These Are the Jobs That Might Make You More Likely to Develop Dementia

What you do for a living might make you more likely to develop dementia.

Jobs that are centered around routine, or without a lot of daily changes, may make you more likely to develop dementia, according to a study published in Neurology.

“Most people in routine jobs in our sample included housekeepers, custodians, construction workers and mail carriers,” lead author Dr. Trine Edwin, a researcher at Oslo University Hospital in Norway, told CNN.

The outlet reported that those who worked in jobs with little daily changes had a 66% higher risk of mild cognitive impairment. After age 70, they had a 37% greater risk of dementia.

Conversely, working in a job that required you to be “cognitively active,” as Edwin told The Guardian, could limit your risk of developing dementia.

Dementia is the umbrella term for the “impaired ability to remember, think, or make decisions that interferes with doing everyday activities,” says the Centers for Disease Control, which points out that dementia is not a part of “normal aging.”

Education appears to play a role, Edwin told The Guardian, as those with a higher level of education appeared less likely to develop dementia — because they worked in more mentally stimulating jobs.

Teachers and university lecturers were the professions ranked as the most mentally stimulating, the outlet says.

“It means that education is very important, but it’s also what you do afterwards: it’s how you use your brain when you are working. You are building your cognitive reserve at work by being cognitively active,” Edwin told the outlet.

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However, she cautioned that your educational level doesn’t automatically immediately mean you’re going to develop dementia, even though their study found that attending college reduced your risk of having a repetitive job by 60%, CNN reports.

“It’s not that you are doomed or you are not,” Edwin told The Guardian. “We can empower people for their later cognitive health with education and tasks that are cognitively stimulating.” 

“Our results show the value of having an occupation that requires more complex thinking as a way to maintain memory and thinking in old age,” Edwin told CNN. 

“The workplace is really important in promoting cognitive health.”

There are more than 55 million people around the world with dementia, the World Health Organization estimates, adding that every year, there are 10 million new cases of the disease.