Jeff Cassman

How long Omicron symptoms will last is suggested by the latest data from current cases.

Omicron has now become the dominant COVID variant in many countries around the world.

At the moment the main concern is that new coronavirus variants may cause serious illness.

The data on the latest Omicron variants suggests that it is somewhat different with other COVID variants.

Omicron shares many similar symptoms with a common cold such as fatigue, runny nose, sneezing, headache, and sore throat.

The data collected on Omicron by the ZOE COVID Symptom study indicates that the virus is less severe than the other COVID-19 variants.

So far Omicron symptoms have also been generally milder than those associated with the previously dominant Delta variant.

The data on the duration of Omicron infection also suggests that the recovery time is quicker and the illness is getting shorter — perhaps as little as a few days.

Professor Tim Spector who specialises in genetic epidemiology and the lead scientist of the ZOE COVID study, said:

“Broadly what we’re seeing now is the majority of people testing PCR positive actually have cold-like symptoms and they do not have the classical triad of ill Covid symptoms of fever, loss of smell and taste and persistent cough.”

Omicron symptoms

The Omicron variant is not so strongly linked to some signs that are frequently connected to COVID.

For example, a loss of the sense of smell does not seem to be linked to Omicron.

Infection with the Omicron variant can be difficult to diagnose without testing because the symptoms vary between people.

It will depend on the person’s age, their vaccination status and other biological factors specific to them.

Some people may experience a very heavy cold, others lighter symptoms and others no symptoms at all.

However, both prior coronavirus infection and vaccination can neutralize the Omicron variant and reduce the risk of serious symptoms and hospitalisation.

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These activities can help to delay the onset of dementia by as much as 5 years.

Simulating mental activities like card games, writing letters, doing puzzles and reading can help delay the onset of dementia by 5 years, a study finds.

People in the study who took part in these types of activities a few times a week did not develop dementia until 94-years-old.

However, those who only did these activities a few times a year developed dementia, on average, at 89-years-old.

The research underlines the importance of keeping the brain active with age.

Other ways to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s include:

1. Eating a high quality diet, such as the MIND diet.
2. Giving up smoking — even after 60 — benefits physical and cognitive health.
3. Exercise: 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise is a good weekly target.
4. Limit alcohol to light or moderate intake. In the US, moderate drinking is no more than 2 standard drinks per day for men and 1 for women (i.e. 2 glasses of wine for men and 1 for women).

Dr Robert S. Wilson, the study’s first author, said:

“The good news is that it’s never too late to start doing the kinds of inexpensive, accessible activities we looked at in our study.

Our findings suggest it may be beneficial to start doing these things, even in your 80s, to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s dementia.”

For the study, almost 2,000 people, average age 80, were tracked over 7 years.

None had dementia at the start of the study and they were given examinations every year.

They all rated how much they participated in mentally stimulating activities, including answering questions such as:

• “During the past year, how often did you read books?”
• “During the past year, how often did you play games like checkers, board games, cards or puzzles?”

Dr Wilson explained the results:

“Our study shows that people who engage in more cognitively stimulating activities may be delaying the age at which they develop dementia.

It is important to note, after we accounted for late life level of cognitive activity, neither education nor early life cognitive activity were associated with the age at which a person developed Alzheimer’s dementia.

Our research suggests that the link between cognitive activity and the age at which a person developed dementia is mainly driven by the activities you do later in life.”

Ruling out reverse causation

The researchers tested an alternative hypothesis that low cognitive activity may be a sign of dementia rather than the cause.

They looked at the brains of 695 people who died during the study.

However, there was no link between how cognitively active people were and markers of Alzheimer’s in their brains.

This suggests that cognitive activity is driving a lower Alzheimer’s risk, rather than the other way around.

The study was published in the journal Neurology (Wilson et al., 2021).

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This sign is not normally linked to being smart.

Happiness is a sign of high intelligence, research finds.

People who are more satisfied with their life and their job score higher on tests of general mental ability.

Satisfaction with life is one of the two major aspects of happiness, along with the feeling of positive emotions in the moment.

The results come from 33 studies on almost 50,000 people.

Along with finding a link between happiness and higher IQ, the study also found that higher IQ was linked to greater job satisfaction.

More intelligent people tend to earn more and have more complex jobs.

Complexity is likely to be more rewarding.

Naturally, then, when highly intelligent people are not challenged in their job, they are not as happy.

The study’s authors conclude:

“…smarter people may be happier both at work and in their everyday lives as a function of their higher attained job complexity and income.

We also found that, when holding complexity and income constant, GMA [general mental ability, or IQ] has a negative relationship with job satisfaction, which may be due to feelings of boredom and frustration at work experienced by high GMA individuals at “average” levels of complexity and income.”

The study was published in the Journal of Vocational Behavior (Gonzalez-Mulé et al., 2017).

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