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Researchers Find 70-Year-Olds Are Getting Smarter
Pickens writes "AlphaGalileo reports that researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden have found in a forty-year study of 2,000 seniors that today's 70-year-olds do far better in intelligence tests than their predecessors, making it more difficult to detect dementia in its early stages. 'Using the test results, we've tried to identify people who are at risk of developing dementia,' says Dr. Simona Sacuiu. 'While this worked well for the group of 70-year-olds born in 1901-02, the same tests didn't offer any clues about who will develop dementia in the later generation of 70-year-olds born in 1930.' The 70-year-olds born in 1930 and examined in 2000 performed better in the intelligence tests than their predecessors born in 1901-02 and examined in 1971. 'The improvement can partly be explained by better pre- and neonatal care, better nutrition, higher quality of education, better treatment of high blood pressure and other vascular diseases, and not least the higher intellectual requirements of today's society, where access to advanced technology, television and the Internet has become part of everyday life,' says Sacuiu."
and get off my alopecurus pratensis!
Table-ized A.I.
...researchers from the Universiy of Gothenburg, Sweden have found in a forty year study of 2,000 seniors that today's 70-year-olds do far better in intelligence tests than their predecessors making it more difficult to detect dementia in its early stages.
Dammit, seniors! Get dumber so we can detect your dementia!
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Your logic is flawed.
Concern for caregivers/families != lack of concern for the patients.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If you are locked up in a room, detached from communication with the outside world and people look at you as a piece of furniture, you expire faster.
Besides, same is true of all animals, not only 70 year old homo sapiens. Me and my neighbour got our dogs from the same litter almost 19 years ago.
He left his dog more or less on its own. It was a happy and long living pup, but died demented at an age of 15 and a half.
My dog (blame the SO as much as me) has had extensive health care -- supplements, regular checkups, and uses a DIY robo-wheel-chair for walks now, because the hind legs cannot support the weight anymore. It is still alive (almost 19 years old) and alert, although completely deaf and almost blind from the cataract.
So, yeah, medical care, attention and stimulation work.
What else is new?
"todays 70-year-olds are smarter.... because most of them can't afford to retire."
It's in Sweden, their geezers _can_ retire, no problem.
"it's well documented that staying active in the workforce is good for the brain"
And this has to do with Sweden exactly, what?
Sweden, you know, is one of those old European countries USA people would tell as communist as old Soviet Union if some from its life style would be tried in America. Swedish oldies have no problem to retire and they do on average at 61 with all Swedish residents entitled to a state-financed guaranteed minimum pension from the age of 65, which is the standard retirement age over there.
"todays 70-year-olds are smarter.... because most of them can't afford to retire."
Again, USA is not the all and everything of the world.
Meanwhile in the United States, the popularity of the "Snuggie" suggests that dementia may be setting in as early as age 30.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?