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Alzheimer's Progresses Faster in Educated People
Nrbelex writes "Bloomberg news is reporting that 'High levels of education speeds up the progression of Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in next month's issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Mental agility dropped every year among Alzheimer's disease patients with each additional year of education, leading to an additional 0.3 percent deterioration, the researchers from the Columbia University Medical Center in New York found. The speed of thought processes and memory were particularly affected.'"
...educated people have more to forget.
Regardless of education, the disease takes the same amount of time to degrade you to a mindless, insensitive clod with the same lower mental ability?
Braking from 100 km/h to 0 in 5 seconds is a harder deceleration than from 30 km/h to 0 in 5 seconds, for sure.
The findings are bogus: they cite a 0.3% difference between more highly educated Alzheimer's patients and their counterparts. The counterargument is that plenty of people who wound normally go to grad school insead choose to work in industry. This small lifestyle difference for four years in a subject's late twenties should not effect tests given at age 65+. More likely is that some other factor is introduced by lifestyle differences between the two major career paths.
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Africus aut Europaeus?
That's hardly significant. Statistically, you can't really call that a correlation. If you were told that high water intake causes .3% more cancer, you'd laugh. That's the problem with medical studies in the media. A slight increase in disease due to some factor is greeted with all kinds of FUD. Hell, even placebos typically have a 5 to 10% effect on things.
From Bloomberg UK: Previous studies have shown that people with high levels of education are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. The new study shows that the brains of more educated people can tolerate changes for longer periods of time, meaning signs of decreased mental agility typical of Alzheimer's disease appear later. When those signs do appear, the disease progresses faster than it does in less educated patients.
So the results of this one study don't mean much. If all previous research shows the opposite, then either a) this study is flawed and the conclusions inaccurate or b) this study uses new methodology, breaks new ground, and has discovered a new series of conditions for Alzheimer's propogation. The results won't be conclusive until more studies of this same type are produced verifying these results.
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The most worthwhile comment so far on the whole thread.
The previous studies have shown that people with high levels of education are less likely to develop the disease, which was interesting and a bit mystifying.
This study shows that perhaps that's not really what's going on. Perhaps something about education that makes you more resistant to the disease and more able to compensate for the slow decline it induces, but once you do start declining, it happens faster. The two studies together make a lot of sense and point to a mechanism. Either taken alone seems a bit strange.
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Please don't mistake education for intelligence.
This study is really saying that in cases where people have been socially conditioned for a longer period of time are better able to fend off Alzheimer's for longer periods.
Genius is usually associated with strange social behavior or thinking and just a step away from madness. Educated people are predictable and controllable and well...social.
They are just more structured, maybe that structure just helps them hang on a bit longer before they fall. I get the feeling that all the commentators are mistaking "knowing things" with being intelligent.