Tag Archives: mental health

What is good for the aging brain?

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What is good for the aging brain? First, reading. Is this really a surprise? There is some suggestion that reading about people in social situations might help substitute for being in actual social situations. Introverts rejoice! But there is also some suggestion of book clubs. Ugh…what I don’t like about book clubs is the idea that I am going to waste my remaining mortal reading time on suboptimal choices that other people think are good for me to read. Maybe online book clubs help solve this problem, because somewhere in the world’s billions there are probably at least thousands or even millions who want to read the things I want to read. But the idea of engaging with strangers on a screen is less appealing than a small group of friends or at least acquaintances discussing something. I like the idea, really – how about just reading something shorter than a book? I am not a huge short story fan, but maybe this is the happy medium. I can sit down and do my “homework” the night before or morning of book club. One more random thought – I wonder about audiobooks vs. reading on a page or screen. I enjoy both, but I actually find that both take regular practice at staying focused, and if I get out of practice with one or the other it takes some effort to get back into the swing of it. If you lose focus while reading words on a page, it’s easy to pause or backtrack, while if your mind wanders during an audiobook, it’s more annoying to rewind and try to figure out where you went wrong. I kind of like podcasts for this reason, because if I lose focus or doze off I don’t really care about going back. I’ll admit I also pay more attention to something I have paid money for than something I have not. Trying to concentrate and process the spoken word may very well be a useful cognitive exercise though, so when I say “annoying” that translates to “effort” which is the thing you have to do to improve or at least maintain yourself.

“Physical activity” – well, we knew that – but also “engagement with arts and culture“. Now that sounds kind of nice, but again I want to pick my arts and culture and not just ones that other people engage in to show off. I wonder if people have separated music from other arts, which could engage the brain differently. Music is inherently mathematical, it requires you to connect your senses and your brain in a unique way, and it is also creative, especially if you are making or writing it yourself. Really concentrating on music takes effort, similar to an audiobook, but you also just let it wash over you in the background without making the effort. Engaging in music with others might have different benefits than doing it by yourself. Damaging your eardrums with excessively loud music is almost certainly not good for your brain.

What age does intelligence peak?

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“Fluid intelligence“, which is your ability to solve problems without applying outside information, peaks around age 20. I find this discouraging. But then “crystalized intelligence”, which is your ability to apply outside information to problems, does not decline until later in life (50, 60, 70? there are a lot of numbers in this article.) I find this encouraging as I am entering this window now. It also suggests to me that multi-generational teams may be good at problem solving if we can get past some of the cultural issues (seriously, what is with the avoidance of eye contact by 20-somethings today?)

The article goes on to describe measurement errors and biases that have affected past studies. A big one is that when you test the intelligence of a sample of people of different ages all at once, you get one answer, whereas if you follow the same people for decades and test them repeatedly using the same methods, you get a different answer. The latter approach is the better one, but of course it is difficult because it takes 50 years to carry out an experiment.

exercise and dementia

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Exercise generally lowers dementia risk – hooray! But there are nuances – exercise performed in the context of work does not seem to lower dementia risk. This suggests to me either that stress plays a huge role, or that people with active jobs are actually doing more than the optimal amount of exercise. Maybe both. Another thing that surprised me here is that active commutes are not shown in the data to reduce dementia risk. That’s a shame, because I want people who shift from a car commute to an active walking or biking commute to be healthier. Maybe stress plays a big role here too – caused by real and perceived physical safety risks, noise pollution, and air pollution. If so, these are things we can try to mitigate through better design of our urban infrastructure.

Seinfeld’s keys to success

In this Open Culture article, Jerry Seinfeld describes three keys to success as “Transcendental meditation, lift weights, espresso.” Compare this to my “four keys to happiness in the moment”: sleep, coffee, exercise, and down time. I am not claiming my keys will work for everyone or that, obviously, I am as successful as Jerry Seinfeld.

The Novel Cure

This is a unique way to share a reading list. Essentially, this book “prescribes” other books for a range of moods and perplexities. I haven’t read it but it would be fun to go through and see how many I have read, how many are on my list of too-many-books-to-read-before-I-die (I am middle aged but not yet terminal that I know of), and how many I do not think would be worth reading as I budget the hours of earthly reading time remaining to me.

The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You

The Novel Cure is a reminder of that power. To create this apothecary, the authors have trawled two thousand years of literature for novels that effectively promote happiness, health, and sanity, written by brilliant minds who knew what it meant to be human and wrote their life lessons into their fiction. Structured like a reference book, readers simply look up their ailment, be it agoraphobia, boredom, or a midlife crisis, and are given a novel to read as the antidote. Bibliotherapy does not discriminate between pains of the body and pains of the head (or heart). Aware that you’ve been cowardly? Pick up To Kill a Mockingbird for an injection of courage. Experiencing a sudden, acute fear of death? Read One Hundred Years of Solitude for some perspective on the larger cycle of life. Nervous about throwing a dinner party? Ali Smith’s There but for The will convince you that yours could never go that wrong. Whatever your condition, the prescription is simple: a novel (or two), to be read at regular intervals and in nice long chunks until you finish. Some treatments will lead to a complete cure. Others will offer solace, showing that you’re not the first to experience these emotions. The Novel Cure is also peppered with useful lists and sidebars recommending the best novels to read when you’re stuck in traffic or can’t fall asleep, the most important novels to read during every decade of life, and many more.

the English-speaking world is sad

As an enrolled university student for about three more days, I have access to the Financial Times. The Financial Times did an analysis of World Happiness Index and found that young people across English-speaking countries (US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand) are sadder than people in Western Europe. Well, that was the headline anyway, but when I look at the graph it is really just the US and Canada that are the outliers, with the US far worse (of course). US people are very, very sad in their 20s and 30s, and then start to cheer up a lot in their 40s. Of course, this is a snapshot in time and it doesn’t actually mean today’s young adults will cheer up, or that today’s older adults were not cheerful when they were younger. Anyway, this author concludes young people are sad because they don’t own houses. I don’t know, I have owned and rented, and both caused me different forms of aggravation and sadness. But not being able to afford the lifestyle you feel you want or deserve, or conversely stressing yourself to the breaking point so your family can just barely afford it, is a recipe for unhappiness. So it may be true that housing affordability is a good indicator of happiness even if not the root cause. And as for old people, of course they own those high-value houses and that makes them happy! Sure, they have to pay property taxes on those houses, and they complain bitterly about paying taxes. They also go to those NIMBY meetings and complain bitterly about new housing construction that might create more supply for young people. But remember that complaining bitterly is also a thing that makes old people happy! (Sorry, I just got ambushed by a very grumpy older relative over something I have no control over, housing related in fact, and I am feeling grumpy myself as I sit here 44 days before my 50th birthday!)

My Keys to Happiness in the Moment

I’ve been thinking about this, whether there is any recipe for my personal happiness in the moment. Happiness in the moment is something different from overall life satisfaction, maybe a topic for another day. Anyway, here is what I have come up with.

  1. Sleep. Enough sleep, and quality sleep. I’ve always had some trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, and I don’t have all the answers. Keeping a set routine most of the time, including weekends, helps. Winding down for an hour or so before bed helps (not always under my control with the life of a working parent). Podcasts and audio books can help for those nights when the mind just doesn’t want to settle down. A quiet, dark, cool bedroom and comfortable bed help (again, not always under my control, although I have taken to sleeping with earplugs at times.)
  2. Coffee. Surprising to see this at #2? For me it’s the only 100% reliable antidepressant out there. I often wake up feeling like the world is not such a nice place, and 30-60 minutes after I have my coffee, it feels like a much nicer place. More coffee is not better, of course. 1-2 cups, at about the same time each day, works for me.
  3. Exercise. Anything including stretching or a walk can provide a temporary mood pickup, but consistent exercise several days in a row really seems to improve my mood. It doesn’t have to be long – maybe 20-30 minutes – but it does have to involve some heart pumping, heavy breathing, sweat and/or sore muscles to maximize this effect for me. Part of the effect of exercise may be that it reinforces good sleep.
  4. Down time. I think the introvert/extrovert framework is a useful way to think here. For extroverts, spending time with friends and family may count as down time. For me, it does not. I love my friends and family, and I don’t want to live my life in solitary confinement, but for me some alone time is non-negotiable to feel my best. Reading, thinking, ideally some time in nature or at least outdoors. Ideally it would be at least an hour a day, a day a week, and a weekend each month. The latter two have been impossible in middle aged working professional family life, but I grab the alone hours and moments where I can. I know however that my mental health is never what it could be if I could slow down and have more time to myself. Perhaps if I live long enough to retire…but it’s sad to look forward to the later stages of your life. Such is the supposedly modern world we have created for ourselves.

That’s it! There are many other things that might help at the margins. Good nutrition certainly. Meditation. Power naps. I do not oppose the light recreational use of alcohol and possibly other substances, in particular to enhance that down time that is in such short supply. And of course professional help is out there and worth trying for many people. I’m sure I could come up with a long list here. But none help that much without nailing the top 4.

Finally, it helps me to think of high and low moods as being like the weather. High and low moods will come and go. Sometimes there is no obvious reason for them. You can’t predict them with certainty, and you can’t expect to control them all the time even if you do everything perfectly. Following the “Top 4” things above improves the odds considerably I think, but there will still be bad days and occasionally weeks. So on those emotional “rainy days”, it is okay to slow down a bit and just remind yourself that the bad weather will pass.

Covid and testes

According to this article, there is some evidence of a decline in male fertility since the pandemic, and this is on top of the known long-term decline in male fertility. For one thing, the virus actually infects the testes themselves. But another thing I didn’t know (or never thought a lot about) is that hormones originating the brain have an important effect on sperm production, so a drop in sperm production might not indicate a physical problem with your testicles themselves.

This article also says that when couples have trouble conceiving for biological reasons, about half the time the problem originates in the male and about half the time in the female. This kind of makes sense. I suspect chemicals in our air, water, and/or food, combined with the stress and time-constraints of modern urban, industrialized life.

Other things that certainly affect fertility rates in a social sense are educated and employed women coupled with (lack of) policies to support families and childcare. I believe pressure on men to work long hard hours to support a family financially somewhat obviously has an effect here too, but maybe this is controversial to some.

If I didn’t have to work quite as long and hard at my testicle-shrinking job, I could spend more time with my children or help more with housework. You can work, help with children, have a great marriage, help care for aging relatives, and maximize your own mental and physical health, but there are some tradeoffs between these desirable objectives for both men and women. The decline of multi-generational households and extended family living close by certainly doesn’t help. There may be no return to the past, but as we lose these aspects of our culture we may need public policy to step in and help fill the gap. In the U.S. at least, that isn’t happening, and we are all standing around scratching our heads as to why we have to give up aspects of our lives (like our health, and strong marriages!) just to keep the whole house of cards from collapsing.

transactional analysis

My high school actually had a mandatory class on transactional analysis, a model of human interactions developed by Eric Berne in the 1950s. I didn’t find it particularly helpful at the time, and haven’t heard much about it since then. But it is interesting:

At the heart of Berne’s model are three ego states that live in each of us: the Child (the most natural, vulnerable, and spontaneous part of our personality, keeper of our creative vitality and our most unalloyed capacity for pleasure); the Parent (the part of us that unconsciously mimics the psychological responses of our parents as we observed them in childhood); and the Adult (the competent and self-possessed part of us capable of making sound decisions in our best interest). All three coexist within us, and all three play into our social interactions…

But beyond the simplest and most complementary exchange — one Adult issuing the stimulus, another Adult giving the response — most of social transactions are a chaos of mismatched and ever-switching ego states. The confusion — the wounding — happens when the lines of communication cross and the interaction becomes not between two people in parallel and consistent ego states, but between one part of one person and a different part of the other: Child-Adult, Adult-Parent, Parent-Child, and all the other possible non-equivalences. This basic pattern, a diagram of which became the book’s cover, is what defines a game — “an ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined, predictable outcome” — a patterned, self-defeating psychological interchange, in which one ego state issues a stimulus concealing the emotional need of another ego-state, then receives a response to the hidden message and reacts negatively to it, frustrating both parties and garbling communication in a way that injures intimacy.

The Marginalian

If I were going to give my younger self advice, I would say don’t assume you know what other people are thinking. Even when you are interacting with others, your thoughts and emotions usually have to do a lot more with what is going on in your own mind and body than theirs. So don’t assume you know what they are thinking or what their intentions are, or what type of reaction they are trying to elicit from you. That’s sounds like funny advice – don’t ascribe intentions to people. People certainly have intentions, but when you try to guess what they are you will often be wrong. See listen and observe, think, and then make up your own mind. Even if they do have malign intentions, which happens more rarely than my younger self would have thought, you still have some control over your emotional reaction and near total control over your own behavior. If you are a person who can be quick to anger, like my younger self, it is better to walk away from the offending person and take some time to reflect than to react in the moment. Some people will take this as a sign of weakness or “nonassertiveness”, but I have learned that reacting in anger is usually unpleasant for everyone, including me, and I tend to regret it later. I will confront that person later in a more rational frame of mind, if I feel the confrontation is worth it, but often I decide it is not. So pick your battles carefully, younger self, and there are not too many battles worth picking.

June 2022 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Mass shootings are often motivated by suicidally depressed people who decide to take others with them to the grave.

Most hopeful story: For us 80s children, Top Gun has not lost that loving feeling.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Taser drones? Seriously, this might have been my most interestingly random post last month. I’ll try to do better.