“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”
Lawrence Pearsall Jacks, educator and Unitarian minister.
“I love playing, it’s just part of me now, and it was then, at 13. I had the dream to play drums, and I ended up being that person, and I’m still that person.
Most of the time I just delete shit like this. Then, unsurprisingly I get another text.
What chat? Why do I feel like I’m being targeted?
HomeVestors, the self-proclaimed “largest homebuyer in the United States,” goes to great lengths to distinguish itself from the hedge funds and YouTube gurus that have taken over large swaths of the real estate investment market. The company says it helps homeowners out of jams — ugly houses and ugly situations — improving lives and communities by taking on properties no one else would buy. Part of that mission is a promise not to take advantage of anyone who doesn’t understand the true value of their home, even as franchisees pursue rock-bottom prices…HomeVestors cautions its franchisees never to take advantage of sellers who are unable to understand negotiations. But by the time he left that evening, Evans had a contract to buy the house for roughly two-thirds its value, signed in Casanova’s shaky script.
Participants with the most positive views of aging were living, on average, 7.5 years longer than those with the most negative views. 90%: the percentage of centenarians who were functionally independent in their 90’s.
People who live long lives can teach us how to live healthy lives.
The source article is an interview with two Yale alumni who are still working at the age of 82. Both are youngsters when compared to…Willie who just turned 90 and still working.
A study led by the UNIGE, HES-SO Geneva, and EPFL revealed that music practice and active listening could prevent working memory decline. Such activities promoted brain plasticity, they were associated with grey matter volume increase. Positive impacts have also been measured on working memory. This study was conducted among 132 healthy retirees from 62 to 78 years of age. One of the conditions for participation was that they had not taken any music lessons for more than six months in their lives…The participants were randomly assigned to two groups, regardless of their motivation to play an instrument. The second group had active listening lessons, which focused on instrument recognition and analysis of musical properties in a wide range of musical styles. The classes lasted one hour. Participants in both groups were required to do homework for half an hour a day.”
After six months, we found common effects for both interventions. Neuroimaging revealed an increase in grey matter in four brain regions involved in high-level cognitive functioning in all participants, including cerebellum areas involved in working memory. Their performance increased by 6% and this result was directly correlated to the plasticity of the cerebellum,” says Clara James, last author of the study, a privat-docent at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of UNIGE, and full professor at the Geneva School of Health Sciences
Journal Reference – Damien Marie, Cécile A.H. Müller, Eckart Altenmüller, Dimitri Van De Ville, Kristin Jünemann, Daniel S. Scholz, Tillmann H.C. Krüger, Florian Worschech, Matthias Kliegel, Christopher Sinke, Clara E. James. Music interventions in 132 healthy older adults enhance cerebellar grey matter and auditory working memory, despite general brain atrophy. Neuroimage: Reports, 2023; 3 (2): 100166 DOI: 10.1016/j.ynirp.2023.100166
I could feel my brain grey matter volume increasing when listening to this album.
A new study has found that older persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a common type of memory loss, were 30% more likely to regain normal cognition if they had taken in positive beliefs about aging from their culture, compared to those who had taken in negative beliefs.
Journal Reference – Becca R. Levy, Martin D. Slade. Role of Positive Age Beliefs in Recovery From Mild Cognitive Impairment Among Older Persons. JAMA Network Open, 2023; 6 (4): e237707 DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.7707
I cannot believe how wonderful the aging process is said no one ever.
The researchers used data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to calculate annual overdose deaths from 2002 to 2021 among people aged 65 and older.
Overall, they found that fatal overdoses quadrupled from 1060 in 2002 (three per 100,000) to 6702 (12 per 100,000) in 2021, with the highest rates in Blacks (30.9 per 100,000).
In 2021, about 13% of overdoses were intentional, 83% were unintentional, 4% were undetermined, and less than 1% were homicide. Older women accounted for 57% of intentional overdoses and 29% of accidental overdoses.
“These patients show evidence of accelerated biological aging, and poor physical and brain health,” which are the main drivers of this association, says Breno Diniz, a UConn School of Medicine geriatric psychiatrist and author of the study, which appears in Nature Mental Health on March 22.
Diniz and colleagues from several other institutions looked at 426 people with late-in-life depression. They measured the levels of proteins associated with aging in each person’s blood. When a cell gets old, it begins to function differently, less efficiently, than a “young” cell. It often produces proteins that promote inflammation or other unhealthy conditions, and those proteins can be measured in the blood. Diniz and the other researchers compared the levels of these proteins with measures of the participants’ physical health, medical problems, brain function, and the severity of their depression.
University of Connecticut. “Depressed, and aging fast: Older adults with late-in-life-depression age biologically older than their chronological peers..” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230322190947.htm (accessed March 25, 2023).
Journal Reference:
Johanna Seitz-Holland, Benoit H. Mulsant, Charles F. Reynolds III, Daniel M. Blumberger, Jordan F. Karp, Meryl A. Butters, Ana Paula Mendes-Silva, Erica L. Vieira, George Tseng, Eric J. Lenze, Breno S. Diniz. Major depression, physical health and molecular senescence markers abnormalities. Nature Mental Health, 2023; 1 (3): 200 DOI: 10.1038/s44220-023-00033-z
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