Smarter People Live Longer

Do higher IQ’s mean higher number of years alive? Researchers at the University of Edinburgh think so. HealthDay reports that when researchers studied data on nearly 66,000 people who were born in 1936, took an IQ test at age 11, and were followed up to age 79 or death, they found that those with  high IQs were more likely to live longer than their less intelligent peers. Higher IQs in childhood were associated with a 28 percent reduced risk of death from respiratory disease, a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease and a 24 percent reduced risk of death from stroke. The researchers point out that the study didn’t prove that high IQ caused reduced risk, just that an association existed. Higher IQs were associated with a lower risk of death from injury, smoking-related cancers, digestive disease and dementia.

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