5 ways being left-handed can positively affect your life

Babe Ruth's athletic success may have actually been linked to his left-handedness.

In 2017, Biology Letters published a study showing that left-handed men and women are overrepresented in elite sports, including baseball, table tennis, cricket, and other interactive games where players have to react quickly.

A small study published in 2013 in A Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology tested the performance of 47 right-handers and 50 left-handers on a series of executive-related tasks, like.

The results suggest that left-handed people have better mental flexibility, as The New Yorker reported, which can help them adapt to new situations.

According to the American Psychological Association, left-handed people are less likely to have highly lateralized brains — or brains where certain cognitive functions are specialized to each side of the brain.

In lefties, information may pass more frequently between brain hemispheres, leading to unique ideas and solutions to problems.

"Righties might dismiss an idea as too radical, but nonrighties might be willing to entertain the thought nonetheless, and develop a solution that a right-hander's brain would skip right over," Michael Corballis, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, told the APA.

Another study in Laterality published in 2005 found that among its sample of over 1 million people, lefties had lower rates of arthritis and ulcers.