6 ms·
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-rela
by fn-mote 7mo ago
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.
- jojobas 7mo agoExcept causation, what can the connection be? Some genes causing both spatial reasoning and suppressing Alz?
- junofan 7mo agoThe taxi-driving Alz patients may overwhelmingly die of something that leads to physicians not listing Alz as a cause of death. If taxi driving is loaded in such a way that Alz presents significant challenges (eg loss of income), that could be the case.
- jojobas 7mo agoBut that's not a spatial reasoning connection. Also would include all other drivers.
- vlovich123 7mo agoOne easy way to confirm this is to look at the impact of GPS on this + whether London taxi drivers get less frequent Alzheimer’s than other cities/countries that don’t have the same requirements and complexities.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- emmelaich 7mo agoWhat 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.
- odysseus 7mo agoSocial interaction while spatially reasoning also helps. (Social + cognitive load)
- heazik 7mo ago- Drivers with early symptoms of Alzheimer’s struggled to remain effective and changed profession
- thereticent 7mo agoI had the same thought, but occupation on the birth certificate is the "usual" occupation the person held.
- ETH_start 7mo agodeath certificate?
- thereticent 7mo agoJust keeping you on your toes?
- dredmorbius 7mo agoAssigned-cabbie-at-birth...
- david-gpu 7mo agoIsn'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.
- Cpoll 7mo agoThe implication is that if you spent 30yrs as an ambulance driver, followed by 10 years working retail, the death certificate will say "ambulance driver."
- randycupertino 7mo ago> The connection is believed to be the spatial reasoning involved in routing. This is triggering me lol. I was a Paramedic for 10 years and 3 of those years were before GPS existed and we had these awful 900 page 5" thick things we had to wield on the fly called Map Books. It was part of our probation period testing and they would time us to pick out the routes reliably within a certain deadline or not graduate from being a probie. While your partner drove to the call you'd put the book on your lap and flip to the big large grid which would tell you which map your location would be on (page 770), then you'd look up the street in the back appendix to get the coordinates for the specific house (P5, C2) and then find the cross street on another page (P5, C3), go to the grid and find the closest appropriate hospital for the purpose of the call (different ERs have different functions- for gunshots go to Highland, for amputations go to CalPac Davies, for heart attacks go to UCSF, etc) (page 815), the street location for that (A6, C4) and then make your route while flipping back and forth between all the pages while simultaneously telling your partner where to turn as you go. When I went to a better ran company, dispatch would give us map page and grid coordinates over the radio when we got the call. Within a few months you learn most of the neighborhoods and routes, and road hazards and preferences- for example if going to UCSF from the Peninsula take O'Shaughnessy because there's no traffic and is a smooth ride. And if you're going to Seton Hospital from 101 slow down around the turn on the on ramp onto 280 because there is a GIANT bump that will knock your partner in the back's head into the ceiling and not be comfortable for the patient on the gurney. Map books were no fun but some of the dudes I worked with definitely became route-finding savants.
- troad 7mo agoThis is such a great anecdote, thanks for sharing! >> for gunshots go to Highland, for amputations go to CalPac Davies, for heart attacks go to UCSF, etc Oooft. My utmost respect. I could not do this job.
- praptak 7mo agoIn a similar vein, to drive a black taxi in London you have to pass The Knowledge of London exam which requires becoming a human routing database for over twenty thousand streets and landmarks.
- matsemann 7mo agoWill we see a drop in alzheimers when the open world gaming population reaches that age? I mean, I can not just navigate my city, but multiple worlds!
- slim 7mo agoeven with one functioning eye! because you're used to navigate by looking at a 2d projection on a screen
- Mordisquitos 7mo agoAnd/or will we see an increase in Alzheimer's disease amongst Google-Maps dependent users? Maybe we will see a bimodal split in both directions.
- stef25 7mo agoYeah, basically Waze is causing dementia
- jgilias 7mo agoNot sure about Waze, but the combination of AI + TikTok/shorts/etc sounds like “not great” for long term brain health.
- Mordisquitos 7mo agoIndeed. My comment about Google Maps (and Waze, etc.) exacerbating Alzheimer's was mostly in jest and an exaggeration, but I'm absolutely certain that there is a statistically significant proportion of society whose current overuse of "AI" chatbots and short video consumption will result in cognitive deterioration if it continues at their current rate. To be clear, I'm not implying that usage of LLMs or viewing potentially unlimited video shorts is necessarily bad, nor could I guess the threshold from which doing these things becomes cognitively damaging in the long term. All I'm saying is that such a threshold exists and some people in society are surpassing it.
- manmal 7mo agoBoth are also very social occupations, talking with multiple strangers every day.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 7mo agoThe main question that comes up when I see a study like this is if they were able to take the same hypothesis and replicate it on another dataset in a different locale. For instance, presumably you could run the same study on UK data. Would we see the same results?
- rzmmm 7mo agoThis kind of replication would make the findings much more convincing.
- nine_k 7mo agoA causal link is easy to imagine. An Alzheimer's onset makes one unfit to work as an ambulance driver, they switch to a less demanding job. When, years later, the person dies, the death is not counted towards ambulance drivers.
- layer8 7mo ago> death certificates included a field for reported usual occupation (the occupation in which the decedent spent most of their working life), generally completed by a funeral director with help from the decedent’s informant
- dyauspitr 7mo agoI’ve always been horrible at spatial reasoning. If I take two right turns and then a left, I have no idea where anything is. I’ve anecdotally always found a correlation between “cool” people and sound spatial reasoning. I’ll probably get Alzheimer’s when I’m 35.