Research linked poor memory to Heart risks

People who have a bad reaction time and poor memory are more prone to heart diseases, a new study suggests.

The survey was conducted by Dr.Beverly Shipley, from the Psychology department, Edinburgh University. She studied the mental agility of about 6,400 people, aged between 18 and 99, from all over Britain, and concluded that poor memory and heart attacks are linked.

The 21 year long study comprised of participants first tested in 1984-85 and observed up to 2005. About 1,550 members of the group died by the end of 2005.

People with poor memory, the inability of the organism to store, retain and subsequently recall information; long reaction time, the time gap between the presentation of the stimuli and reaction of the organism is long; and visual spatial perceptions, have a greater chance of developing a cardiovascular disease.

“One of the surprising outcomes of the study was that younger and older adults exhibited the same link between cognition and heart disease mortality, but the reasons for this are not clear,” she added.

A number of other factors account for heart diseases and since times immemorial, are considered the main causes behind these problems. Factors like age, absence of key nutritional elements, hypercholesterolemia, tobacco smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, etc, have been associated with many heart problems. But the new study elucidated the fact that longer reaction times and higher death rates were somehow linked as well.

The results of the study indicated that people who have a “lower than average mental agility” have 10% greater chance of developing vascular disease.

It was also seen in the study that both adults as well as children exhibited a strong link between cognition and heart diseases.

The researcher said that one possible explanation for the study is “that human reaction time was an indicator of a body with better system integrity, meaning how well it is wired together”.