Friday, May 16, 2014

Brain Health for Young and Old


Links and Literature

“C’mon, Swifty, you’re never going to catch up with all that’s current in neuroscience and aging.  Let’s just do a brain dump of our recent findings and go on to a new topic.”

“Good idea, Julie.  But, I may cycle back to aging occasionally.  It’s an area in which I have a personal interest.  I propose that we start with a link to a synopsis of a book with a rather technical title, ‘Love 2.0.’  This is for young and old and definitely not romantic era love poetry.  It’s as straight up as Scotch whisky without rocks.”

“I think it’s a stretch for an old geezer like you to write about love, but maybe you have a good memory.”

“It wasn’t my memory alone; I had help.  Mrs. Curmudgeon’s ghost and I went through the synopsis together.  We read each of Fredrickson’s characteristics of love and agreed, ‘Yep, that was us.’  Here are a few examples: ‘Love is a momentary upwelling of three tightly interwoven events: first a sharing of one or more positive emotions between you and another; second, a synchrony between your and the other person’s biochemistry and behaviors; and third, a reflected motive to invest in each other’s well-being that brings mutual care.’ “

“Evidently, Old Guy, you both had high levels of oxytocin.  But what about this principle?  ‘Your body, sculpted by the forces of natural selection over millennia, was not designed for the abstractions of long-distance love.’ “

“It’s a good thing that I hadn’t read that 25 years ago when our professions required that we live 2,000 miles apart.  We were lucky.  I counted the hours until my next trip to Appleton.”

“So, Curmudge, what’s the bottom line?  What does love contribute to the brain health of the young and old?”

“It should be obvious, Julie.  You’ll live better and longer and like it a lot more.”

“Next lesson, Professor.  I understand that you bought a book, ‘On Purpose’ by Victor Strecher (1).”

“Its cartoon format was a little distracting, but its lessons are valuable.   You recall Maslow’s pyramid, a hierarchy of human needs?  At the top is self-actualization, which requires one to be all that he/she can be.  Then later Maslow thought of an even higher level, the special qualities of people who had a purpose reaching beyond their own needs.  He called these people ‘transcenders.’  Among their qualities are empathy, compassion, truth, openness, community involvement, and being in mutually supportive and caring relationships.”

“Then Strecher shares research results that should be of interest to senior citizens.”

“They are to me, Julie.  Here’s a quotation: ‘People with a (transcendent) purpose appear to be more likely to avoid illnesses.’  They are less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease and are likely to live longer.  Now, chère étudiante, tell me where this reasoning leads us: When the ends of chromosomes become frayed, the deteriorated chromosome means the beginning of disease.  The end of the chromosome is protected by a telomere, which itself is maintained by the enzyme, telomerase.  In 2011, Elizabeth Blackburn found that meditation increases telomerase activity.  That suggests to us that…”

“…One’s lifestyle, hopefully including meditation and having a transcendent purpose in life, should help us to avoid disease.  Hey, Curmudge, that telomerase stuff might be the connection between having a purpose in life and living longer.”

“You just earned an ‘A’, Julie.  Connections between lifestyle and health and longevity are showing up all over.  Here’s a link to a recent article in the Wisconsin State Journal; the title is Alzheimer’s disease could be as much about lifestyle as about aging.  And here’s a quote from Consumer Reports on Health (2): ‘Researchers think that a lifetime of learning and engagement allowed these people (who functioned well despite brains riddled with plaque) to build a “cognitive reserve”—a buffer of extra brain structures and neurological networks that compensated for the areas affected by disease.’ ”

“Speaking of memory, Curmudge, this link should be useful to one who is willing to put a lot of effort into sharpening his/her memory.  It is in Brain Pickings, the same place where we found the synopsis of Love 2.0.  So, Curmudge, we have devoted two typed pages to brain health for young and old.  Do you have a really profound conclusion for our readers?”

“It’s pretty simple.  Living a meaningful life to the end takes a lot of work.  Developing the right mindset is like developing a skill; it’s better if you start when you are young.  However, a person of any age can benefit from these findings.”

Kaizen Curmudgeon        

(1)  On Purpose: Lessons in Life and Health From the Frog, Dung Beetle, and Julia by Victor J. Strecher, Dean Ornish and Kody Chamberlain (2013)  $19.95 from Amazon.
(2)   How to sharpen your memory now.  Consumer Reports on Health, vol. 26, no. 5, (May 2014).

Link to posting from blog archives: Judgment 6/18/10 http://kaizencurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2010/06/judgment.html

No comments: