Intellectual Pursuits Important in Warding Off Dementia

iStock/Thinkstock(ROCHESTER, Minn.) — If your life has been filled with intellectual pursuits, congratulations. It turns out you may avoid a lot of grief during those coveted golden years.

Dr. Prashanthi Vermuri at the Mayo Clinic says people with at least a college education and working at jobs that demand a lot of brain power are better able to ward off dementia than those who didn’t go to college or held down less demanding jobs.

Vermuri based her findings on a study of nearly 2,000 Minnesota elderly residents, more than quarter of whom had the APOE4 gene variant, which is found in people with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

After asking a battery of questions about their backgrounds and having them taking tests to measure cognitive skills, the Mayo Clinic team concluded that “higher levels of educational, occupational, and cognitive activity are independently associated with a lower risk of dementia.”

Just as importantly, even those with the APOE4 gene variant delayed the onset of Alzheimer’s by eight-and-a-half years when they were among those in the top quarter of well-educated and intellectually challenged participants compared to the group in the lowest 25th percentile.

Yet, it’s not too late to change when people hit their midlife years from 50 to 65 if their education backgrounds were limited. Vermuri says that boosting cognitive skills at that late stage can help to delay the onset of dementia.

Copyright 2014 ABC News Radio

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