Can your field of work decide your risk of Alzheimer’s? Researchers now say that people in certain jobs are at reduced risk of death from the memory-debilitating disease.
It turns out that professions requiring constant navigation, such as taxi and ambulance drivers, might be at an advantage as a recent study found these workers have a reduced risk of death from Alzheimer’s disease.
To understand the protective effects of certain jobs on Alzheimer’s, researchers examined nearly 9 million people across 443 professions who died between 2020 and 2022. Of this study group, about 3.88% or 348,000 lives were lost to Alzheimer’s disease. However, the researchers noted that only 1.03% of taxi drivers and an even smaller 0.74% of ambulance drivers died from the disease. The results of the study was published in BMJ.
One possible explanation for this finding is that jobs like driving require real-time spatial thinking and navigation. This may lead to changes in the brain, particularly in areas like the hippocampus, which could help lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
However, the researchers caution that these findings come from an observational study, which means that they cannot interpret a direct cause-and-effect relationship between certain occupations and a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease or neurological changes in the hippocampus.
“We view these findings not as conclusive, but as hypothesis generating. Further research is necessary to definitively conclude whether the spatial cognitive work required for these occupations affect risk of death from Alzheimer’s disease and whether any cognitive activities can be potentially preventive,” the researchers wrote.
Experts, including Prof. Tara Spires-Jones, Director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and President of the British Neuroscience Association, believe this study adds to the growing evidence that building brain resilience could help reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. However, she cautions that it’s not possible to definitively conclude from this type of data that these occupations protect against Alzheimer’s.
“It is possible that people who are at higher risk of Alzheimer’s may not choose memory intensive driving occupations, which is a so-called “selection bias”,” she said. Also, the average age at death for taxi and ambulance drivers was 64-67 years, compared to 74 years for other occupations. Since Alzheimer’s typically develops after age 65, it’s possible that these drivers might have developed the disease had they lived longer, she added.
