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
(2) How
to sharpen your memory now. Consumer
Reports on Health, vol. 26, no. 5, (May 2014).
