Financial hardship may age the brain faster, researchers say in new study

Adults who faced persistent financial hardship showed poorer cognitive performance and signs of accelerated brain aging later in life, according to a new study.

Researchers at University College London looked at 2,759 U.K. participants from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development born in 1946, as stated in a press release.

Adults who reported experiencing persistent financial hardship or low income performed worse on cognitive tests that assessed verbal memory and processing speed.

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Those who had persistent low income also showed poorer brain health based on MRI scans, which measured markers of aging like brain shrinkage and enlarged ventricles.

"[While] we know well that cognitive decline is associated with both genetic risks and adverse childhood experience, we knew very little about what happens during the life course … particularly, the experience of persistent financial stress over the lifetime," study author Dr Jacques Wels from the Unit for Lifelong Health & Ageing at UCL told Fox News Digital.

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"The study clearly demonstrates … that the accumulation of poverty is linked to cognitive decline. We used different measures of lifecourse financial adversity and different measures of cognitive decline and they all show the same results, which makes the results solid."

The associations were strongest among men, people who had disadvantaged childhoods and carriers of the APOE-ε4 genetic variant that is linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease.

"The study shows that [while] cognitive decline is both a matter of genetic risks and individual behaviors, it is also affected by the experiences we live over our lives that we don’t always have control on," Wels added.

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Based on the findings, the researchers suggested that chronic financial adversity over decades, rather than short-term periods of hardship, is linked to faster cognitive aging.

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This could be the result of chronic stress leading to inflammation or increased cognitive load from persistent financial worry, the authors proposed.

There were some limitations of the study, including that its observational design could not prove that the financial stress caused the cognitive effects.

"We are looking at a cohort of people born in 1946 – so their life course experience is really dependent on the context they lived in," Wels noted. "For instance, we found stronger effects among males, which reflects the ‘breadwinner’ role of men in older cohorts, something we might not observe in more recent generations."

Even after accounting for many other factors that could influence brain health, it's still possible that unmeasured variables may have affected the results, the study authors acknowledged.

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While reducing long-term poverty could help protect brain health, the UCL team said further studies are needed to determine whether improving financial circumstances directly reduces the risk of cognitive decline and dementia.