51–60 of 111 posts
But exercise does: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20160324/Exercise-slows-do...
I got my genes sequenced recently and it turns out I have a mutant gene that predisposes me to Alzheimers - APOE e4. it's a cholesterol shuttling gene! Very important to keep low fat, it effects your entire body.
It is difficult to really test for this though, because you can't control for people's amount of mental exertion, gaming, learning and puzzle solving over their entire lives, so we substitute things like "knows more than one language fluently," something we can objectively measure and see if there's a correlation. This particular study used a group of people that took the same intelligence test when they were young.
There's been some research that shows some older people's brains have trouble metabolizing glucose and other sugars, and that diets that push ketosis in older people (higher fats, coconut oil, less cereal/crabs) can help some people:
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You can't really criticize it only based on those numbers, at least not without looking at similar numbers from other cohort studies with the same length. Well, one can't criticize the quality of the study without looking how well other studies did. But even if all studies involve a massive drop-out rate, the drop-out rate still seems like something to look at in evaluating the accuracy of the study. I mean my concer…
15 -years- is a LONG time for a study. I'm not sure about the dropout rates, but it is a real statistical issue. I'm just not sure there's anything that can reasonably be done about it. You'd have to have something like federally mandated participation / continued participation. That's also very unlikely to pass ethics boards. BTW, it would also be an issue if the subjects were compensated to the point that they diff…
Everyone keeps replying as if my comments imply a demand that "something be done about this". That's not my point. Maybe nothing can be done about it. The situation is still significant or at least appears significant.
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This is a cohort study conducted over 15 years. You can't really criticize it only based on those numbers, at least not without looking at similar numbers from other cohort studies with the same length. I tend to ascribe some value to "It was published in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal." Additional thought: Especially because it is essentially supporting the null hypothesis.
You can't really criticize it only based on those numbers, at least not without looking at similar numbers from other cohort studies with the same length. Well, one can't criticize the quality of the study without looking how well other studies did. But even if all studies involve a massive drop-out rate, the drop-out rate still seems like something to look at in evaluating the accuracy of the study. I mean my concer…
It's called longitudinal analysis or survival analysis, depending on the question being asked.
We statistician got test and models for these.
You can rely on it if the people who are conducting the experiment are competent and know what they're doing.
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My armchair analysis suspects that it is chemicals like cortisol will degrade the brain over time, while dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin will help preserve it. So stress and anxiety bad, exercise good.
Completely off topic, but I appreciate you properly citing your source. I hate when people make absolute claims off no factual evidence. Even just "I heard ______ " is a perfectly acceptable comment imo.
This is a fascinating share, if not for the results—"None of the measures of intellectual engagement was linked to the speed of decline of people's mental abilities over time"—but for the study itself. "Many people also dropped out of the study. Only 96 of the 498 people recruited took part in the last round of testing. The researchers lost touch with 13 people, while 57 people died and 332 declined to take part." Do…
>The researchers lost touch with 13 people, while 57 people died and 332 declined to take part." This is one of the major downsides to longitudinal studies— people are unpredictable.
This is a fascinating share, if not for the results—"None of the measures of intellectual engagement was linked to the speed of decline of people's mental abilities over time"—but for the study itself. "Many people also dropped out of the study. Only 96 of the 498 people recruited took part in the last round of testing. The researchers lost touch with 13 people, while 57 people died and 332 declined to take part." Do…
Edit: Yes, they did. See ojbyrne's comment.
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for sure.. but I expect the real results to be worse (though this is purely speculative on my part), as I can only imagine people with steeper intellectual decline being more likely to drop out
Its mentioned in the paper: "However, recruitment to and retention in cognitive ageing studies is also affected by self selection to volunteer among better educated individuals who are ageing well, which is also true of our study. Thus, the findings might be biased towards those individuals with higher cognitive performance."
Ultimately I'm not entirely sure what the point of science along these lines even is. The big risk is you notice a correlation to something and assume causation. You then start working to try to pursue that end in cases where the correlation is good - or avoid that end in cases where the correlation is bad. And you spend immense energy and resources doing this, only to find that in the end there was no actual causation at all and you just spent immense amounts of time, energy, and resources doing nothing.
Even worse is that sometimes you might pursue the correlation and falsely end up at the desired end thus assuming causality when none exists. Maybe the best example of this is human/animal sacrifice of ancient civilizations. Those sacrifices were not baseless from their perspective. What undoubtedly happened is that at one point a civilization has e.g. a bad harvest. They feel they must have wronged the gods, so they end up sacrificing something. And, completely by coincidence, the next harvest is bountiful. Lo and behold, you now have centuries of human and animal sacrifice in a model where you can ignore any negative outcomes by suggesting it simply means that you didn't sacrifice enough. Keep ramping up the sacrifices and indeed eventually you'll get a good harvest, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the sacrifices you've made.