Scientists search for the connection between intelligence and health

They don't bother to tell you the alcohol angle because it goes against all medical superstition.

What about this?

Smarter People Tend To Drink More Alcohol

Here is what your doctor will use, no thinking required:

Safest level of alcohol consumption is none, worldwide study shows

The latest here:

Scientists search for the connection between intelligence and health

by Laura Staloch

December 12, 2022

in Cognitive Science

Researchers at the University of Vienna, Austria, analyzed a 13-year longitudinal study to determine why those with a high IQ are consistently found to be in good health. After analyzing the cognitive, physical, environmental, and behavioral data collected from approximately 10,000 participants, there is no clear behavioral or environmental reasons for the correlation. Instead, the results indicate that a third factor may be at work influencing both intelligence and health.

The study was published in the journal Intelligence.

Research consistently finds a positive correlation between health and intelligence. The higher the IQ, the better the health, but the mechanisms responsible for this relationship have yet to be discovered. Proposed causes include better access to health care, better health choices, access to safe work environments, stress management, and genetics. Unfortunately, these have yet to prove to be the key to why these two factors are related.

For their new research, Jonathan Fries and Jakob Pietschnig looked to a previously completed 13-year study to shed additional light on the issue. The data was collected through the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The SHARE study used participants from the European Union and Israel who were over the age of 50.

The original intent of the SHARE study was to collect information on the health and well-being of individuals approaching retirement age. This study gathered a significant amount of information about the physical and mental health of the participants. Data was collected in seven waves from 2004 to 2017. Although there were over 30,000 participants in wave one, the number dwindled to 10,996 by wave 7 in 2017.

Relevant cognitive, health, behavioral, and risk factors were extracted from the data provided by the final 10,996 participants. Statistical analysis revealed several notable findings. The first supported the hypothesis that the higher one’s IQ, the better their health. For those with high scores on cognitive measures, rates of chronic illness and symptoms decreased.

Factors like smoking, alcohol intake, BMI, and work environment, which one would expect may be causal factors in better health, were found to be unrelated. Physical inactivity was the only variable that was connected to both IQ and health. These findings were consistent across countries and cultures.

Fries and Pietschnig had this to say about their findings: “These results suggest that the intelligence-health association cannot be sufficiently explained by environmental and behavioral risk factors. Thus a different mechanism is required to understand the relationship.” Some propose genetics as that mechanism. If this is the case, Fries and Pietschnig encourage future research to consider that the same genes may affect health and IQ.

Limitations of the study include the age of participants. Intelligence was measured after 50; earlier measures of intelligence may have some relevance to health after 50. Additionally, two-thirds of the original participants had dropped out of the study. This could have been due to death or illness, leaving the health data skewed toward the abnormally healthy.

Despite the limitations, the study was large and conducted over a number of years. The data collected is an essential contribution to the study of intelligence and health.

The study, “An intelligent mind in a healthy body? Predicting health by cognitive ability in a large European sample“, was authored by Jonathan Fries and Jakob Pietschnig.

You may be seriously wrong about how long you'll live

The main problem using this estimator is, do I classify my health as poor, average or excellent?
Poor because I've had a stroke and have mild CAD,
Average because I've lived 10 years past the stroke.
Excellent because there is nothing I won't do and walking 13 miles in a day doesn't faze me.

Dean1 health is poor dean2 health is average

dean3 health is excellent

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/you-may-be-seriously-wrong-about-how-long-youll-live/

By Steve Vernon MoneyWatch May 20, 2016, 5:00 AM

How long do you think you'll live? Tough question for sure, but it's a critical piece of your retirement planning that helps let the implications of aging sink in regarding your finances and lifestyle. If you're like many people, however, you suffer from two common misunderstandings about your longevity. Fortunately, a new tool developed by the Society of Actuaries (SOA) and American Academy of Actuaries (AAA) helps clear up the confusion.
First, the misunderstandings:
You focus on average life expectancies as reported in the media.
You might hear that the average American lives until their late 70s, but that's the wrong number for aging baby boomers to focus on. That's the average life expectancy at birth, which factors in everybody who dies in childhood and early to mid-adulthood. But if you've lived to your 50s or 60s, you're in a more select group of people who've been healthy enough -- or lucky enough -- to make it that far.
Many people make this common mistake of confusing life expectancies at birth with remaining life expectancies at their current age, such as 65. Instead, you'll want to focus on the remaining number of years you can expect to live, given your current age. Such a calculation will usually show you might live until your 80s or 90s.
You think your life expectancy is your destiny.
If you're in your 50s or 60s and use one of the available calculators to determine your life expectancy, you might find that you have another 20 or 30 years on average to live -- or more. But it's important to understand that your estimated life expectancy isn't your destiny.
A life expectancy is just an average period of time you might expect to live based on assumptions about mortality rates. It's entirely possible that you could live well beyond your calculated life expectancy -- or fall well short. Using statistical terms, the "standard deviation" around calculated life expectancies is quite large.
Clearing up the confusion
To counter these common misunderstandings, the SOA and AAA recently released the online Actuaries Longevity Illustrator, which estimates the possible range of lifespans for individuals or couples, based on four inputs:

• Age
• Gender
• Whether you smoke
• Self-reported health as poor, average or excellent

Research shows these four factors are reasonable predictors of your longevity. For instance, suppose you're a 65-year-old woman who doesn't smoke and self-reports average health. According to the Longevity Illustrator, you have a 50/50 chance of living at least another 23 years, to age 88. But you also have a 25 percent chance of living at least another 29 years, to 94. Those one-out-of-four odds are the same as drawing a diamond out of a deck of cards.
On the other hand, the odds are also one in four that you'll pass away before 81, living 16 years or less. The range between these two possible one-in-four lifespans is 13 years, illustrating the uncertainty surrounding how long you might live.
Given these same factors, you'd also have a 10 percent chance of living at least another 34 years to 99, and a similar 10 percent chance of passing away by 74, living only another nine years or less.
Now suppose you're a 65-year-old man who doesn't smoke and self-reports average health. The Longevity Illustrator shows that you have a 50/50 chance of living at least another 20 years to 85. The remaining lifespans with one-in-four odds range from passing away by 78 (only 13 more years) to living at least until 92, another 27 years. This results in a "25 percent uncertainty spread" of 14 years.
The SOA Longevity Illustrator also allows a couple to see how long their money might need to last -- which should be as long as one of them is still alive. So if our 65-year-old man and woman were married, the one-in-four remaining lifetimes for them range from 22 to 32 years. And there's a 50/50 chance at least one of them will be alive in 27 years, surviving to 92.
It's just one of life's realities that you could live for a long time -- or not very long at all. It's simply not possible to know for sure. Nevertheless, it's a good idea to learn about your potential longevity because it gives you a better idea of how long your money might need to last.
It's also a good idea to develop reliable sources of retirement income that can last the rest of your life, no matter how long you live. Such sources include Social Security, a pension if you have one, a payout annuity from an insurance company and living on just interest and dividends from invested assets. With these sources, you'll want to build a diversified portfolio of retirement income.
Given the uncertainty regarding how long you could live, you'll want to plan your finances -- and your life -- to enjoy today while also being prepared to live a long time.