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Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

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Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#31

Post by wavemode »

bloomca wrote: post #11
arielweisberg wrote: post #3

Can video games provide similar benefits?

The thing about taxi drivers is that they have something at stake, while video games have no fail state effectively. You can be punished in-game, but overall it does not matter. Also video games in general are pretty derivative, so playing the same genre probably won't help much after a certain point. But playing different ones can be very helpful, I imagine (same with other mediums).

Yeah but, Taxi drivers usually don't hop around from place to place. They work in a specific metro area.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#32

Post by Palomides »

cobertos wrote: post #22
chuckadams wrote: post #4

The ones that do stopped being taxi drivers.

True, though the article does also mention another study not based on taxi drivers, but just living in high spatial complexity ZIP codes puts you at a lower risk. > Research on cognitive maps points toward the same conclusion as the study on taxi drivers. In 2023, researchers ran a machine learning model on more than 22,500 people in a national dataset and were able to predict which ZIP codes had higher rates of Alzh…

or there's a million confounding factors around people living in dense cities versus rural areas

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#33

Post by YmiYugy »

I find the title highly misleading. The actual claim is a 40% lower chance (1 in 100 as opposed to 1 in 60) for taxi and ambulance drivers when compared to the average. That’s a big drop but the title implies that Alzheimer’s is rare in taxi drivers specifically and I don’t think the difference warrants that claim whatsoever.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#34

Post by TacticalCoder »

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.

That's very interesting but why do taxi drivers have a job that lowers life expectancy? Is it because they're sitting too much? Or because they're inhaling CO from cars too much? Or staying inside (the car) too much? Or is it just stressful?

For from the look of it it doesn't look like an exceptionally hard job (btw a brother of mine did years of "VTC": "Vehicule de Tourisme avec Chauffeur", basically high-end taxis without the "taxi" logo).

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#35

Post by bloomca »

wavemode wrote: post #31
bloomca wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about taxi drivers is that they have something at stake, while video games have no fail state effectively. You can be punished in-game, but overall it does not matter. Also video games in general are pretty derivative, so playing the same genre probably won't help much after a certain point. But playing different ones can be very helpful, I imagine (same with other mediums).

Yeah but, Taxi drivers usually don't hop around from place to place. They work in a specific metro area.

I assume there is enough variation to be aware of -- seasons change, constructions, car crashes, so you need to alter the route a bit. Today you have the maps with navigation, but I assume you still need to be quite aware on where to park, where is the best entrance to some places, etc. So you basically need to keep some fresh info on top of your mind.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#36

Post by bpodgursky »

jmcgough wrote: post #19
bpodgursky wrote: post #16

Guys... Alzheimer's is 60-80% heritable, and driven largely by APOE genotype. No, you cannot get out of it with One Quick Trick. We have to find therapeutics to make real progress here. This kind of misdirection is not helpful to the research community, or encouraging politicians to fund effective projects. Everyone WANTS a quick lifestyle change and will latch onto these things, but this is a real biological disease…

Half of people with Alzheimer's carry at least one APOE ε4 allele. However , a full quarter of the population carries that mutation, and most carriers never go on to develop Alzheimer's. Lifestyle matters a lot here. This kind of misdirection is not helpful for educating people on changes they can make now to reduce their risk, rather than waiting for a silver bullet. Alzheimer's research is well-funded in the US as…

To the extent that lifestyle helps, which is not zero, you need to exercise. "Become a cabbie" is NOT an intervention that is going to help whatsoever.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#37

Post by Barrin92 »

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.

As the paper points out that's accounted for in the analysis, because shockingly enough to most internet commentators researchers know that they need to control for confounding variables

https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#38

Post by wilburx3 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #34
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.

That's very interesting but why do taxi drivers have a job that lowers life expectancy? Is it because they're sitting too much? Or because they're inhaling CO from cars too much? Or staying inside (the car) too much? Or is it just stressful? For from the look of it it doesn't look like an exceptionally hard job (btw a brother of mine did years of "VTC": "Vehicule de Tourisme avec Chauffeur" , basically high-end taxis…

Getting stabbed in the neck by filthy street urchins.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#39

Post by smolder »

cobertos wrote: post #22
chuckadams wrote: post #4

The ones that do stopped being taxi drivers.

True, though the article does also mention another study not based on taxi drivers, but just living in high spatial complexity ZIP codes puts you at a lower risk. > Research on cognitive maps points toward the same conclusion as the study on taxi drivers. In 2023, researchers ran a machine learning model on more than 22,500 people in a national dataset and were able to predict which ZIP codes had higher rates of Alzh…

I know an 80 year old who was a commercial truck driver for decades and still has a strong mental map for a pretty vast area. Anecdata, but I find it interesting.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#40

Post by glitchc »

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.

They are likely studying individuals that retired without getting fatally stabbed or shot on the job.
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