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Alzheimer's disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers (2024)

bmj.com

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Re: Alzheimer's disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers (2024)

#81

Post by balamatom »

hamstergene wrote: post #20
sowbug wrote: post #8

Would be interesting to see whether spatial reasoning from gaming shows the same association.

This is indeed interesting because rotating 2D screen is not necessarily the same type of brain processing as experiencing things fly around you. Even VR is not necessarily the same, because knowing you're safe may be different from taking the situation seriously. Could be same, could be completely different. But the first massively popular 3D games started end of 90s which means Alzheimer cases for them will pop up…

Besides safety, there is also the cognitive complexity angle.

Plus, digital environments are explicitly designed to be engaging: authors are putting intentional thought into making the virtual space easy to navigate so that the player doesn't get frustrated and go do something else.

Meanwhile, the physical world is something we're pretty much stuck in, and material spaces tend to be optimized not so much to be engaging to navigate and explore - more to be comfortable to inhabit, etc.

Besides, physical spaces - e.g. cities - tend to be iteratively developed over generations, bearing the hallmarks of many different thinking minds, and not optimized for any one particular user flow.

Re: Alzheimer's disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers (2024)

#82

Post by metalman »

I am slowly learning how to navigate useing OSM on my phone, haveing never used guggle or GPS, but then bieng unable to buy replacement paper maps, the small screen format is frustrating... I have driven courier in a mostly shook 1 ton ford, though it did have a built race motor and a 5 speed, and would snap and bark on the down shift,setting off every car alarm on the narrow steets, doing nothing for the mental states of all those people bieng dutifuly parinoid about there cars. It is the last, the low level persistant unresolved stress, coupled with never going out and blowing off steam, or finding some fundamental satiation, or even true physical and mental exhaustion, and a well earned rest.

Re: Alzheimer's disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers (2024)

#83

Post by david-gpu »

thereticent wrote: post #50
heazik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Drivers with early symptoms of Alzheimer’s struggled to remain effective and changed profession

I had the same thought, but occupation on the birth certificate is the "usual" occupation the person held.

Isn't that the point? People whose cognitive abilities were already slowly declining would likely look for another job that was less demanding.

Sorry if I am misunderstanding you.

Re: Alzheimer's disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers (2024)

#86

Post by bjourne »

Does the data reject the null hypothesis? If you group people into hundreds of groups (occupations) and measure something (Alzheimer's rate) variance ensures that the means of the measurements will vary. Some groups will have low means other will have high means. The distributions may be equal but due to random chance there will be outliers.

Re: Alzheimer's disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers (2024)

#87

Post by jmalicki »

shawn_w wrote: post #17
academicfish wrote: post #15

I assume that was a generation that didn’t use Google Maps.

At my most recent EMS job ("ambulance driver" is considered insulting), the younger people couldn't navigate anywhere without mapping it. Some of them brought up being amazed that I could get to every hospital in our area from pretty much anywhere without having to bring it up on my phone (random houses and nursing homes were a different story).

The funny thing is this study only looked at non-EMT ambulance drivers - i.e. those true ambulance drivers!

Re: Alzheimer's disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers (2024)

#88

Post by tenthirtyam »

emmelaich wrote: post #26
fn-mote wrote: post #2

The rate of fatality for Alzheimer’s among ambulance and taxi drivers is 3x lower than the general population. This is not observed in other transportation-related careers. The connection is believed to be the spatial reasoning involved in routing. No causative link is suggested.

What are some possibilities? 1. Those with spatial reasoning are less likely to develop Alzheimers 2. Ambo and Taxi drivers are less likely (for some reason) to develop Alzheimers AND their work leads them to develop good spatial reasoning. Any others? One consideration is that those with jobs requiring long periods of concentration drink less. Among other things.

Pure speculation here. Driving is a sedentary occupation which might increase the percentage of deaths attributable to a sedentary lifestyle, with consequent decrease for Alzheimers?

Re: Alzheimer's disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers (2024)

#89

Post by austinjp »

So let's say there's a causative link (see other comments here for why this may not be the case), it would take a lifetime of daily complex spatial navigation for several hours every day to significantly reduce Alzheimer's disease risk, and it's still not guaranteed. If there's a linear dose response (a big if) it would still require hours per week for decades for a more modest impact.

That seems unattainable for anyone at all.

Man, Alzheimer's disease sucks. We need more investment and more research into this horrible illness.

Personally I'm curious about the impact of super-early diagnosis, decades before symptoms, and interventions that maximally slow progress.

Re: Alzheimer's disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers (2024)

#90

Post by patall »

ekianjo wrote: post #85

From the graphs it looks like ambulance drivers and taxi drivers died much younger than everyone else. Hence less death from Alzheimer (a disease famous for happening mostly with old age), so case closed?

I am afraid, there are far bigger confounders than that (which they supposedly correct for): you absolutely cannot be a taxi driver if you experience short term memory loss. So those people may have changed profession at a faster rate than say kindergarden teachers or bakers. Tbf. GPS somewhat changed that but with GPS, the spatial information thing makes less sense.
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