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If you think the heat’s messing with your head, you may be right. A new study of older adults found that repeated, prolonged exposure to extreme heat can result in cognitive decline.
Researchers from the New York University (NYU) School of Global Public Health and Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea found that extreme heat can “trigger a cascade of events in the brain, including cellular damage, inflammation, and oxidative stress, all of which can exhaust one’s cognitive reserve,” Virginia Chang, an associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at NYU and the study’s senior author, said in a statement.
“Cognitive decline may not manifest right after a single heat event, but repeated or prolonged exposures to extreme heat may be detrimental,” Chang added.
The study follows the hottest month on record, though extreme heat doesn’t affect everyone equally.
Low-income and BIPOC-majority neighborhoods face greater risks due to a dearth of “well-maintained green spaces, air conditioning, and cooling centers,” according to Haena Lee, an assistant professor of sociology at Sungkyunkwan University and co-author of the study.
The study’s authors analyzed data from a survey that was conducted between 2006 and 2018 of ~9,500 US adults ages 52+, and found that extreme heat led to faster cognitive decline in older Black adults but not “white or Hispanic older adults.”
“One possible explanation for this pattern of findings is that Black older adults may have disproportionately experienced systemic disadvantages throughout their lives due to structural racism, segregation, and other discriminatory policies, all of which may affect cognitive reserve,” Chang said in a statement.
The study’s authors concluded that their findings “underscore the need for policy actions to identify and support high-risk communities for increasingly warming temperatures.”