Young Cognitive Function Predicts Aged Pulmonary Function
Many measurable differences in human ability and life course correlate with long-term health, age-related dysfunction, and mortality. Intelligence, social standing, and wealth are some of the more easily measured line items, but the reasons why these things correlate with better health and life expectancy remain to be proven. We can all suggest that more intelligent people will obtain access to and make better use of medical resources, as well as take better care of their general health, but demonstrating that this is in fact the mechanism using data from human populations is a whole different story. The issue is confounded by the fact that intelligence, social standing, and wealth all correlate strongly with one another as well, and there is even some evidence to suggest that greater intelligence and a more robust metabolism might have a biological connection in mechanisms of stress resistance.
On this subject, here is an interesting correlation pulled from historical epidemiological records, showing that young cognitive ability predicts future function of the respiratory system:
Poor pulmonary function is associated with mortality and age-related diseases, and can affect cognitive performance. However, extant longitudinal studies indicate that early cognitive ability also affects later pulmonary function. Despite the multifaceted nature of pulmonary function, most longitudinal studies were limited to a single index of pulmonary function: forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1). In this study, we examined whether early adult cognitive ability predicted five different indices of pulmonary function in mid-life.Mixed modelling tested the association between young adult general cognitive ability (mean age=20), measured by the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), and mid-life pulmonary function (mean age=55), in 1019 men from the Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging. Pulmonary function was indexed by per cent predicted values for forced vital capacity (FVC%p), FEV1%p, maximum forced expiratory flow (FEFmax%p), and maximal voluntary ventilation (MVV%p), and by the ratio of FEV1 to FVC (FEV1/FVC), an index of lung obstruction.
After adjusting for smoking, pulmonary disease, occupation, income and education, age 20 AFQT was significantly associated with mid-life FVC%p, FEV1%p, FEFmax%p, and MVV%p, but was not significantly associated with FEV1/FVC. [Thus], early adult cognitive ability is a predictor of multiple indices of aging-related pulmonary function 35 years later, including lung volume, airflow and ventilator capacity. Cognitive deficits associated with impaired aging-related lung function may, thus, be partly pre-existing. However, results also highlight that early life risk factors may be differentially related to different metrics of later-life pulmonary health.