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Category: Intelligence
The Food Linked To Higher IQ
The foods boosts fluid intelligence, which is the speed at which the brain works.
The foods boosts fluid intelligence, which is the speed at which the brain works.
Eating organic food is linked to a higher IQ, a study finds.
School-age children who ate more organic food had higher scores on tests of fluid intelligence and working memory.
Fluid intelligence refers to the speed at which the brain works.
It is like the raw power of an engine or the speed at which a computer can process information.
Working memory, meanwhile, is vital to holding pieces of visual, verbal or other information in your mind while you manipulate them.
Better working memory has been linked to improved learning, attention and other vital outcomes.
The higher levels of nutrients in organic foods may account for the boost to IQ, said Dr Jordi Júlvez, study co-author:
“Healthy diets, including organic diets, are richer than fast food diets in nutrients necessary for the brain, such as fatty acids, vitamins and antioxidants, which together may enhance cognitive function in childhood.”
In contrast, eating fast food, being exposed to tobacco smoke and house crowding were all linked to lower scores on tests of fluid intelligence.
Children’s brains are sensitive
The results come from over one thousand children aged 6 to 11-years-old in six different European countries, including the UK and Spain.
The research examined 87 factors that the unborn child might be exposed to along with another 122 factors that could affect them during childhood.
The brain is still developing in childhood, so it is particularly sensitive to toxicity.
Low levels of toxicity that may have little affect on the adult brain can still influence children’s brains.
Dr Jordi Júlvez, study co-author, explained the main predictors of higher IQ:
“In our study, we found better scores in fluid intelligence and working memory with higher organic food intake and lower fast food intake.”
As for the predictors of lower IQ, Professor Martine Vrijheid, study co-author, said:
“We observed that several prenatal environmental pollutants (indoor air pollution and tobacco smoke) and lifestyle habits during childhood (diet, sleep and family social capital) were associated with behavioral problems in children.”
The study is notable because of its comprehensive approach to a huge range of variables, said Professor Vrijheid:
“One of the strengths of this study on cognition and the earlier study on behavioral problems is that we systematically analyzed a much wider range of exposure biomarkers in blood and urine to determine the internal levels in the model and that we analyzed both prenatal and childhood exposure variables.”
→ Other dietary changes linked to high IQ include nuts, a diet low in sugars, fats and processed foods, fruits and vegetables,
The study was published in the journal Environment International (de Bont et al., 2021).
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The Personality Trait That Decreases Suicide Risk
It is also a generally protective factor against health problems.
It is also a generally protective factor against health problems.
More intelligent people are at a lower risk of suicide, research finds.
In fact, intelligence emerges as a generally protective factor against health problems.
People with higher intelligence are also less likely to suffer heart attacks and have accidents.
Dr David Batty, the study’s first author, said:
“People with higher IQ test scores tend to be less likely to smoke or drink alcohol heavily, they eat better diets, and they are more physically active.
So they have a range of better behaviours that may partly explain their lower mortality risk.”
The conclusions come from a study of one million Swedish men.
They were conscripted into the Swedish army at 18 and their health was followed into middle age.
The researchers think the link could be partly down to healthier behaviours of those with a higher IQ.
Dr Batty said:
“If you believe the association between IQ and mortality is at least partially explained by people with a lower IQ having worse behaviours – which is plausible – then it might be that the messages used to change health behaviours are too complicated.”
IQ can be increased through preschool education and nutrition, studies have found.
Dr Batty said:
“Messages about diet, including how much or what type of alcohol is beneficial, aren’t simple, and the array of strategies available for quitting smoking are diverse and actually quite complicated.
If you clarify the options available to people who want to, say, quit smoking, in the short term that may have an effect.”
A further study by Dr Batty and colleagues on 4,000 US soldiers found the same thing: that those with higher IQs lived longer.
The study was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology (Batty et al., 2017).
This Bodily Measurement Is Linked To Your IQ
The study of almost 10,000 people used MRI scans to measure abdominal fat and blood flow through the brain.
The study of almost 10,000 people used MRI scans to measure abdominal fat and blood flow through the brain.
Higher body fat is linked to the brain being slower to process information — a critical component of IQ.
The more abdominal or ‘belly fat’ that people have, the lower their scores on tests of cognitive function.
The study of almost 10,000 people used MRI scans to measure abdominal fat and blood flow through their brain.
Professor Sonia Anand, the study’s first author, explained the results:
“Our results suggest that strategies to prevent or reduce having too much body fat may preserve cognitive function.
The effect of increased body fat persisted even after adjusting for its effect on increasing cardiovascular risk factors like diabetes and high blood pressure, as well as vascular brain injury, which should prompt researchers to investigate which other pathways may link excess fat to reduced cognitive function.”
A healthy body weight is key to a healthy brain, said Dr Eric Smith, study co-author:
“Preserving cognitive function is one of the best ways to prevent dementia in old age.
This study suggests that one of the ways that good nutrition and physical activity prevent dementia may be by maintaining healthy weight and body fat percentage.”
Nutrition and cognitive function
Nutrition is often linked to cognitive function by research.
For example, a study on rats found that high-fat foods can reduce intelligence in just 9 days.
Cognitive performance was reduced by 20 percent in just over a week after eating a high-fat diet.
The study on rats fed them a diet equivalent to human junk food.
Another rat study also found that diets high in saturated fats can slow brain function.
In contrast, healthier diets have repeatedly been linked to better cognitive function, higher IQs and a lower risk of dementia.
For example, people fed a healthier diet from an early age have a higher IQ, one study found.
Even eating organic food in childhood is linked to a higher IQ.
Finally, the MIND diet could lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by over 50 percent and improve your brain health.
The study was published in JAMA Network Open (Anand et al., 2022).
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Smart Women Are Only More Attractive To Men Sometimes — Here’s When
This confirms what smart women always suspected about men.
This confirms what smart women always suspected about men.
Men prefer smarter women, but only in theory, a study finds.
When a real living, breathing smarter women is close by, men shy away, preferring women of lower intelligence.
Dr Lora Park, who led the study, said:
“There is a disconnect between what people appear to like in the abstract when someone is unknown and when that same person is with them in some immediate social context.”
The research tested the difference between abstract and actual intelligence.
Dr Park explained the results of the study:
“We found that men preferred women who are smarter than them in psychologically distant situations.
Men rely on their ideal preferences when a woman is hypothetical or imagined.
But in live interaction, men distanced themselves and were less attracted to a woman who outperformed them in intelligence.”
Perhaps we should avoid laying all the blame on men, though.
The study just happened to look at men’s attraction towards women, it didn’t examine women’s attraction towards men.
Dr Park said:
“That’s a question for future research.
But presumably, anyone who is outperformed by someone close to them might feel threatened themselves.
We just happened to look at men in a romantic dating context.”
In the research 650 young adults were given a range of different scenarios in six separate studies.
Some men were only shown profiles of women, others expected to meet women while some actually met women in real life.
Dr Park said:
“In each case, how much you like someone or how much you are attracted to them is affected by how intelligent that person is relative to you and how close that person is relative to you.”
But it’s vital that the quality — in this case intelligence — is important to you, said Dr Park:
“The domain matters.
If you don’t care about the domain, you might not be threatened.
Yet, if you care a lot about the domain, then you might prefer that quality in somebody who is distant, then feel threatened when that person gets close to you.”
So, in this case it seems intelligence really does matter.
The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Park et al., 2015).
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