Survival strategies
Anne Lamott – Time Lost and Found
I sometimes teach classes on writing, during which I tell my students every single thing I know about the craft and habit. This takes approximately 45 minutes. I begin with my core belief—and the foundation of almost all wisdom traditions—that there is nothing you can buy, achieve, own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder. But the good news is that creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.
Then I bring up the bad news: You have to make time to do this.
This means you have to grasp that your manic forms of connectivity—cell phone, email, text, Twitter—steal most chances of lasting connection or amazement. That multitasking can argue a wasted life. That a close friendship is worth more than material success.
USPharmacist.com – Vitamin Deficiencies in Seniors
USPharmacist.com > Vitamin Deficiencies in Seniors.
Follow this link for some nice charts on nutritional deficiencies in seniors. Read the article and I promise you will never read an APS the same way ever again.
Regular Fish Consumption and Age-Related Brain Gray Matter Loss – American Journal of Preventive Medicine
Conclusions
Dietary consumption of baked or broiled fish is related to larger gray matter volumes independent of omega-3 fatty acid content. These findings suggest that a confluence of lifestyle factors influence brain health, adding to the growing body of evidence that prevention strategies for late-life brain health need to begin decades earlier.
Frozen fish sticks were a staple in my childhood diet.
I hope it helped.
To Work Better, Work Less – The Atlantic
The Financial Risk of Living a Long Time
The Financial Risk of Living a Long Time
People nearing the end of their careers can potentially lose 5% to 10% of their retirement wealth, or the equivalent of 2 to 5 years’ labor, by failing to annuitize their savings or annuitizing too early, according to an estimate by Alessandro Previtero of Ivey Business School in Canada. By providing a guaranteed income for life, an annuity is essentially an insurance policy against outliving one’s retirement savings. In a study, Previtero found that when stocks are rising, people are less likely to purchase annuities offered by their employers.
This excerpt came through my RSS reader this morning. As an insurance guy, naturally I was interested. When I clicked on the link to take me to the original Harvard Business Review blog article I got a 404. So I went to Google and found the article linked below.
No, I will not speculate on the reasons why HBR took their post down. Read the article and let your imagination roam.
Affordable Housing Draws Middle Class to Inland Cities – NYTimes.com
Affordable Housing Draws Middle Class to Inland Cities – NYTimes.com.
Finally a story about OKC that doesn’t mention…
EARTHQUAKES.
Stupidity is Worse for us than Either Sugar or Saturated Fat
Stupidity is worse for us than either sugar or saturated fat.
Read this article and you’ll encounter a well reasoned rant with lots of links for further reading enjoyment. My personal journey includes a significant weight loss experience in my early 20’s. Over the years I’ve gained back some of the 200 plus pounds lost. Over the years I’ve also gotten lazy with my dietary habits. Too many calories and an aging metabolism is not a combination for staying trim. So I got serious (again) and have dropped 12 pounds the past three months. I’ve always known what to do but failed to do what needed to be done.
And so it goes. Change. Adapt. Repeat.
It’s Official: The Boomerang Kids Won’t Leave – NYTimes.com
It’s Official: The Boomerang Kids Won’t Leave – NYTimes.com.
One in five people in their 20s and early 30s is currently living with his or her parents. And 60 percent of all young adults receive financial support from them. That’s a significant increase from a generation ago, when only one in 10 young adults moved back home and few received financial support. The common explanation for the shift is that people born in the late 1980s and early 1990s came of age amid several unfortunate and overlapping economic trends. Those who graduated college as the housing market and financial system were imploding faced the highest debt burden of any graduating class in history. Nearly 45 percent of 25-year-olds, for instance, have outstanding loans, with an average debt above $20,000. (Kasinecz still has about $60,000 to go.) And more than half of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed, meaning they make substandard wages in jobs that don’t require a college degree. According to Lisa B. Kahn, an economist at Yale University, the negative impact of graduating into a recession never fully disappears. Even 20 years later, the people who graduated into the recession of the early ’80s were making substantially less money than people lucky enough to have graduated a few years afterward, when the economy was booming.
Read the entire article for a lesson in how to put a positive spin on our new Culture of Dependency. Watch the slideshow of a dose of reality. Then read the reader comments and decide for yourself if this “new and permanent life stage” is truly a “potentially thrilling economic evolution”.
Or not.
Johns Hopkins Health Alert – The Compelling Case Against Sugar
Re-posted from the Johns Hopkins Health Alert email The Compelling Case Against Sugar
For years, nutrition experts have warned that consuming too much sugar contributes to excess weight gain. Now, a mounting body of scientific evidence suggests that sugar is even more detrimental to the body than was previously believed. As a result, a growing chorus of scientists and public health advocates is urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to set safe limits for sugar consumption.
Recently, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, took matters even further, suggesting that sugar should be regulated by the government to protect public health — just like alcohol and tobacco. Sugar, they argue, is a toxic substance with a tremendous potential for abuse because it affects the brain in a way that encourages people to consume larger amounts, even when they should be satisfied with what they’ve already had.
What’s more, they contend, sugar changes a person’s metabolism, altering the signaling of hormones (including leptin, ghrelin, and dopamine, which regulate satiety, hunger, and pleasure, respectively) in a detrimental way. In other words, the researchers say, sugar is addictive.
That point of view is quite controversial, however, so it’s not likely that sugar is going to be banned or regulated by the government — at least not anytime soon. Nevertheless, the latest research makes a compelling case for determining just how much sugar is safe for human consumption — and for cutting back on the amount of sugar you consume.
The dangers of added sugar. First, it’s important to distinguish natural sugars from added sugars. Natural sugars are an essential part of our diet because the human body converts them to glucose to meet its energy needs. Natural sugars are found in varying amounts in fruits and vegetables, which contain fructose, and in dairy products, which contain lactose.
Added sugars, on the other hand, are not essential. Added sugars are sugars and syrups that are added to foods or beverages when they are processed or prepared, as well as the sugar you add to your coffee, tea, cereal or other foods. Whether it’s added in the form of white sugar, raw sugar, brown sugar, high fructose corn syrup, honey or molasses, it’s all sugar.
Added sugar has been implicated in a variety of ills, from raising blood pressure and increasing the risk of gout to causing liver damage and accelerating the aging process. Some of the strongest evidence to date shows associations between excess sugar consumption and diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
How much added sugar is too much? Surprisingly, the answer to this question varies. Currently, the USDA recommends that people consume no more than 10 teaspoons of added sugar in a 2,000-calorie per day diet. At 16 calories per teaspoon, that’s 160 calories each day. These days people typically consume twice that amount.
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