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.

7 Everyday Ways You Are Lowering Your Intelligence

Is your doctor making sure you aren't doing these and thus handicapping your recovery? What is your doctor doing to increase your cognition?  ANYTHING AT ALL?
7 Everyday Ways You Are Lowering Your Intelligence 

How feeling like an expert, googling it and more could be lowering your intelligence.

1. Saturated fat reduces cognitive flexibility

But have these been considered?

Carbs more harmful than saturated fats: study

For decades, the government steered millions away from whole milk. Was that wrong?

Trans fats, not saturated fats, linked to increased mortality, CHD risks

FENS Satellite Symposium reveals beneficial health effects of regular fat dairy foods

No Evidence to Support Dietary Fat Recommendations, Meta-Analysis Finds

Dietary Saturated Fat Has Undeserved Bad Reputation, Says Review

A high-fat, high-sugar diet causes significant damage to cognitive flexibility, a new study finds. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adjust and adapt to changing situations. The research was carried out on laboratory mice. They were given either a normal diet, a high-fat diet or a high-sugar diet. After four weeks the mental and physical performance of mice on the high-fat or high-sugar diet began to suffer.

2. Multimedia multitasking shrinks the brain

Using laptops, phones and other media devices at the same time could shrink important structures in the brain, a new study indicates.
For the first time, neuroscientists have found that people who use multiple devices simultaneously have lower gray-matter density in an area of the brain associated with cognitive and emotional control. Multitasking might include listening to music while playing a video game or watching TV while making a phone call or even reading the newspaper with the TV on.

3. Googling it makes you feel cleverer than you are

Searching the internet makes people feel they know more than they really do, a new study finds.
And it doesn’t seem to matter much that people don’t actually find the information for which they were searching.
Matthew Fisher, who led the research, said:

“The Internet is such a powerful environment, where you can enter any question, and you basically have access to the world’s knowledge at your fingertips. It becomes easier to confuse your own knowledge with this external source. When people are truly on their own, they may be wildly inaccurate about how much they know and how dependent they are on the Internet.”

4. Too much sugar damages memory

Otherwise healthy people with high blood sugar levels are more likely to have memory problems, according to a recent study published in the journal Neurology.
One of the study’s authors, Dr. Agnes Flöel, said:

“…even for people within the normal range of blood sugar, lowering their blood sugar levels could be a promising strategy for preventing memory problems and cognitive decline as they age.

5. Experts know less than they think

‘Know-it-alls’ don’t know as much as they think, new research finds. The more people think they know about a topic, the more likely they are to claim that totally made-up facts are true, psychologists have found Ms Stav Atir, the study’s first author, explained:

“The more people believed they knew about finances in general, the more likely they were to overclaim knowledge of the fictitious financial terms.
The same pattern emerged for other domains, including biology, literature, philosophy, and geography. For instance, people’s assessment of how much they know about a particular biological term will depend in part on how much they think they know about biology in general.”

6. Poor sleep ruins thinking skills

The damage that poor sleep does to your thinking skills is mammoth. Sleepy brains have to work harder while short-term and long-term memory is worse. Attention and planning are worse and it’s easier to follow habits and difficult to create new strategies. Sleep deprivation even damages the ability to read other people’s facial emotions. Read on: Lack of Sleep: The 10 Most Profound Psychological Effects

7. Physical exhaustion hits mental performance

Both mental and physical stress can interact to cause fatigue, a new study finds. The brain’s resources in the prefrontal cortex — an area used for planning and control — are divided during physical and mental activity, the research found.
The research is one of the first to show how mental and physical tasks can interact to fatigue the brain.

Review reveals that predicting poor outcome after stroke is still a long way off

And the way to solve that is to get an objective accounting of the 3d size and location of the dead and damaged area.  This would have to be after the neuronal cascade of death has run its course. But this won't occur because we seem to have no intelligent people in stroke leadership. I'm sure I've posted this before but it needs repeating.
http://www.thestrokeelf.net/publication-types/systematic-review/review-reveals-predicting-poor-outcome-stroke-still-long-way/

7 Everyday Ways You Are Lowering Your Intelligence

Is your doctor making sure you aren't doing any of these and thus hampering your recovery?
7 Everyday Ways You Are Lowering Your Intelligence

1. Saturated fat reduces cognitive flexibility

2. Multimedia multitasking shrinks the brain

3. Googling it makes you feel cleverer than you are

4. Too much sugar damages memory 

 

5. Experts know less than they think

6. Poor sleep ruins thinking skills

7. Physical exhaustion hits mental performance What exactly is your doctor doing to alleviate your fatigue?

Vinod Khosla shares thoughts on disrupting health care with data science

If we had stroke associations willing to talk and listen to intelligent people we might actually make some progress in solving all the problems in stroke. But this won't occur because the status quo is too f*cking important for our stroke associations to ever consider doing something innovative.
Stroke needs to be completely disrupted but the boards and presidents don't seem to even know how badly f*cked up stroke is.
http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2015/05/11/vinod-khosla-shares-thoughts-on-disrupting-health-care-with-data-science/
On the topic of books and papers that have influenced his views, Khosla said:

    A lot of what I’ve been thinking about started with articles by Dr. John Ioannidis at Stanford School of Medicine. What he found through decades of meta-research is that half of what’s in medical studies is just plain wrong… His research is focused on why they are wrong and why all sorts of biases are introduced in medical studies and medical practice.

On the topic of books and papers that have influenced his views, Khosla said:

A lot of what I’ve been thinking about started with articles by Dr. John Ioannidis at Stanford School of Medicine. What he found through decades of meta-research is that half of what’s in medical studies is just plain wrong… His research is focused on why they are wrong and why all sorts of biases are introduced in medical studies and medical practice.

- See more at: http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2015/05/11/vinod-khosla-shares-thoughts-on-disrupting-health-care-with-data-science/#sthash.1xCyPYwt.dpuf

Changing the Trajectory of Alzheimer's Disease

At least the Alzheimers Association has some intelligent people that can put together a report like this. We in stroke however have absolutely nothing like this, which seems odd that with three major stroke organizations, ASA, NSA, WSO; not one has anyone intelligent enough to produce such a report. I'm sure we could prove that stroke will affect more people and have a greater financial impact. But we have NO leaders that are even willing to try to tackle all the problems in stroke.

Do you want to be known as the stroke leaders that did nothing but twiddle your thumbs?

NSA President - Mr. Lopez

AHA President - Dr. Arnett

WSO President - Dr. Davis

Changing the Trajectory of Alzheimer's Disease

Changing the Trajectory of Alzheimer's Disease: How a Treatment by 2025 Saves Lives and Dollars presents information about the current trajectory and economic impact of Alzheimer's disease, and describes an alternate trajectory if, in 2025, a treatment became available to delay the onset of Alzheimer's. > Summary > Quick Facts > Appendices

Summary

Changing the Trajectory of Alzheimer's Disease: How a Treatment by 2025 Saves Lives and Dollars calculates that a treatment introduced in 2025 that delays the onset of Alzheimer's by five years would reduce the number of individuals affected by the disease by 5.7 million by mid-century and save all payers, including Medicare, Medicaid and families, more than $220 billion within the first five years.
The report reinforces the value of reaching the 2025 goal set by the National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Disease under the National Alzheimer's Project Act (NAPA). If the federal government were to invest $2 billion per year as recommended by the scientific community, then it would recoup its investment within the first three years after a treatment became available.
A treatment introduced in 2025 that delays the onset of Alzheimer's would cut the number of people in 2050 who have the disease by 42 percent — from 13.5 million to 7.8 million. The Alzheimer's Association's report also shows the positive impact of adequate funding and the potential consequences of under-funding.

• In 2015, the costs to all payers for the care of people living with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias will total an estimated $226 billion, with Medicare and Medicaid paying 68 percent of the costs. Without a treatment costs are projected to increase to more than $1.1 trillion in 2050.
• Reaching the 2025 goal would save payers $220 billion over the first five years and $367 billion in 2050 alone. Savings to Medicare and Medicaid would account for nearly 60 percent of the savings.
• People living with Alzheimer's and other dementias and their families would save $54 billion over the first five years in their out-of-pocket costs if the 2025 goal is met.

Subcortical intelligence: Caudate volume predicts IQ in healthy adults

Ask your doctor if yours was damaged in the stroke and what stroke protocol is used to rebuild it.
Yes, I know we are no longer healthy adults, but our doctors can at least treat us like adults.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25491047?dopt=Abstract

Grazioplene RG¹, G Ryman S, Gray JR, Rustichini A, Jung RE, DeYoung CG.

Author information

Abstract

 This study examined the association between size of the caudate nuclei and intelligence. Based on the central role of the caudate in learning, as well as neuroimaging studies linking greater caudate volume to better attentional function, verbal ability, and dopamine receptor availability, we hypothesized the existence of a positive association between intelligence and caudate volume in three large independent samples of healthy adults (total N = 517). Regression of IQ onto bilateral caudate volume controlling for age, sex, and total brain volume indicated a significant positive correlation between caudate volume and intelligence, with a comparable magnitude of effect across each of the three samples. No other subcortical structures were independently associated with IQ, suggesting a specific biological link between caudate morphology and intelligence.

Six Famous Thought Experiments, Animated in 60 Seconds Each

We need intellectual challenges to reduce our chances of getting dementia. So your doctor should be prescribing stuff like this. Does your doctor know the answer to an infinite bus of passengers arriving at an infinite hotel? What else has your doctor given you to stimulate your intellect? Nothing!
How stupid is your doctor?
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/10/19/open-university-thought-experiments/