United States – The new research paper says exercising your mind to challenge yourself throughout life can help your brain grow older more bearably.
Importance of Mental Challenges in Aging
Researchers reported on April 17th in Neurology Journal that the more your brain tells it, the less likely you are to have problems with memory and thinking ahead in life, as reported by HealthDay.
“We examined the demands of various jobs and found that cognitive stimulation at work during different stages in life — during your 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s — was linked to a reduced risk of acute cognitive impairment after the age of 70,” said researcher Dr. Trine Holt Edwin, of Oslo University Hospital in Norway.
Study Findings and Methodology
This study was based on the analysis of information collected from people in 7,000 jobs in 305 industries in Norway.
Researchers rated the jobs according to how stressful the work was, based on difficulty, body, and brain levels involved.
Implications for Cognitive Health
They divided the participants into four groups, considering the type of their jobs and whether the occupation required more manual or cognitive skills.
The rank of teaching turned up as the most demanding profession for an individual’s brain, while mail carriers and janitors obtained the least demanding positions for a brain.
After age 70, people finished memory and thinking tests to evaluate how well their brains were aging.
42% of the employees with very little brain activity were found to have developed natural dementia, which is always the first step for Alzheimer’s disease.
While only 27% of those were found to already have developed mild cognitive impairment, intellectually demanding jobs were shown to be responsible for this.
A group whose job category demanded minimum thinking skills had a 66% 2higher risk of mild cognitive impairment than the group carrying out brain-intensive work.
Promoting Brain Health Through Lifelong Learning
“These results indicate that both education and doing work that challenges your brain during your career play an important part in lowering the risk of cognitive impairment later in life,” Edwin said in a journal news release, as reported by HealthDay.
“Further research is required to pinpoint the specific cognitively challenging occupational tasks that are most beneficial for maintaining thinking and memory skills,” Edwin added.