It’s been awhile since I’ve done a
potpourri post, but I’ve been collecting health tidbits for months. I’m now
sharing these for your enlightenment, in case you missed them.
In the general health category:
drinking can reduce the risk of death. This was reported in the September 4,
2017 issue of Time magazine. The
snippet cited the finding in the Journal
of the American College of Cardiology. Light to moderate drinking
correlated to a 20% reduced risk of death (vs. no drinking at all). “Light to
moderate” was defined as 14 or fewer drinks per week for men and 7 or fewer for
women. Looks like I need to uncork a bottle of vino more often. There goes that diet where I count calories…
About a month later another report in
Time informed us that the American
Heart Association found evidence that meditation lowers blood pressure or
stress hormones. The net takeaway? Lowered risk factors for heart disease. I’m
a big believer in meditation. But now I’m stressed because when I’ve had a
glass or two of wine, I have difficulty focusing well enough to meditate.
Choices, choices.
This same issue promised that just an
hour or two of exercise each week could prevent depression. Based on my
experience, so can a few glasses of Chianti
Classico. The American Journal of
Psychiatry studied 33,000 people for this report. Those who didn’t exercise
were 44% more likely to develop depression during the 11-year follow-up phase.
No guidance was provided on what constituted “exercise,” but I doubt that it
was lifting a wine glass every evening.
This next tidbit from a double issue
of Time in July 2017 came as no
surprise to me: “Forgetting things can make you smarter.” I did a blog post on
a related topic in July 2013—“Why We Forget More As We Age.” Time
reported an item in Neuron that
claimed forgetting the old stuff “clears out details that don’t matter,” making
room for newer (and presumably more useful) info. My post provided a scientific
basis for this. For starters: Similar to the way that a woman is born with a finite number of eggs in her ovaries,
our brains have a finite capacity for the number of things we can remember.
My
explanation continued. Once our hippocampus is full (usually as we approach
retirement age), there’s no more room for new stuff. Depending on your
sentiments and the type of brain you have, you either fail to store any new
information, or the new information bumps out something older that’s already in
there. I then launched into an explanation of the accounting methods LIFO (Last
In, First Out) and FIFO (First In, First Out) and how to control your brain
type. I won’t bore you with where this went. If you want to know, read the 2013 post:
https://retirementsparks.blogspot.com/2013/07/why-we-forget-more-as-we-age.html.
I will, however, share this
suggestion that I made: Scientific
advancements enable a woman to use a donor egg to create a baby. We need to
co-opt that science for gray matter in order to counteract the forgetfulness
that comes with aging. We donate blood. We donate bone marrow. Is it too much
to ask to be able to donate a few cells from one hippocampus to another?
Finally, the Healthy
You column in the August-September 2017 AARP
Magazine was titled: “When Your Brain Has A Mind of Its Own.” In it,
Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky provided some insight into how our
previous experiences can influence the way we interpret current life situations.
He contends, “Our most impulsive actions aren’t always determined by the
moments when they happen.”
He further
explained why some people feel more stress than other folks. His most useful
(but not earth shattering) observations: If you have no control over what’s
going on, you’ll be stressed. Ditto if you don’t have any outlets for your
frustration and you lack social support. I think Sapolsky is missing a
significant causal factor for stress in our lives: the absence of a fine glass
of wine when we really need one. He also missed one foolproof way to reduce
stress.
Here’s my quartet
of anti-stress advice: get a hobby, cultivate a few good friends, and stock up
on fine wine or a nice IPA craft beer. Then grab one of the cats that you
adopted form the local shelter for a relaxing, purr-filled nap.
