Posted on 08/14/2007 11:33:05 PM PDT by neverdem
It is not surprising that when doctors examined people who had worked at a lead smelter for years, they found no lack of neurological problems associated with lead.
But not every worker was affected equally, a new study says, especially when it came to those who were good readers. While those workers had the same sorts of motor skill losses as their colleagues, they had retained much more of their thinking skills.
People who are good readers, generally a sign of better education, have been found in earlier studies to have better health. The presumption has been that this is because they can take better care of themselves or afford better food, housing and medical care.
But writing in the July 31 issue of Neurology, researchers said that in this case some smelter employees were protected not as a direct result of their reading but an indirect one. The years of reading, the study said, may have helped their brains develop more of what doctors call cognitive reserve.
So as the lead exposure robbed their coworkers of skills involving attention, memory, mental calculations and decision making, the good readers retained much of their skills, even as they, too, were suffering damage to their nervous systems.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It’s also because readers excercise their brain more. Use it or lose it applies to brains too.
Well, that explains DU, DailyKos, Huffpo.....
It may just be they had better brains to begin with, hence the love of reading. The one truth is that years of lead exposure is not a good idea.
ping
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