If work is a constant barrage of brainstorming challenges, bursts of creativity and delicate negotiations to keep the troops happy, consider yourself lucky.
Researchers have found that the more people use their brains at work, the better they seem to be protected against thinking and memory problems that come with old age.
In a study of more than 7,000 Norwegians in 305 occupations, those who had the least mentally demanding jobs had a 66% greater risk of mild cognitive impairment, and a 31% greater risk of dementia, after old age of 70 compared to those in the most mentally taxing roles.
“It really shows how important work is,” said Dr Trine Edwin, a geriatrics and postdoctoral fellow at Oslo University Hospital. “It’s important to go to work and use your brain, and to use your brain to learn new things.”
Edwin and her colleagues examined the cognitive complexity of various jobs based on the amount of routine manual and mental work, and the degree of analytical and interpersonal tasks they involved.
Most people worked jobs with similar degrees of cognitive demands during their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, meaning that those who started working in less mentally stimulating jobs tended to stay in them, as did those who did cognitively challenging ones. assumed positions from the off.
After the age of 70, the volunteers took part in standard memory and thinking tests and were classified as having no cognitive impairment, mild cognitive impairment or dementia. Of those who worked in the least cognitively challenging jobs, 42% were diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, compared to only 27% who worked in the most cognitively stimulating roles.
Among the jobs considered most stimulating were teachers and university lecturers, according to the study, in Neurology. Among the jobs that were least cognitively demanding were those that involved repetitive manual tasks, such as road work, cleaning and mail delivery.
Previous studies have shown that education has a significant protective effect against cognitive decline in old age. Part of the reason is that better educated people are more likely and more able to lead healthier lives. But education also appears build “cognitive reserve” – the ability to improvise and find alternative ways of doing things – which can help prevent mental decline, just as physical exercise delays frailty.
According to Trine, higher levels of education accounted for about 60% of the protective effect seen among people who did mentally stimulating work. “That means education is very important, but it’s also what you do afterwards: it’s how you use your brain when you work. You build your cognitive reserve at work by being cognitively active,” she said.
The results suggest that people who spend their working lives in less mentally stimulating jobs may benefit from further training and pursuing more cognitively challenging pastimes outside of work. “It’s not that you’re doomed or not – we can empower people for their later cognitive health with education and tasks that are cognitively stimulating,” said Trine.
Prof Gill Livingston, professor of psychiatry of older people at University College London, said the findings were consistent with other studies on the impact of work. “It’s not just that more educated people do more cognitively stimulating jobs – they do – but cognitive stimulation in work through problem solving and new situations has an effect in itself.
“It’s a lot of cognitive stimulation, since most people work a lot of hours for a lot of years,” she said. But work may not have as much of an impact as education, she added, because the brains of children and young adults can change more than those of adults to increase cognitive reserve.
