Word: braine
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When it comes to keeping your brain healthy - and working at its best - doctors have long advised patients to "use it or lose it." The idea is to keep the intellectual highways humming; if circuits aren't used, they tend to deteriorate and eventually wither away, leading to dementia, and in some cases,Alzheimer's. But new research provides a twist on this familiar advice - it turns out that some people benefit more from using it than others...
That means that those with the lowest cognitive abilities are most likely to lose it if they don't use it, and also most likely to protect themselves from dementia and other cognitive problems by keeping their brain circuits active. Not surprisingly, the jobs that proved most beneficial to these folks include the higher degree professions such as law, medicine and journalism, but any career that required multi-tasking, organizing and managerial skill also boosted cognitive abilities later in life. "Any job that requires you to keep fresh, whether it is new sales techniques or learning about new products...
While on the face of it, Potter's study reinforces previous studies' findings about the importance of keeping brain circuits active, it is the first to tie it to the subjects' baseline intellectual ability. In other studies, researchers could never be sure, for instance, that people who remained intellectually active and therefore suffered fewer cases of dementia, didn't have some sort of brain reserve, or start out with a higher level of cognitive ability that served as a buffer during their declining years...
Since Potter could use the IQ scores from early in life as a baseline, he showed that regardless of how much intellectual ability a person starts out with, a mentally demanding job can keep his brain healthy well into retirement. In fact, the gains for people who have high IQs are relatively small, leading Potter to speculate that having a complex job, "may make up for a lack of advantage early in life, whether they be socioeconomic or otherwise." he says. So depending on what you do for a living, that daily grind may actually be the ultimate brain booster...
...long waiting lines for treatment, Moore fired back by calling them “ingrates.” In 2007, the average patient in Canada waited more than 18 weeks between seeing their family doctor and receiving the surgery or treatment they required. A “brain drain” is also presently in effect: Better career opportunities in the United States entice many talented Canadian doctors to leave home and head south...