[originaltext] A recent study reveals higher education tends to speed up men

A recent study reveals higher education tends to speed up mental decline and leave elderly people at a loss for words.
    Participants in the study were all more than 70 years old. They were tested up to four times between 1993 and 2000 on their ability to remember 10 common words read aloud to them. The most educated test subjects were found to experience a steeper decline during the years in remembering the list.
    Individuals with a better education seem to have a higher starting point in their word memory, and so may initially remember more total words than their less educated peers.
    The more education one has, the more words one will know to begin with. It appears the more you know, the more you have to lose.
    The explanation for the faster decline of more educated individuals could possibly be they were unable to access memory tricks they once relied on to help them remember things. For a while, these strategies can help them compensate, but as they get older, their brains become overwhelmed and they can no longer use those strategies.
    Because the study didn’t follow people across their entire life spans, there could be other unseen factors. For example, those with less education may start their cognitive decline earlier.
    The possibly protective nature against conditions like dementia could be due to a correlation between higher education and generally higher living standards, like access to better health care and better eating habits. The things that make a healthy body make a healthy mind.