The Possibilities of Overworking the Brain Causing Illness Later in Life

With a new medical theory saying that overworking the brain causes future brain problems--you have to wonder if conspiratorial type of people will think this is a sinister plot by those who abhor intellectual curiosity. Anybody who thinks that overworking the brain is dangerous sounds like someone who wants knowledge to die out or promote the idea of artificial intelligence accumulating the world's knowledge for us. Yet there seems to be compelling evidence that if we overuse our sense of memory early in life, it puts a strain on the memory hub and burns it out later in life to the point of causing dementia or Alzheimer's. This theory does point out, however, that it all depends on whether you have the Alzheimer's gene. Since most people choose not to know that, chances are those susceptible will be continuing to work their brains to intense levels to keep up in the world.

The key word there, though, is strain. Also, another key word is young brains and not middle-age or older ones. If those in high school or college with the Alzheimer's gene (called the APOE4) get overburdened using their memory skills, their memory hubs become hyperactive at all times, including moments of rest. Of course, the problem here is that everybody who's in school has to use their brain to the fullest degree or risk dropping out and ending up...going on American Idol or something. With today's educational requirements, it could be that we're setting up kids toward a brain burnout later in life.

Not that anybody can prove it yet. And someone might argue that by the time those kids get Alzheimer's, we'll have a cure for it. Not that anybody can prove that yet either, especially when we don't know if future Presidents will continue stem cell research. We also don't know what else overuse of the brain could cause in the future, particularly if we continue to use our brain in a career that demands supreme cerebral abilities. It gives a new thought that we probably never considered the possibility a brain can wear out from being overrun as much as a transmission system in a car.

We've obviously seen evidence that brains can have meltdowns when under intense pressure or just via stress that also puts strain on the brain and everything else. Most of us who went to school before the 90's all remember having the pressure of heavy-duty homework in high school, yet really can't really compare to what's expected of kids today to deliver in an ever-demanding educational system. Some of the graduating requirements in my local school district today couldn't even be imagined when I was in high school during the late 80's. For most of us, though, it's should be a relief that kids are learning college-level material already in high school in order to compete in a demanding world.

It's from the perspective of kids that we have to worry about and how much mental pressure they can really withstand. Some love the challenge and others are burning out before they can even finish school. For those who love filling their brain with knowledge as quickly as possible, it's probably hard to comprehend they could be setting themselves for dementia or other brain problems later in life. When you also have the mysterious impact of brain tumors happening to cerebrally active people, it places more suspicion on just how fragile our brains may really be when we're depending on it more than ever.
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Perhaps another explanation why kids are setting themselves up for brain burnout later in life is the use of brain-enhancing drugs that have been proven to safely give you better mental acuity. For those with an affinity to intellectual curiosity and creativity, they may not need anything like that and already play the crapshoot of this new medical theory. I've always found it fascinating, however, that so many famous people who've had brain tumors and brain issues were highly creative people who used their brains more than the average person. Yes, I've written before that it could be the environment for the increase in brain cancers. Yet in a different era, that doesn't add up.

For example, brain tumor victim George Gershwin lived during a time when there was no exposure to radiation where a tumor could develop. There was no TV, no cell phones or even radiation for that matter in the age before the atom bomb. He nevertheless was one of the hardest-working composers in the world as well as one of the most popular. Was his overwork the result of a tumor developing in his brain before he was 40 years old?

It's a left-field theory to be sure, though a number of other creative types developed the same thing long before the age where dangers of technology became a suspect cause. This only had to happen in certain individuals who were vulnerable since the most mentally-taxed scientists of our age (namely Albert Einstein for starters) never had brain issues late in life. The argument still is valid that keeping ourselves mentally engaged at least later in life helps us keep cerebrally sharp in old age.

That Alzheimer's theory applied to overworking the brain when young has a lot of implications, though. The study done at Oxford University tells us that perhaps intense knowledge shouldn't be crammed into a young mind until it's fully developed. It used to be that kids would be spared heavy-duty knowledge until college when their brains were presumably fully formed. Now even grade schools are making kids learn early college level subjects before they're even 18 just to get them prepared for the demands of the future.

Oxford may have hit on a warning that the minds of kids need time to grow and cultivate their imaginations before learning anything overly challenging. But when we have so many prodigies being born of late who are compelled to use their brains at full capacity every minute of the day, there may be a cerebral danger for our new generation on the horizon.

The better news in all this is that with the times we're living in, a lot of middle-age and older people who lost their jobs are going back to college to learn new trades because their old ones were outsourced. No, that isn't entirely good news economically outside of the idea that learning complicated new careers at an older age might spare an onslaught of brain problems in many. Don't be surprised to see older people just as taxed mentally with homework as high school students in the future--and eventually competing for the same jobs.

Source:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1168183/Is-Alzheimers-caused-overworking-brain-youth.html