Dr. Majid Fotuhi

So having a sense of purpose reduces the risk of dementia by 19%, reduces risk of heart attack by 12%, reduces the risk of strokes by 50%.

In other words, you look at two groups of people

One group has high score for a sense of purpose in life, one group has low score.

And then look at their brains, the people with higher sense of purpose have 50% fewer strokes than people who don't have a sense of purpose in life.

You live longer, you have less stress, you sleep better, your brain is sharper.

Here's another thing.

If you look at two groups of people with the same load of plaques and tangles of Alzheimer's disease.

So person A, let's say from one to 10, has six out of 10 plaques and tangles in their brain.

And person B has six out of 10 plaques and tangles in their brain.

And then you do cognitive testing on them to see how well they perform

on a test of cognitive functions.

People who have a sense of purpose in life perform much better in tests of cognition than people who have low sense of purpose, even though both groups have plaques and tangles in their brain.

There is something magical about having a sense of purpose in life.

It has biological differences.

And the study in Wisconsin showed that if you look at MRIs and look at the number of neurites, how many synapses they have,

People with a sense of purpose in life have actually more synapses.

than people who don't.

This is interesting because we can't have animal studies.

We can't have like mice who have a sense of purpose in life.

So it's hard to do hardcore scientific studies.