The higher the level of education, the lower the risk of senile dementia as you age , according to new research by British and Finnish scientists.
The researchers discovered the important role of education after analyzing data from 872 European elderly people. "Our study shows that education allows some people to cope with a large number of brain changes before dementia symptoms appear," explains Carol Brayne of the University of Cambridge, co-author of the study published in the journal Brain .
Specifically, the figures suggest that for each additional year of study the risk of developing dementia is reduced by 11%. Brayne and his colleagues have found that differences in educational level do not prevent the brain from "suffering from dementia", but rather that those brains that have received more education from young people are able to "compensate for the effects of dementia" , delaying the appearance of symptoms for several years. The results, they say, show that education is important for health, and that it is necessary to continue investigating how certain factors in the first years of a subject's life affect their life expectancy.
