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A healthy IQ

by Dr Norman Swan

A Scottish study has found that a person's IQ may go part of the way to determining his or her health.

12 12 2006


The better off and the more educated you are, and the higher you are in an organisation, the longer you live and the lower your chances of heart disease, stroke and many cancers.

You'd think this gradient would be explained by better diet, less smoking and more exercise. But in fact it persists even allowing for those factors.

There is evidence that chronic stress at work and at home cause some of the gradient - it's usually called control, meaning the sense of control one has over ones life. But even control isn't the whole story.

Could it be IQ?

It's an uncomfortable topic because it reeks of elitism and heredity but people with lower IQ are at greater risk of poverty and unemployment.

A Scottish study has examined this and found that IQ does indeed explain some of the gradient in health but again not all of it.

The issue is that your status, degree of privilege and background are what really matter to your health so maybe we need to focus on them rather than dissecting data into ever smaller pieces.

For Reference

Title: British Medical Journal
Author: Batty GD et al. Does IQ explain socioeconomic inequalities in health? Evidence from a population based study in the west of Scotland.
2006; 332: 580 - 584