(NewsNation) — Bidding farewell to your favorite navigation app could help reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
That’s according to a new study, which found taxi and ambulance drivers in the United States recorded the lowest percentage of deaths attributed to Alzheimer’s across more than 400 jobs.
Roughly 1% of taxi drivers and 0.91% of ambulance drivers died from the disease, while other occupations recorded nearly 3.9% of deaths.
Researchers link these findings to the demands of a driving-based job, which they describe as occupations that “demand frequent spatial and navigational processing.”
“They’re making decisions literally every few seconds about where to go, where to turn,” senior study author Dr. Anupam Jena told The Wall Street Journal. “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.”
Navigating road closures and sudden traffic situations could be pivotal to preventing hippocampal atrophy, an early characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease, in turn keeping drivers sharper, the researchers posit.
“It’s probably unlikely that being a taxi driver prevented people from getting Alzheimer’s disease pathology in the brain, but it allowed them to mask some of the symptoms for longer,” Dr. David Wolk, director of the University of Pennsylvania Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, told the Journal.