Education Reduces Risk of Dementia

Dementia has a more difficult time taking hold in more educated brains, according to recent research from Britain and Finland. Even a single additional year of education can reduce the risk of developing dementia by more than 10 percent.

Hanna Keage, a researcher from Cambridge University who was involved in the study, says, “More education is not associated with any differences in the damage to the brain, but people with higher education can cope with that damage better.”

With an increasingly aged population and the potential for a drastic increase in the number of people suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, this research could be an extraordinary helpful.

While there have been other studies to demonstrate a connection between education and lowered risk of dementia, this is the first to isolate that education does not prevent damage but makes it more likely that the brain will be able to cope with whatever damage occurs.

In the study, the researchers examined the post-mortem brains of 872 people who had participated in a large aging study in Europe. All of the participants had completed questionnaires about their level of education prior to dying. The pathology within the brain was similar in those who had more education and those who did not, but those who had more education did not have the same level of affect from the disease. The researchers speculate the additional education may allow the brain to find different ways around problems that occur within the disease.

More than 30 million people currently suffer from dementia, most commonly in the form of Alzheimer’s disease. While years of research have been completed, there is no cure. Preventing dementia is now the primary focus of most governments, since it is predicted that the numbers of cases will double every 20 years. Keage pointed out that if dementia could be delayed by even a couple of years through more education, they could reduce the number of people suffering from the disease by almost two million people over several decades.

Shadra Bruce is a contributing writer for Mental Health News.