One of the factors that may reduce your risk for Alzheimer’s disease is having a formal education. But why is that? Is there a magical safety switch that flips in our brains when we learn the Pythagorean theorem in middle school? Well, not quite! To be honest, researchers have different beliefs as to why education lowers the risk for Alzheimer’s disease. The Alzheimer’s association released an article highlighting 3 main ideas that researchers support.
In summary the 3 ideas are:
- Education increases our cognitive reserve which ‘strengthens’ the brain so it has a better chance of defending itself when facing damaging diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
- Quality of education is just as important as quality. The type of formal education a person receives can affect their risk. For example, someone receiving 12 years of education from a well-funded school system with top-of-the-line resources, and equipment would have more protection against Alzheimer’s disease than a person with 12 years of education in a school located in a low socioeconomic area, with limited resources, and overworked teachers.
- It’s not education, it’s where education takes you, or what education keeps you away from. This theory suggests that more education opens the door to higher paying jobs that come with a higher quality of life. The idea is that educational opportunities lead to an economic advantage which then grants the person access to things such as better healthcare and healthy lifestyle choices which can combine to lower the risk for many chronic diseases, including Alzheimer’s.
These ideas mainly focus on how early life education can prevent Alzheimer’s, but some studies show there is still a benefit to learning later in life. Learning doesn’t necessarily mean you need to enroll in an organic chemistry course (unless you want to!). Learning could be reading a book on a topic you’re unfamiliar with, learning to swim, or learning a new language. Obtaining new skills and engaging in new tasks and jobs that require critical thinking has been shown to ‘strengthen’ the brain by increasing cognitive reserve even in adulthood.
So, while researchers plug away at clarifying the relationship between education and Alzheimer’s disease, we at PAAD-2 want to encourage you to keep on learning!
Click this link to see the full Alzheimer’s association article.