Introduction
As the aging population in Australia increases, the number of people with dementia is on the rise. What many don’t know is how much the profession you work in can influence your risk of developing this disease.

01: The Surge in Alzheimer’s Cases in Australia, These Jobs Have the Lowest Risk
According to a report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), in 2023, there were 411,100 people living with dementia in Australia!

AIHW estimates that this means 15 out of every 1,000 Australians have dementia, while for Australians aged 65 and above, the number rises to 84 per 1,000. With Australia's aging population, these numbers are expected to keep growing.

However, many people don’t know that the job you do can also impact the risk of developing dementia. New research shows that compared to adults in hundreds of other professions, taxi drivers and ambulance drivers have a significantly lower rate of death from Alzheimer’s disease.

This result is an observational study, but researchers suggest that memory-intensive jobs might be linked to a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The hippocampus, a key brain region responsible for spatial memory and navigation, shows exceptional function in taxi drivers. Studies show that taxi drivers’ hippocampal function is generally superior to the average population. Interestingly, the hippocampus is also one of the brain regions most associated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

“It is also one of the brain regions linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease, which raises the possibility that occupations requiring frequent spatial processing might be associated with a lower Alzheimer’s death rate.”

02: In-Depth Analysis by Researchers: Memory-Intensive Jobs May Be the Key
To verify this hypothesis, researchers analyzed the causes of death among nearly 9 million people across 443 different professions between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2022.

Results showed that among the 348,328 people who died from Alzheimer’s disease (3.9% of the sample), taxi drivers and ambulance drivers had a much lower death rate compared to the average. Specifically, of the 16,658 taxi drivers, only 171 (1.03%) died from Alzheimer’s disease, and among ambulance drivers, the rate was even lower—only 0.74% (10 out of 1,348).

After adjusting for age and other social and demographic factors, the death rate from Alzheimer’s among taxi and ambulance drivers was the lowest in all professions studied (1.03% and 0.91%, respectively), much lower than the general population (1.69%).

This finding provides strong evidence supporting the idea that memory-intensive jobs may help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Interestingly, not all transportation-related jobs have the same result. For example, bus drivers and pilots, whose routes are predetermined, did not show the same decline in Alzheimer’s death rates as taxi and ambulance drivers. This suggests that jobs involving frequent spatial processing and memory retrieval may be key to reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s.

Additionally, the study found that taxi and ambulance drivers did not show a decrease in the death rate from other forms of dementia. This further highlights the special connection between changes in the hippocampus and a lower risk of Alzheimer’s.

Despite these promising results, researchers acknowledge that further in-depth studies are needed to determine whether the spatial cognitive tasks required by these jobs directly influence the risk of dying from Alzheimer’s and whether any cognitive activities can help prevent it.

Conclusion
Although there is still no conclusive evidence showing a direct cause for these professions lowering the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, the current data suggests that jobs like ambulance driving and taxi driving, which involve frequent spatial processing, have a significantly lower incidence of the disease.

This new research provides a fresh perspective and approach for Alzheimer’s disease prevention.