ArcaMax

Conventional wisdom suggests that higher levels of education directly protect against cognitive decline and brain aging. That is, if you're a college graduate, you're less likely to experience dementia compared to people with less formal education.

A new international study puts that thinking in doubt. Researchers analyzed longitudinal data from more than 170,000 people in 33 countries and found that while people with more years of formal education tend to start with a higher cognitive level in adulthood, they do not experience slower cognitive decline with age.

The good news: The incidence of cognitive decline appears to be decreasing, and older adults have better cognitive function today than they did 20 years ago. The trend is attributed to smarter lifestyle choices in the population, such as better diets, more exercise, regular social activities and improved health care.

Body of Knowledge

Every person has a unique body odor, a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Even identical twins who share the same DNA have been shown to smell slightly different.

Get Me That, Stat!

In data from the latest National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, researchers found that the mean percentage of total daily calories from ultraprocessed foods for Americans 1 year and older is 55%.

Mark Your Calendar

September is a busy health awareness month, with observances for many types of cancer (blood, ovarian, prostate and pediatric), atrial fibrillation, childhood obesity, cholesterol, sickle cell, sepsis and Alzheimer's disease. September is also national recovery month -- if you can get through the month.

Doc Talk

CBT: It's the acronym for cognitive behavioral therapy, a type of psychotherapy used to help individuals manage problems by changing the way they think and behave. It also, informally, refers to chronic biscuit toxicity, an allusion to patients who overeat to their physical detriment. In British English, a biscuit is what Americans call a cookie.

Phobia of the Week

Ablutophobia: fear of washing or bathing. Followed by autodysomophobia, the fear that one is emitting a vile odor.

Never Say 'Diet'

The Major League Eating speed-eating record for spaghetti with red sauce is 10 pounds in eight minutes, held by Matt Stonie, who remarkably did not receive the award pasta-humously.

Best Medicine

If four out of five people suffer from diarrhea, does that mean one person enjoys it?

Observation

"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity." -- American writer and poet Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849). Poe's mental health has long been a subject of study and debate. There is no definitive diagnosis, but it has been variously suggested that Poe suffered from chronic depression, alcoholism, anxiety, bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder -- or some combination.

Medical History

This week in 1978, U.S. scientists announced the production of human-type insulin by a strain of E. coli bacteria that had been genetically engineered after months of creative gene-splicing. The work was a joint effort by research teams in California at Genentech Inc. in San Francisco and the City of Hope National Medical Center in Los Angeles.

A normal body's production of insulin takes place within cells of the pancreas, programmed by certain genes. The scientists synthesized copies of these genes and inserted them into a weakened lab strain of the intestinal microbe Escherichia coli. In 1982, insulin was the first recombinant DNA drug to be marketed as Humulin by Eli Lilly & Co.

Sum Body

Match these archaic or obsolete medical terms with their modern names.

1. Biliousness

2. Mortification

3. Green sickness

4. Quinsy

5. Jail fever

A) Typhus

B) Gangrene

C) Jaundice

D) Oral infection near tonsils

E) Anemia

Answers: 1-C; 2-B; 3-E; 4-D; 5-A

Medical Myths

Generally speaking, the brain is not more active when asleep than when awake. Some regions, such as those involved during REM sleep or memory consolidation, can be more active, but overall brain activity is typically lower during sleep compared to wakefulness.

If people tell you they're "going to sleep on it," they're really just referring to their mattress.

Curtain Calls

In 1900, more than 6,000 people in England were poisoned by beer that had been brewed using impure sulfuric acid containing arsenic. More than 70 people died, and many of the survivors were left paralyzed.

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