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Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

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Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#151

Post by Tadpole9181 »

pibaker wrote: post #137
harrall wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study accounts for that. Delay your aging by using your brain a fuck ton, all the time, learning brand new things nowhere near anything you already know.

Alzheimer's is an entirely different beast than normal mental atrophy and there are plenty of stories of otherwise intelligent people ending up with it. I'm not saying you shouldn't try using your brain more but this is just like saying Stephen Hawking should have tried exercising more.

Would this not be closer to saying Arnold Schwarzenegger should have tried exercising more?

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#152

Post by Revanche1367 »

_kulang wrote: post #86
danw1979 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adjusting for age seems like an indication to me

Adjusting for sample/population age is the simplest interpretation of that

Indeed. I feel that although many people try to learn new languages, the intellectual stimulation provided by doing so is understated. Especially learning languages very different from your native language (grammatically, morphologically, etc.). It’s almost like finding new ways to think.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#154

Post by jollyllama »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #150
harrall wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study accounts for that. Delay your aging by using your brain a fuck ton, all the time, learning brand new things nowhere near anything you already know.

Could just be that whatever factor causes certain cabbies to live much longer than their cohort is also protective from Alzheimer’s. I guess they might have accounted for that too — I’ll have to look at the study.

Or, that if you can survive the thing that kills the rest of their cohort, it has beneficial tradeoffs. As in, perhaps smoking protects from Alzheimer's, if it doesn't kill you first.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#155

Post by lazyasciiart »

philwelch wrote: post #101
chuckadams wrote: post #4

The ones that do stopped being taxi drivers.

I was going to make the same wisecrack, but in seriousness I assume they're counting elderly retired taxi drivers as taxi drivers even if they stopped working years before their deaths.

They’re working off occupation as reported on death certificates, so they say they are assuming it’s still accurate.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#156

Post by lazyasciiart »

jere wrote: post #142
akamaka wrote: post #123

I wonder if alcohol consumption plays a role here, since it is a known risk factor for Alzheimer’s. A taxi driver who works 60 hours a week will have very little time left over for drinking, whereas pilots have relatively short work hours where they actually need to be sober.

> A taxi driver who works 60 hours a week will have very little time left over for drinking That's plenty of time to be a full blown alcoholic.

Not to mention that your full time alcoholic isn’t taking 12 hour shifts off to be sober.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#157

Post by pmxi »

Melatonic wrote: post #110

One of the first things to go with Alzheimer's is spacial mapping in the brain so this makes sense. Your exercising daily a part of the brain that is involved. In addition there's the social component of driving - you may not always want to talk to a Taxi driver but many people do. And ambulance drivers are often socializing with their colleagues Driving also has a mix of reaction time based skills and hand eye and h…

This test would be passed by a Waymo with ChatGPT.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#158

Post by [deleted] »

cortic wrote: post #30

Taxi Drivers: The mean age at death is approximately 67.8 years. General Population: in the same dataset, life expectancy averaged 74 years. The average age at which patients are typically diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease is 79. People in these jobs don't live long enough on average to get diagnosed, at the same rate. The same effect will happen in any job that lowers your life expectancy.

[deleted]

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#159

Post by bob_theslob646 »

cortic wrote: post #94
xvedejas wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how would you control for the causal possibility that those who will eventually develop Alzheimer's early on might tend to have undetectable memory issues that prevent them from becoming taxi drivers in the first place? You can't control for profession, since that's behind the very claim itself.

Its even worse than that, i can imagine people with undiagnosed early Alzheimer's self selecting for car accidents and cardiac issues through additional stress of mental fatigue while their brain tried to compensate for loss of function. So you have people self selecting out of the profession, self selecting for early death within the profession, and on top of that, a general life expectancy discrepancy that is near…

What happens in the age of self driving cars?

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#160

Post by swang »

Wasn't there some an article/video from somewhere where a man had worked in a hot environment (I think it was on a navy ship in the engine room) and even though his family had a history of Alzheimer's, he never showed any signs of it. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? (Might not be Alzheimer, might be thinking of another disease)
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