may affect Alzheimer's risk and exploring potentially preventive cognitive activities is important. About 7 million Americans currently live with Alzheimer's, and the Alzheimer's Association projects this number to rise to 13 million in the coming decades. Ambulance drivers, who constantly navigate new routes to hospitals, exercise their hippocampus, which is responsible for spatial reasoning, memory, and sense of direction. The study, published in the British Medical Journal, analyzed data from the National Vital Statistics System on over 8.9 million deaths between 2020 and 2022, with approximately 348,328 attributed to Alzheimer's
Alzheimer's Dementia Cognitive Health Hippocampus Occupations
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