Lower IQ lifts risk of heart deaths in poor: Study

As per the Scottish researchers, that explains why poor people are more prone to die of cardiovascular disease.

The researchers studied the database of 4,289 former U.S. soldiers in the study. Two categories of people, one with high socio-economic status and another with low socioeconomic status, were taken into account.

Findings of the study
The evaluation of data on the participants revealed that, along with the well-known risk factors like obesity and smoking, which contribute to cardiovascular disease, IQ also played an important role in aggravating the heart problems.

More than 20 percent of the difference in heart disease and stroke deaths between the two categories was due to the difference in their IQ levels, the researchers said.

In a news release, chief researcher Dr. David Batty, an epidemiologist at the Medical Research Council's Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, said that they already knew socio-economically underprivileged people had shoddier health and as a result they died earlier, due to conditions like heart disease, cancer and accidents.

"Environmental exposures and health-related behaviors, such as smoking and diet and physical activity, can explain some of this difference, but not all of it. This raises the possibility that, as yet, unmeasured psychological factors need to be considered,” Batty said.

He further added that one of the factors was intelligence or cognitive ability or IQ (which is a measure of a person's ability to reason and problem-solving). This crucial factor was directly associated with a person’s socioeconomic status.

Implications of the study
Batty recommended that public health messages that appeared on food, exercise and smoking products need to be converted into simple language so that a layman can understand them.

The current format of the messages “can be quite complicated, even contradictory, and they lack clarity. For instance, we often read about how some types of alcohol are good for you while others, or even the same ones, are not. These messages can be difficult to interpret, even by knowledgeable people," he explained.

Besides, Batty suggested that extensive and mass efforts should be initiated to reduce socioeconomic inequalities that prevailed in the society.

"Initiatives aimed at raising living standards and education of the most disadvantaged families with children could potentially make a difference to those children's health and well-being later in life," he added.

The study was published in the July 15 issue of the European Heart Journal.