Category: Health

I hadn’t realized until recently….

I hadn’t realized until recently just how much politics has intruded into medical  funding. And I’m not writing about the controversial “Obamacare,” recently validated by the Supreme Court and set to go into full implementation in 2014.  This intrusion has its genesis through several administrations, going all the way back to the early 80s. Consider that current government bio-medical allocations by the National Institutes of Health include the following 2012 funding:

Heart disease: 2.2 billion (Deaths annually: 771,100; expenditure per patient: $27).
Diabetes: 1 billion (Deaths annually: 70,611; expenditure per person: $42).
Breast cancer: 778 million (Deaths annually: 41,049; expenditure per patient: $3,721).
Prostate cancer:  337 million  (Deaths annually: 28,517;  expenditure per patient: $177).
Obviously, men are being short-changed. But that’s not the worst of it. Both sexes suffer dismal funding when you take HIV/AIDS funding into account:
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HIV/AIDS: 3.2 billion (Deaths annually: 10,295; expenditure per patient: $3,047).
I find this shocking. But there is more to this egregious funding for a disease that pales when it comes to the mortality rates for our primary illnesses.
In addition to research allocations for HIV/AIDS, 15.6 billion has been designated for housing and cash assistance to HIV/AIDS patients. All of this pales when you consider our government, beginning with the recent Bush administration, has pledged itself to spending 50 billion on global AIDS.
Since1981, we’ve spent 170 billion on AIDS and continue to spend 20 billion annually on it, not including 24 billion in last year’s budget.
Currently, there are about 81 million Americans with heart disease, according to the AHA.
The CDC’s National Vital Statistics Report says that there are 24 million of us with diabetes, not including a larger number who are pre-diabetic.
Presently, some 1,200,000 of us have cancer.
It should be obvious that our health budget is out-of-wack when it comes to AIDs and blatantly unfair to the vast majority of us threatened with diseases vastly more dangerous.  
How did it get this way? When AIDS first became prominent in the early 80s it was, indeed, a hideous disease growing exponentially. Since then, mortality rates have declined nearly 18% and new medications have made HIV manageable.
 
At present, government health allocations are skewered and blatantly unfair, as well as injurious to the vast majority of us.  
Can anything be done? Unlikely, for it would be deemed PC, or anti-gay.  
One way out might be doubling the allocations for the 16 diseases with higher incident rates of occurrence and mortality than AIDS such as hepatitis and Alzheimer’s. Not likely in a nation still reeling from a stagnant economy and its future enormously compromised with an ever increasing national debt.
 

Lately, I’ve taken a strong interest in….

 
Lately I’ve taken a strong interest in meditation to escape stress and feel more relaxed.  From the medical sources I’ve read, I’m convinced it has a lot going for it. If you’re depressed or anxiety prone, meditation may be more helpful than Zoloft or Valium and the like. In his book, When Panic Strikes, noted psychiatrist David Burns, argues that the new research isn’t gung-ho anymore on the assumption of chemical imbalance in the brain, resulting in serotonin deficiency.  What success SSRI’s seem to have may really be the placebo effect in action.  Control groups in which placebos have been given have shown virtually the same results. Of course, this is bad news for the pharmaceuticals, who keep pumping out their propaganda across the media and offering perks to physicians.  Alas, there are even those in the FDA who have had strong links with the drug companies. One thing we do know:  while meds can be necessary for many, they all have potential side-effects that can do great harm.
Burns eschews the psych meds, favoring the cognitive approach with its advocacy of getting rid of emotional distress by adopting alternative, more positive thoughts in handling stress. It takes work to reprogram your responses, but it can be done. Cognitive therapy now dominates counseling, replacing traditional talk therapy. I agree that it can be helpful.
In the hard scenarios, something more is needed.  (Here I’m writing about anxiety, not depression.)  That something may well be meditation. In the last several months I’ve been trying out what’s called restorative yoga, which consists of simple breathing, visualization, and meditation exercises. I’m not a champ at this kind of endeavor. I can’t even say I’ve got the breath thing down right. Books and videos can help, but ultimately, at least initially, you need a good teacher.
Clumsy as I may be, I know that when I retreat to my sunroom hideaway, unroll my mat, and lie down, beginning with breathing from the stomach up through the nose, four seconds in, six seconds out, I sense my body unwinding from its tightness. I follow with body visualization, letting each limb “fall through” into the mat. Then I transport myself mentally into bliss, a scene that brings pleasure. For me, it’s usually my wife and I walking up the steep, narrow pathway of rugged Ben Nevis, the valley below a dense green, splattered by the white wooly sheep grazing contentedly in a rolling landscape fenced by stone walls. I am there again in Scotland, that dear country of green mountains, twisting by-ways, lakes and bubbling brooks, and friendly people. I am at peace.
I follow with actual meditation, or at least the attempt, with the aid of my mantra, the psalmist’s “lead me by the still waters,” emptying the mind, though it keeps insisting it’s the boss.  Whatever my failed attempts, I feel relaxed.
Recently I was virtually mesmerized in reading Tim Park’s Teach Us to Sit Still: A Skeptic’s Search for Health and Healing.  He could have been writing about me. Both of us have been profs, working with language and literature. Both of us are into the mind thing, analytical and suspicious, reserved in our allegiances.  Both of us were raised in a religious context, which we’ve now abandoned. Both of us have suffered the same physical ailment with its ubiquitous fall out, always there, seemingly beyond remedy.
 Parks, in his desperation, suspends his cerebral dissonance, to try meditation.  It comes hard.  It’s all about breathing.  Though the mind resists emptying, Parks knows there’s something to it. He attends a five day retreat.  On the fourth day, it happens. He feels the breath flow across his upper lip.  Heat radiates through his body. And the pain? There is no pain.
Of course the conscious world will bring back the pain with its culminating anxiety. You’re not there in a day. But Parks knows now, though he may not understand it fully, that mind isn’t separate from the body. The mind and body are one.
The seed has been sown and Parks persists, each attempt in overcoming the chattering mind becoming easier.  
Parks finds his way ultimately to permanent relief from his physical pain.
Nonetheless, as a rationalist, he still finds it paradoxical,  He’s a writer with twenty books published, and on one occasion, short-listed for the Booker Award, Britain’s highest award for literary achievement.  Words, after all, not only give him employ, they are the essence of what make us human.
And yet there is that world beyond words, vast and ineffable, removed from the mind’s ceaseless chatter, bringing us in to touch with our full selves.  Integrated, mind and body become amalgam, and reconciliation grants equanimity.  No longer two selves, in our found wholeness comes peace transcending time and space, circumstance and pain.
Teach us to be still.
rj

When it comes to stress….

When it comes to stress management, seeing things in perspective can help you get your ducks in a row. I still stumble, but it helps when I get a tip once in a while such as in reading Peter Bergman’s insightful article in a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review.
Origins of stress
Bergman points out that a lot of our stress comes from frustration, or this disconnect between expectation and result.  I’ll make up some of my own examples here:


1.  You’re driving through a residential neighborhood.  There are stop signs at the end of each block.  You’re behind this guy who doesn’t stop at any of them.  The speed limit, well- posted, says 25.  He’s going at least 40.  It gets to you: why is it some people think the law’s for other people?
   
2.  You thought you had a connection with someone, only to learn they’ve been putting you through a shedder when talking to others.
3.   You haven’t heard from your kids in ages. Not the first time.  Do they give a hoot at all?
4.   It’s the damned cell phone again. Expensive gadget at high monthly costs and you can’t get it to work just when you need it most.
5.   You’ve paid all this money for a good meal, only to find you’ve been short-changed on both the food and the service.  
As I write, I find I’m surprised how easily the examples come to my mind of daily frustration. Doubtless, you can add your own.  
Consequences of stress
Frustration mounts up and spills over, souring relationships and potentially impacting your health, both physical and mental:  think ulcers, gastritis, hypertension, depression, etc.  According to the American Psychological Association (2010), stress can have multiple effects on your body, mood, and behavior:
Body:  headache, muscle tension, upset stomach, insomnia
Mood:  anxiety, restlessness, loss of motivation, sadness
Behavior:  overeating/under eating, anger outbursts, drug or alcohol abuse, withdrawal
Oddly, the APA misses out on the worst behavioral response of all:  suicide
Coping
In getting a handle on things, it’s helpful to gain a sense of perspective.  Say something happens to you. When you can’t get out of your head, then all hell can break loose. Maybe you’ve got something like acid reflux, diabetes, or irritable bowel syndrome. None of them is fun, but resorting to what I call comparison helps put things in perspective.
Better the reflux than the way some people languish. Try on Lou Gehrig’s disease, MS, or cancer. Trade places with a paraplegic needing total care. In the news recently comes the story of the pretty Georgia girl recovering from flesh eating bacteria, resulting in multiple amputations. Haven’t seen such courage in a very long time.
All over the world are those who suffer grievously and unfairly from natural disasters, famine, disease, poverty. Think Africa.  Think Bangladesh. In our own blessed nation, there are many who’ve lost their jobs, homes, and health coverage.  
All too often we learn of Man’s cruelty to his fellows. Think of today’s Syria, of whole families executed, civilians shelled daily, deliberately.
When you lie in bed at night, thinking things are awful for you, try this tactic to get out from under: What’s the worst thing that could ever happen to me? Believe me, it will make your present anxieties seem small.
Here’s another way you might develop a sense of perspective:  what I call the camera technique.
Ok, the moment you sense stress coming on, imagine you’re outside your body, filming yourself. (In yoga, we call this kind of thing the Witness.) Fill the frame with yourself.
Now pull your camera back to fill the frame with people.
Now pull back again to include the landscape.
Then pull the camera back yet again to include the clouds.
Take the shot.
How do you find yourself in the picture now? Seeing yourself in the larger spectrum helps you downsize the seeming magnitude of your stress.  Here, you might look back at the photo that prefaces this entry to catch my meaning.
Set your lens on infinity, whether spatial or temporal. What am I in the backdrop of the stars?
Prognosis
Learning to cope, you’ll discover your stress tumors shrink.  
It’s then you ‘ll find freedom in an unfree world.
rj

i was reading somewhere….

I was reading somewhere that half of those who die from heart disease have low  cholesterol LDL, which of course flies in the face of long-standing medical emphasis on reducing the bad stuff.  But there’s a new blood test in town that explains why you can have acceptable LDL, but still be in danger of a heart attack or stroke.  This test, performed by just two labs in the U.S., measures lipid particles for their size and density   Everyone should take this test on an annual basis at the very least. 
Unfortunately, the practice of relying on cholesterol scores can lead to fatal consequences, since it doesn’t get at the causes of heart disease–poor nutrition, lack of exercise, and daily stress.  Statins don’t even remotely touch on any of these factors, though It may be good for the pharmaceutical industry, contributing substantially to our bloated health costs.
In my last post, I mentioned the crucial role diet plays in preserving good health:  whole grains, fiber, and vegetables versus fats, sugar, refined flour, and lack of sufficient fiber.  As much as you can, focus on a plant based diet.
Writing in the Huffington Post, physician David Hyman cautions that “instead of looking just at the cholesterol numbers, we need to look at the cholesterol particle size. The real question is: Do you have small or large HDL or LDL particles. Small, dense particles are more atherogenic (more likely to cause the plaque in the arteries that leads to heart attacks), than large buoyant, fluffy cholesterol particles. Small particles are associated with pre-diabetes (or metabolic syndrome) and diabetes and are caused by insulin resistance.”
What got me started on this entry is that I recently took the new test and was shocked to find I’m excessively high in small LDL particles.  Further that I’m experiencing insulin resistance, which can be a precursor to diabetes.
For years, I’ve been taking annual blood tests for cholesterol, and thinking everything is well.  Now I think again of that 50% fatality among people displaying low LDL cholesterol, many of them slender types like myself.
I’m actually thankful for the surprise results, as things aren’t helpless.  You can decrease small LDL particles by adopting the eating habits I mentioned earlier and doing five thirty-minute exercise sessions weekly.  You might also try niacin supplements, but under a physician’s monitoring.  Niacin has proven to be as effective as statins for many. 
One caution I need to add:  choose nutritious foods that have a low glycemic index, or convert to blood sugar more slowly.  Look out for the carbohydrates like white potatoes!
Do well and be well.
rj

I was recently reading….

I was recently reading a favorite minimalist blog.  You know, the kind that stresses simplifying one’s life, something I wrote about recently.  The blogger writes about her teaming up with another blogger to reduce her sugar intake, not a bad idea, considering the increasing occurrence of obesity and diabetes, even in children.

She mentions that she eats an apple a day as her primary sugar intake.  If I remember things right, your sugar intake shouldn’t exceed 36 grams daily.  An apple, at 25 grams, almost gets you there.  A medium banana nets you 14 grams.

This leads to a conundrum for me, to say the least.   After all, most medical sources recommend five daily servings of fruit, which help assure proper fiber intake and promote digestive health.  Assuming fruit is loaded with sugar, five helpings would suggest you’d be way over the max.

Out of curiosity, I checked the National Diabetes Association site and found they include fruit as a sugar source.  While they encourage you to eat fruit, you have to trade off with your carb intake.  Rather cumbersome, I’d say.  By the way, I wasn’t aware before of how carbohydrates contribute to your blood glucose.  Cutting out sugar isn’t as easy as it might appear.  Seems you almost need to be a chemist.  Just looking at the sugar content on a label doesn’t suffice.

On the other hand, there are the well-respected holistic doctors such as Neil Barnard and Joel Fuhrman, who shun limits on intake of fresh fruits, though not fruit drinks.  For them, the key is avoiding processed, or refined, foods.  This includes refined carbohydrates.  What about unrefined carbs such as brown rice?  These are the good guys, the complex carbs, which haven’t had their fiber stripped away.

Who’s right? I side with Fuhrman and Barnard.  Don’t stress about carbs or fruit, unless you’re diabetic.  Focus on fruits, plant foods, and the good carbs like oatmeal, rye, multigrain and sourdough breads, brown rice, pasta, etc.

You can also select more wisely by using a glycemic index chart, available online.  The GI indicates how quickly the food item converts to blood sugar.  White potatoes, for example, have a high GI.  Try a sweet potato instead.  Back to the complex carbs.  In general, they have lower GIs.

I’ve found medicine isn’t an exact science.  Abounding in contradiction and uninformed, even dangerous, practices, you always have to be wary.  When it comes to sugar, say no to its common sources– table sugar, cakes, pastries, sodas, etc.  But then don’t forget the carbs and fruit.  Check their GI.  Avocados, for example, have a very low GI.

We are what we eat.  Better:  We become what we eat.  Did you know that 60 percent of our diseases come from what we eat?

Anybody for an apple?

Stress as a health menace

We talk a lot about good health.  Given the increasing expense of medical care, it’s understandable.  Costs seem to have no end in sight.  Mindful, health providers frequently feature free check ups to reduce future costs.  
We can do a lot to help ourselves: quit smoking; imbibe alcohol moderately, if at all; exercise; watch our weight; eat the right foods (low fat meats, lots of veggies and fruit), get a good night’s sleep.
Truth is, even these good habits may not get us there.  The heart of the problem lies not in nutrition, but in daily stress.  There’s plenty to go around these days, whether at work or at home.
I wasn’t surprised to recently see the statistics.  According to a recent National Health Interview Survey, some 75% of us experience moderate to high stress in a given two week time frame.  In fact, stress is costing companies nearly 300 billion a year in claims, lost work days and productivity.
The American Medical Association tells us that up to 60% of all illness derives from stress.  I believe the mind and body are one.  When we’re consistently stressed, our body bears the toll, whether in a weakened immune system, hypertension, or an increased acid digestive environment.  Ultimately, stress can affect our mental stability, work performance and our relationships.
But how do we lessen stress?  Here are ways that work for me.  I don’t pretend I’ve made my way past anxiety.  But these have helped me and may help you.  
1.  Changing thoughts
I’m no guru, but anxiety, my particular consequence of stress, has been a close neighbor all too long.  I don’t like its proximity, but I know it’s not going to move away.  It’s up to me to make the move.
I’ve tried medication to relieve my anxiety.  Frankly, I don’t like this route and try to avoid it since every drug, even the seemingly innocuous, has its side effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea.  Meds often give me that hangover effect or sense of stupor.  They can lead to kidney and liver damage and, ironically, increase the anxiety for which they’ve been prescribed.  There is now convincing research evidence they may not work for many.  User success claims may well be due to a placebo effect. Minimal result differences exist, for example, between those treated with SSRIs (anti-depressants) and those in control groups receiving placebos.
Unfortunately, modern medicine generally treats symptoms, not causes.  I believe we find healing when we root out cause factors.  I wager that our thoughts greatly define who we are and how we feel.  If I can change my thoughts, I can  minimize my anxiety-laden emotions causing my stress.  
The good news is that we can find our way back to well-being, or wholeness of mind, body and spirit.  After all, you are what you think.
2.   Exercise
It’s incredible how well our bodies function when we exercise regularly.  By exercise I mean what gets your heart pounding for a minimum 30 minutes, five times weekly.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s running, swimming, or the elliptical machine in your basement or at the gym.  LDL gets pushed down; HDL (the good stuff), goes higher; weight gain comes under control; blood pressure is lowered, etc. When I exercise, I feel better.
3.  Relaxation strategies
Lately  I’ve been turning to the East with its bottomless wisdom nurtured over centuries into a profundity often missed in our materialistic, frenzied West.  Recently, I found a book with simple yoga exercises designed for stressed people like myself.  They take only twenty minutes to do without all the twist gyrations traditionally associated with Hatha yoga, the form most practiced in the West for its physical regimen.
Yoga has its spiritual side, releasing us from everyday stresses.  When I lie on my mat and practice progressive relaxation and visualization, it helps me to divert.  When I breathe properly, that is, deeply, I can actually feel my tightened muscles relax and my mind yield to prevailing calm.  Yoga teaches me that I can transcend my worries and achieve a richer life free from angst.  Yoga frees me from reacting to the gauntlet  of pummeling circumstance. In its place comes mindfulness, the importance of living in the Now.  Through meditation, I am learning how to control my thoughts.  Detached from my anxieties, I find my worries far away, or like passing clouds in a tall sky. 
When I lie down on my mat, breathe deeply, chant my mantra, or fixation aid, my limbs  seem to have fallen through. I am become like a bird buoyed on a thermal, removed from earth, empowered for flight.
In my kindling of interest in the East I have found Qi Gong and Tai Chi buttress what Yoga does. Because of its simplicity, Qi Gong can be done in a chair. You might think of it as a take-it-with-you exercise.
 
As for Tai Chi, it’s one of China’s foremost cultural achievements.  When I think of China, I visualize multitudes of young and old, gathered in parks, invigorated by early morning coolness, anointed by the sun’s first rays, shifting their balance from foot to foot, arms moving slowly, rhthmically.
4.  Music
Shakespeare tells us that music has charms to soothe the savage beast.  I would say it a more modern way: music has capacity to heal the troubled psyche.  I think of David singing psalms before troubled King Saul. While I like many kinds of music,  I prefer classical Indian music best when it comes to fostering relaxation.  Enya also is very special.
5.  Reading
I’ve always read a lot.  At times when I cannot sleep,  I will read.  Better than a pill, it usually works.
6.  Hobbies
Nobody should be without one.  Hobbies divert, providing a way out from stress.  They also promote the best part of ourselves, the Eros (creative) rather than the Thanatos (the negative or death element.  There are two dynamics, like laws of physics, embracing the universe and individuals: one fostering creation; the other, destruction.  One is positive; the other, negative.  Hobbies foster the right choice.  I happen to indulge in gardening and studying languages.  They’ve proved unstinting in their capacity to delight me and bring peace.
7.  Social
We need each other.  Get out.  Be with others.  Like many of you, I often would prefer to stay home bound, but when I do go out, I’m usually glad I went. Besides, there are dividends.  Psychology tells us that when we connect, we’re happier and live longer.
8.  Humor
Again, Shakespeare rises to the occasion.  “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”  In short, laugh and be well. I turned on the comedy channel last week when I was emotionally fidgeting.  Shakespeare was right.
9.  Good deeds.
 
Wordsworth, that great poet of memory, tells of how recalling his acts of kindness afforded him peace despite the varied, unceasing shocks of life.  A shy person, I’m not there yet. But I’m making effort to go out and do.  To find a cause.  To engage.  Again, Shakespeare reminds us that “Joy’s soul lies in the doing.”
10. Writing
I could have included writing under hobbies, but I wanted to give it emphasis by listing it separately.  Writing offers me catharsis for pent up emotions.  But it also becomes my act of self-discovery, my journey into self-knowledge.  Writing clarifies, helps me see patterns, staves off my too often impulsiveness for making grand, sweeping generalizations and, in being superficial, to be silly.  I’m always wiser when I reflect.
11.  Quietness
I am learning to take time out.  To take time to let go.  To take time to do nothing.  I am learning  to be quiet.  To listen. To learn.

Stress can take its toll on your health

Stress can take its toll on your health.  Unabated, it can shorten your life.  I keep telling myself this, since it’s been a long time bug-a- boo for me. You see, I’m a chronic worrier.
Stress comes in many wrappings.  More commonly, it comes from our dodgem affair with everyday life: work, relationships, unemployment, health issues, a loved one’s death.  I bet you could add to the list. There’s enough to go around, that’s for sure.
A lot of times, we can’t avoid stress.  It’s the entrance fee for pursuing a full life.  We may sometimes wish for lotus land, but it’s in the striving, not escape, we achieve and find fulfillment.  Mark Twain, a guy increasingly compelling for me in his common sense observations, said he would find heaven a boring place. I agree.  
But as I hinted, sometimes stress is of our own making.  Like an ulcer, it can erode life’s joy. I consider myself relatively intelligent and rational, yet I worry a lot, even about little things, like Did I say the right thing? What will people think?  Did I sign the check I just stashed in the envelope?  
Lately, as an older person, I’ve been worried about my health. My body doesn’t work as well. Increasingly, I’ve had to turn sentry to preserve what health remains. Like a car gathering miles, things start to go wrong, sometimes suddenly.
I think my recent nemesis, or anxiety, has its more immediate source in a common human malady: the angst of mortality.  When we’re young, we don’t think about it much, at least most of us. As I write, I think of Auden’s exquisite poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts,” with its allusion to children for whom grief and death, the epitomies of life’s drama, absent themselves in the intensity of their play.
When we get older, we become more aware.  We take insurance and what we pay is determined by scientifically based actuary tables.  
We all worry, but some of us worry far too much, gashing the tree of life in getting too close with our weed-eater approach, trimming away life’s unevenness.
Buddhism has it right in its simple maxim that all suffering comes of desire.  We want too much what we often lack power to control. With acceptance comes peace. This is the great moral of Sophocles’ ancient, yet still riveting play, Oedipus the King, its protagonist determined to outwit Fate.
Worrying comes from a need to control, when what we really need is to let go. Things get a whole lot lighter when we hurl our sack of anxieties over the mountain side.
You see, the best of living comes with living in the moment.  The past is what it is, and we’re not guaranteed a future.
I’m not there yet. The trail up the mountain is arduous in its steep, but I’m making the trek, one step at a time. I have found wise counsel, helpful books, and to my delight, yoga with its progressive relaxation postures, deep breathing, and meditation aspects. I’m curious about Tai Chi.
I’ve been learning to replace negative thoughts, the source of emotional pain, with positive alternatives. I have returned to daily physical exercise, a great stress-buster, too.
I am worrying less. I enjoy life more.
rj

I am back!

I am back!

I am back! This after several months of illness. And I’m feeling better.

I appreciate those of you who read my blog worldwide: Russia, UK, Canada, Germany, the USA, Japan. I’ve missed you!

For new readers, this is an indie blog. I write my observations on a wide variety of topics to provide a stimulus for thought and discussion. I craft carefully with you in mind, usually two or three times a week. You are invited to respond, either through the response option or email options that follow each entry. Don’t be shy and always be gentle with me and each other. Please forgive my sometimes exuberance. I’ve always been a Romantic at heart.

rj

Brain-tickling: n- back tasking

I’ve just returned from North Carolina, visiting my wife’s father in a nursing home. He turns 92 this Christmas. Right now, he’s recovering from a series of falls, the last one resulting in a broken ankle and hence nursing facility. Daddy is lucky in some respects, for the facility strikes me as well run, with sensitive staff (blessed with a sense of humor), decent meals even if institutional, and clean premises.

Yet in all of this, I couldn’t help taking in the white-haired residents, all of them in wheelchairs. Some seemed fixed, no movement throughout the day, heads bent, silent. One dear lady, presumably a stroke victim, courageous, tried to greet strangers, but she might well have spoken another language. In place of words, cheerily pitched sounds, but murmurings for all of that. In nearly a day at the place, I saw few visitors. If “loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every person,” as writer Thomas Wolfe held, then its apex must be old age.

And yet there are things we can do to ease our journey into our senior years. For some time, I’ve been exercising daily, and rigorously, on our elliptical machine. Now I’ve added strength exercises three times a week, using weights to enhance muscle growth. After recently taking a bone scan test, I was delighted to learn I hadn’t lost any height, an occurrence as high as 80% in seniors.

I keep up with testing in general, whether annual blood checks or colonoscopies every three years, given my family’s cancer history. I get a flu shot every fall.

I haven’t touched meat in 15-years. I learned just the other day that only 15% of vegetarians suffer heart attacks. That’s good enough for me.

So much of preserving good health lies in adopting a preventative regimen, as Medicare and health insurers now increasingly recognize and encourage.

But there’s an aspect of maintaining good health that needs more attention. Consider that half of those past 85 suffer dementia. Now that’s huge! Think of the cost and the suffering, the diminishment in human dignity. We need to exercise our minds as well as our bodies.

I subscribe to Massachusetts General Hospital’s Mind, Mood & Memory. In its recent issue, the newsletter notes the success of those who exercise their brains, hence slowing down Alzheimer’s, or even preventing it. Cross word puzzles, Sudoku games, learning a language, etc., all help–and a lot. This hits my palette, for I’ve generally favored games of mental skill like chess over games of chance.

New research indicates that the key to warding off dementia lies in boosting working memory. But how best to do this?

Turns out there’s a brain exercise called n-back that not only stimulates working memory (the kind used in reasoning and solving problems), but increases IQ. Hey, it actually makes you smarter!

Well, this got me going on my own research. I even bought the iPad application N-Back Suite. It’s as gorgeous as it’s friendly to users, allowing for stretching the mind through sensory stimuli (letters, images, sounds, colors, etc.).

With n-back tasking the idea is to remember items appearing in sequences. You can adjust your speed and there are ten levels of difficulty. Most of us will be lucky to get to level 3. It’s challenging.

It’s been tried with children and young adults, too. After 30 days of exercising for 20 minutes, results showed significant gains in fluid intelligence, i.e., the ability to recognize unfamiliar patterns and solve problems. IQ scores averaged 5 point gains. These results lasted 3 months, even though the participants were no longer doing the n-tasks. MGH neuropychologist Mimi Castelo calls the results “impressive.”

If all of this interests you, here are some web sites that offer sample n-back exercises. But don’t forget the iPad application I mentioned earlier.

http://dual-inback.com/nback.html

htpp://brainworkship.sourceforge.net

Good luck!

Death’s reprieve: thoughts on human mortality

All of us, by being born, are immediately under a death sentence, how, when, or where unknown. As an English major and teacher, I came to realize early that the stuff of poetry nearly always comes down to mortality. I often think it’s this aesthetic appreciation of finiteness that propels all great Art, that only through the Imagination, or human creativity, do we get a chance to stave off ending in the creation of an artifice unassailable by time. And yet even here, we deceive ourselves as Keats reminds us in his poignant “Ode to a Nightingale.” Can there be solace in the grave with its suspension of awareness? When our endeavors are the stuff for other ears? In a world where even memory itself becomes cloyed with life’s pursuit? A world where even those who know us best age and succumb?

Sometimes death stalks us at elbow range, and we haven’t the faintest idea how close we’ve come. I think of December, 1981 in Kerala, India, when I nearly lost my balance tottering along a narrow beam as I exited from a river vessel. I didn’t know how to swim.

In June, 1983, returning from my son’s West Point graduation with my wife and daughter, I was driving in the mountains of Western Maryland along a three lane highway, with my present lane about to merge. Unfortunately, a semi-truck was laboring up the sharp ascent in front of us. I foolishly gambled I could pass before the lane gave way, only to find that three lanes suddenly narrowed into two with a car in the other lane approaching at breakneck speed. Trapped in a spatial pincher, I accelerated, threading a narrow opening between the truck and oncoming car. As I swung past, maybe a foot to spare on either side, I heard the car’s screeching brakes as I viewed in my mirror its desperate careening to right itself in its lane. I had teased Eternity’s border

And then there have been those plane journeys: planes nearly colliding because of tower errors, violent storms, a propeller no longer working (this one in the military flying over the Sea of Japan, all of us in parachutes).

Sometimes death comes looking for us close to home. Last week, for instance, on just a late afternoon trip to the grocery store, a big bumper in your face pick-up came speeding round a curvy bend hogging the already narrow road, sending me off the road to avoid a head-on crash. I didn’t have time to think; I reacted instinctively.

Two weeks ago, I took my annual blood work-up. Several days later, I got the mailed results. Bilirubin levels were elevated. Concerned, my doctor scheduled me for a follow up hepatic test and abdominal scan to check liver function and for gall stones, tumors, and cancer of the gallbladder or pancreas. Now anxious, I didn’t find relief in reading in my Mayo guide that elevated bilirubin levels indicated cancer. A short 36-hours after the test the doctor’s office called: the tests had turned out normal.

I got away yet again; yet I don’t fool myself. It’s kind of a hide and seek game we play with death. Sooner or later, it finds you.

One thing I learned from this most recent episode: how many are caught in death’s net, every year, month, week, day, hour, minute, and second. I note their anguish, their physical suffering, their often painful, slow demise. I have found my passion for others renewed; my sense of life lived in the context of the meaningful quickened; a heightened sensitivity to the beauty of every new day to be relished; a sharpened awareness of temporality’s potential to enhance.

To live life rightly helps our not clutching it. In fact, it helps us let go.