Poverty may be bad for brain
Aging Baby Boomers have taken a variety of approaches to keep their cognitive abilities sharp, from meditation to specially designed games to (my personal favorite) eating chocolate.
But new research finds one factor that influences the rate at which our brains age is largely outside our control: Our socioeconomic status, psmag.com reported.
“We provide evidence that there exists a powerful relationship between an individual’s present environment and their brain,” a research team led by Micaela Chan and Gagan Wig of the University of Texas, Dallas wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In its study, middle-aged adults of lower socioeconomic status “exhibited signs of both functional and structural brain aging earlier in adulthood” than their betteroff peers.
“Engaging and resourceful environments associated with higher socioeconomic status may provide a buffer or delay against aging,” the researchers wrote.
“Inadequate health conditions associated with lower socioeconomic status environments (such as exposure to toxins and poorer nutrition), together with continual stress, may accelerate the aging process.”
The study featured 304 participants between the ages of 20 and 89, who were recruited in the Dallas-fort Worth area. Their socioeconomic status was determined by their years of education and occupation.
Using neuroimaging, the researchers evaluated participants’ brains in two ways, measuring ‘functional network organization and cortical gray matter thickness’.
They found both measures demonstrated greater aging in people of lower socioeconomic status, even after accounting for demographic differences and personal health.
The results raised an obvious question: Was this a long-term effect of a difficult life, or can it be traced back to their childhoods? To find out, the researchers noted the childhood socioeconomic status of 168 of the participants (which was estimated using their parents’ education level as a marker).
Taking that information into account did not change their results, which suggested the more pronounced neural aging appears to be cumulative.
While the reasons for this aren’t entirely clear, the researchers point to some obvious possibilities. People who are struggling to get by tend to have less access to nutritious food, high-quality health care, and opportunities for ‘continuous and sustained learning’, they wrote.
Besides living in a ‘less stimulating environment’, they are subject to ‘environmental and social stressors’, which can have long-term negative effects on the brain. A 2014 study found Africanamericans age more rapidly than whites, presumably due to the stress of dealing with racism.
We’ve long been told that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Perhaps we need to remember it’s also a terrible thing for a mind to waste away. Dangerous challenges on social media are becoming much more common among teens.
Videos showing teens harming themselves to gain attention or follow the latest social media trends are surfacing all over the Internet. Medical experts say this is only the beginning, valleycentral.com wrote.
“These kids really don’t know the dangers, they’re just doing it for the likes, the followers. In reality, they don’t know the health issues that could arise from these challenges,” said Erika Gomez, who works at the Mcallen Primary Care Clinic.
The most recent of the dark social media trends is ‘the deodorant challenge,’ where someone sprays deodorant onto bare skin for as long as possible.
“It can go from first degree, second degree, even third degree burns. You are obviously going to end up with scars,” said Gomez.
Another dangerous trend popping up on the Internet is the ‘Ice and salt challenge,’ where teens pour salt on a part of their body and then place an ice cube over it. The salt can lower the temperature of the ice cube to one degree within five minutes leaving the teen with serious and permanent burns.
Although this trend has been seen in past years, local doctors say it’s still happening right here in the Rio Grande Valley.
“I’ve had a couple of patients with the actual scars of the burning, the ice and the salt burning,” said Gomez.
Parents say it’s getting out of hand.
“I think they’re pretty stupid. It can be fun for adults, but kids, it’s pretty unsafe,” said Mauricio Flores.
Experts agree that better parental supervision will help decrease the number of dangerous accidents caused by social media challenges.
“We go back to them feeling pressured to fit in. But it has to do a lot with how they’re raised and we as parents need to always be aware and monitoring them so it doesn’t happen,” said Gomez.