Alzheimer's is an entirely different beast than normal mental atrophy and there are plenty of stories of otherwise intelligent people ending up with it.

I'm not saying you shouldn't try using your brain more but this is just like saying Stephen Hawking should have tried exercising more.

Collecting a bunch of covariates is never a substitute for recognizing that you can't force people to be taxi drivers for life.

Could just be that whatever factor causes certain cabbies to live much longer than their cohort is also protective from Alzheimer’s. I guess they might have accounted for that too — I’ll have to look at the study.

Learning new languages (and actually using them) is a great way to do this for all ages!