Taxi Drivers Offer a Clue On Alzheimer's Risk

HERE'S ONE STRATEGY that might preserve your brain: Ditch Google Maps and rely on your own sense of direction.

- SUMATHI REDDY

A new study found that U.S. taxi and ambulance drivers had the lowest percentage of deaths attributed to Alzheimer's disease among more than 400 occupations. The drivers mostly worked before GPS navigation systems were widely used.

The researchers hypothesize that taxi and ambulance drivers could have a lower risk of developing Alzheimer's because they are constantly using navigational and spatial processing, says Dr. Anupam Jena, a professor of health at Harvard Medical School and associate physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and senior author of the study.

Those on-the-fly decisions about how to get from point A to point B when a road is closed or blocked may protect the drivers' cognitive abilities, the researchers speculate.

"They're making decisions literally every few seconds about where to go, where to turn," says Jena.

"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."