Climbing the social ladder may lower your risk of dementia 40%, study finds trends now
Being a social climber doesn't just get people invites to the best parties - it also does wonders for their health.
Researchers in Japan found people who climbed the social ladder were less likely to get dementia by up to 40 percent.
People born into a low income home with little social support who gained more wealth and social standing over their life saw the biggest protective effect.
Conversely, people who were stuck on a low rung in the socioeconomic ladder, those that moved from higher to lower standing and those who hung somewhere in the middle were all more likely to develop dementia than the climbers.
About 55 million people are currently living with dementia. Scientists think a combination of genetic and lifestyle factors probably contribute to your likelihood for developing the disease.
Social support decreases your risk for developing dementia. This study was one of the first to show if changing your social standing can affect your dementia risk.
'This report marks the first documentation, to our knowledge, of the benefits of upward SES patterns during the life course for dementia prevention,' the study authors wrote in the paper, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open.
The researchers suggest that social climbing could make the brain more resistant to stress, which is thought to be a big risk factor for dementia.
The authors point to research from Rutgers University which found that people who stick through stressful life experiences have better memory's.
This could be because the stressful situation requires a person to learn more, which exercises their brain, making it stronger and more able to withstand the changes that occur as we age.
Lead author Hiroyasu Iso, an epidemiologist and director of the Institute for Global Health Policy Research (iGHP), said scientists have known for a long time that the more social support someone has, the less likely they are to develop dementia.
One French study, for example, showed that people who were
