Taxi, Ambulance Drivers Fare Better With Alzheimer's

A new study suggests that turning off GPS in the car and instead navigating by your own wits may help stave off Alzheimer's. The study in the British Medical Journal found that taxi drivers and ambulance drivers died of the ailment less than people in other professions, reports HealthDay. Researchers theorize that such drivers are constantly exercising a particular part of the brain that deals with what the Wall Street Journal describes as navigational and spatial processing. And all that exercise might pay off.

• "They're making decisions literally every few seconds about where to go, where to turn," says senior author Dr. Anupam Jena of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. "The way that your brain is used over the course of your career or the course of your life might impact the likelihood that someone develops dementia."
• The researchers analyzed records of about 9 million people who died between 2020 and 2022 and determined that 4% of them died from Alzheimer's. But only 1% of taxi drivers and 0.7% of ambulance drivers did, faring the best of any of the professions. (Given the years of their deaths, it's possible many were working before GPS came around.)
• Jena emphasizes that they're not trying to pitch all this as conclusive but more like "hypothesis-generating" parts of the puzzle, per HealthDay. The takeaway in the Journal is that "it wouldn't hurt to take up hobbies that stimulate your brain, such as playing chess or learning a new language."

(More discoveries stories.)