Differential Epidemiology: Intelligence And Mortality

Differential epidemiology is a new field of research that studies the factors that influence people who use the health system and whether or not they follow their treatments. Two of these factors have now been presented: the five personality traits and the G factor of intelligence.

The main aim of this research area of ​​differential epidemiology is to establish a link between intelligence (or the G-factor), personality traits and mortality.

In a study conducted at the University of Edinburgh in 2017, researchers found a link between people who showed signs of intelligence when they were children and their eventual death. They concluded that the higher a person’s intelligence is at age 11, the more likely they are to live past the age of 80.

In other words, there appears to be a link between the G factor and practicing healthy habits, taking recommended medications, following a treatment regimen, exercise and following a balanced diet.

Differential epidemiology

This may mean that in addition to allowing us to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, or understand complex ideas, our intelligence is also a good predictor of our life expectancy. If your G-factor is lower than 85, you are at risk, according to the researchers.

Apparently, the G factor isn’t just about following treatments for disease. It could also help anticipate and prevent unexpected accidents. Some studies show that people with an IQ below 85 are three times more likely to be killed or injured in a car accident than those with an IQ above 115.

The difficult part of drawing conclusions is that not all people receive the same medical treatment. Our health system also doesn’t take the G factor into account at any point. But if it did, we could treat people with low IQs better.

If this is really the case, we are dealing with a problem of lack of accessibility in our current health system. At first, this may not seem all that logical.

However, the key to improving our medical care may not just be offering more services. The right answer might be to provide proper care to a person with a specific G-factor and personality.

Mortality and personality

The G factor doesn’t seem to be the only thing that affects one’s mortality. Studying this side of the story isn’t the only thing that matters in differential epidemiology, either.

The five traits Goldberg identified—openness to experience, accuracy, extroversion, friendliness, and neuroticism—can also play an important role in medical care.

In the case of personality traits, the possibilities of whether different personality traits can be the cause of certain disorders have been studied .

For example, conscientiousness or care would be related to the use of alcoholic beverages, cannabis and tobacco. Neuroticism is said to be linked to depression, anxiety and phobias. Kindness or politeness would be related to things like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), obsessions, and schizophrenia.

Likewise, these personality traits would also have a very practical relationship with your general health. If we look at the integrative personality model, we can see that some factors are more important than others.

Such is the case with conscientiousness, or self-control, which regulates temperamental systems defined by other character traits.

Thus, a physician should consider, for example, a person’s level of conscientiousness to determine a treatment plan. Of course, they also have to look at the other character traits and go through the same basic process.

Phenocopies and Psychological Profiles

The importance of differential epidemiology is clearer when you think about what adapting medical care to people’s G-factors might mean. If researchers continue to study this field, we may be able to develop profiles based on a person’s genes and their interaction with the environment.

This would help us better understand how a person’s intelligence and personality traits affect the way they live their life. From there we can develop a psychological profile. A profile to find the ideal way to plan things like:

• operations
• a certain type of medication
• which day someone needs a certain check

Things we can put into practice

We still don’t have enough studies on individual genetics and differential epidemiology. However, we can still start implementing certain things in checkups, operations and medical treatments. This would be a first step in leveling the playing field for people of different IQs.

There are also other things about the G-factor that can be easily put into practice. For example, think of:

• don’t expect a certain reading level
• communicate exactly what a patient should do (and should not do)
•  r ecepten easily do so they are understood by the general public. This can be done, for example, by using a simpler vocabulary and omitting unnecessary information

Personalization based on character traits

In terms of personality traits, we should personalize medical care based on each patient’s specific character traits. This can include anything as broad as giving people the right medication depending on their personality.

For example, you wouldn’t give someone with a high extroversion any medication that could affect their social life. But you could give someone with high conscientiousness a drug that would affect their concentration because they could cope with that side effect.

Or you could work directly on a therapeutic relationship with someone of low politeness. All of these things would do more than just help people get the best from healthcare. It would make the system itself more effective and faster, and increase the likelihood that patients will adhere to a treatment.

Knowing a patient’s intelligence and personality profiles could also help doctors create prevention plans for certain unhealthy behaviors. By knowing how people process information, they can then figure out the best way to transfer that information.