Are We There Yet? vol. 246
By the time you’re reading this post, and if you celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday, you likely have blown the budget on eating this week. I know I have. Thanksgiving kicks off an eating frenzy that, for most of us, goes through New Year’s Day.
In an NPR online article by Allison Aubrey, she writes that “about 40% of dementia cases could be prevented or delayed by healthy lifestyle choices and preventive medicine.” Most of us know someone who has suffered or is suffering from dementia or some level of cognitive impairment. As people live longer, the likelihood that any of us will suffer from these diseases is increasing, so having some control to avoid them is good news.
The article focuses on the Brain Care Score developed at the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. The key factors to a higher score won’t surprise you and include nutrition, sleep, exercise, reducing stress, minimizing alcohol and sugar, and maintaining social contacts. These same factors have been noted as helping to improve heart health. While the factors themselves were not surprising to me, I was surprised by the impact these factors can have. I would have thought there would be an impact at the margins, but preventing or delaying 40% of dementia cases is not a trivial amount. It means that we have significant control over lessening the chances of getting these diseases that impact our cognitive health. So, whether you exercise some restraint this holiday season or wait until the new year, working toward improving your brain score will give you the best chance to stay healthy, both physically and cognitively, as you age.
Take care and stay safe.
BOOK:
The Hidden Globe by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Borders draw one map of the world; money draws another. A journalist’s riveting account exposes a parallel universe that has become a haven for the rich and powerful.
A globe shows the world we think we know: neatly delineated sovereign nations that grant or restrict their citizens’ rights. Beneath, above, and tucked inside their borders, however, another universe has been engineered into existence. It consists of thousands of extraterritorial zones that operate largely autonomously, and increasingly for the benefit of the wealthiest individuals and corporations.
Atossa Abrahamian traces the rise of this hidden globe to thirteenth-century Switzerland, where poor cantons marketed their only commodity: bodies, in the form of mercenary fighters. Over time, economists, theorists, statesmen, and consultants evolved ever more sophisticated ways of exporting and exploiting statelessness, in the form of free trade zones, flags of convenience, offshore detention centers, charter cities controlled by foreign corporations, and even into outer space. By mapping this countergeography, which decides who wins and who loses in the new global order—and helping us to see how it might be otherwise—The Hidden Globe fascinates, enrages, and inspires.
Learn more about Bob Len here.
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