Taxi and ambulance drivers less likely to die from Alzheimer’s
Taxi and ambulance drivers are less likely to die of Alzheimer’s disease than other workers, a study has found, raising the possibility that navigational skills lead to better brain health.
The researchers looked at the causes of death of millions of American adults and how they spent their working lives.
Of more than 400 professions analysed, cabbies and ambulance drivers were the least likely to fall victim to Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia.
The people included in the study started their working lives long before smartphones and GPS became commonplace. “Our findings raise the possibility that frequent navigational and spatial processing tasks, as performed by taxi and ambulance drivers, might be associated with some protection against Alzheimer’s disease,” the researchers, who were led by Professor Vishal Patel of Harvard Medical School, wrote in a study published in the BMJ.
However, cabbies tended to die earlier than the average worker; a life largely spent sitting in a car may be unhealthy in other ways.
More than 75,000 Britons died of dementia last year, making it the leading cause of death, according to Alzheimer’s Research UK. With a cure yet to be found, many experts emphasise the importance of lifestyle habits that may help to guard against it.
Patel and his colleagues were inspired by a study that found training to be a London cabbie changed the shape of the brain. As apprentice taxi drivers memorise the capital’s streets, a brain region called the hippocampus, which plays an important role in spatial memory and navigation, becomes larger.
Learning the Knowledge is known to expand the hippocampus
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The hippocampus is also one of the first brain regions to atrophy, or shrink, in Alzheimer’s. It makes intuitive sense, then, that boosting its volume might help fend off the disease.
The researchers analysed death certificates of nearly nine million US adults who had worked in 443 different occupations and died between 2020 and 2022.
After adjusting for age at death and other factors, taxi and ambulance drivers were found to have the lowest proportion of deaths from Alzheimer’s disease of all the occupations represented, at 1 per cent and 0.9 per cent respectively, compared with 1.7 per cent for the general population.
The trend was not seen in bus drivers or aircraft pilots, possibly because they tend to travel the same predetermined routes.
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This kind of study cannot prove that working as a taxi driver causes better brain health. It is possible that people at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s are less likely to do jobs that demand a very sharp memory.
“We view these findings not as conclusive but as hypothesis-generating,” the researchers said. “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.”
According to Dr Richard Oakley, of the Alzheimer’s Society, researchers believe that nearly half of dementia cases could be delayed or prevented. “Some risk factors cannot be reduced or avoided, but many others can,” he said. “These include excessive alcohol consumption, lack of physical activity, smoking and limited social contact among others. We can all take steps to reduce our risk.”
Other experts said that the study was intriguing but needed to be read carefully. Professor Tara Spires-Jones of the University of Edinburgh, group leader in the UK Dementia Research Institute, who was not involved in the research, said: “This is a large study that adds to knowledge around building brain resilience to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”
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However, she also noted that the average age at death of ambulance and taxi drivers in the study was 64 and 68, respectively, while for all other occupations it was 74. “This is a serious limitation of the study as the age of onset of Alzheimer’s is typically after 65 years old, meaning that the taxi and ambulance drivers might have gone on to develop Alzheimer’s if they lived longer.”
Similarly, the proportion of female taxi and ambulance drivers was 10 per cent and 22 per cent, whereas in all other occupations it was 48 per cent. “This is important because women are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than men. Authors used statistics to try and take into account these limitations, but they do limit the interpretation of the study.”
However, she added: “Even with these limitations, the data in the study are interesting and highlight the need for more fundamental research into how to protect our brains from Alzheimer’s disease.”
How to keep your brain sharp
Map-reading and exercise may both help to preserve cognitive function
COLIN HAWKINS/GETTY IMAGES
Take up orienteering. Orienteering involves walking or running around a course, using a map and compass to reach control points along the way. It combines two activities that may lessen Alzheimer’s risk: physical exercise and using your brain to navigate unfamiliar terrain. Researchers at McMaster University in Canada published a small study last year that found orienteering boosted a brain chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which is linked with the creation of new brain cell connections.
Ditch the GPS. Another small study, published in the Journal Scientific Reports in 2020, found that people who used GPS more frequently had steeper declines in spatial memory over time. In other words, their internal navigational systems degraded more quickly. “Importantly, we found that those who used GPS more did not do so because they felt they had a poor sense of direction, suggesting that extensive GPS use led to a decline in spatial memory rather than the other way around,” the researchers wrote.
Walk, don’t drive. Taxi drivers may have less risk of dying from Alzheimer’s. But overall, the BMJ study suggests that they’re not the healthiest role models. On average, they died relatively early, at the age of 68, and having a job that mostly involved sitting down probably won’t have helped (though bus drivers lived to 74, on average, and pilots to 78). The adage you’ll hear most often from dementia experts is that what’s good for your heart is good for your head. So if you really want to boost your brain health, start by boosting your cardiovascular fitness — and go by foot rather than catching a cab.
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