Financial hardships can cause long-term damage to your brain: Study
A study found that financial stress can cause long-term damage to your brain.
Researchers from University College London followed 2,759 people born in March 1946 and assessed their cognitive function, household income, and financial hardships at different decades.
Their findings associated exposure to low household income and financial hardships with lower processing speed and verbal memory at 53 years old.
They also noted a slower rate of decline for verbal memory between ages 53 and 69 in those who experienced poverty compared to those who were more advantaged. However, the scientists said this suggested earlier cognitive losses at midlife for the unadvantaged.
The study further found that men who experienced financial adversity performed worse at brain tests at age 53 than women undergoing the same struggles. According to a Newsweek report, researchers said this may be due to the male participants' likelihood to take up vices like smoking and drinking, as well as additional stress from the pressures of being providers to their families.
"The key message of the study is that brain health is not only a matter of individual trajectories; it is also how a society shapes people's lives and experiences," Dr. Jacques Wels, one of the study's authors, told Newsweek.
"Financial hardship alone is a cause of financial stress and unhealthy behavior, but I don't think we can easily distinguish the cause and the mechanisms—they both reinforce each other," he added.
According to Wels, most studies on cognitive aging focus on a single point in time. Their study accumulated data and brain scans over decades.
Moreover, the study, published in the Innovation in Aging journal, emphasized the importance of supporting several vulnerable households "to prevent financial adversity from becoming chronic, which could also help protect against age-related cognitive impairments and disorders such as dementia."
