Try the Oldest Known Recipe For Toothpaste: From Ancient Egypt, Circa the 4th Century BC

in Health, History | February 1st, 2016

Ancient_Egypt_Dentistry

Image of Ancient Egypt­ian Den­tistry, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

When we assume that mod­ern improve­ments are far supe­ri­or to the prac­tices of the ancients, we might do well to actu­al­ly learn how peo­ple in the dis­tant past lived before indulging in “chrono­log­i­cal snob­bery.” Take, for exam­ple, the area of den­tal hygiene. We might imag­ine the ancient Greeks or Egyp­tians as prone to ram­pant tooth decay, lack­ing the ben­e­fits of pack­aged, brand­ed tooth­paste, silken rib­bons of floss, astrin­gent mouth­wash, and ergonom­ic tooth­brush­es. But in fact, as tooth­paste man­u­fac­tur­er Col­gate points out, “the basic fun­da­men­tals” of tooth­brush design “have not changed since the times of the Egyp­tians and Babylonians—a han­dle to grip, and a bris­tle-like fea­ture with which to clean the teeth.” And not only did ancient peo­ple use tooth­brush­es, but it is believed that “Egyp­tians… start­ed using a paste to clean their teeth around 5000 BC,” even before tooth­brush­es were invent­ed.

In 2003, cura­tors at a Vien­nese muse­um dis­cov­ered “the world’s old­est-known for­mu­la for tooth­paste,” writes Irine Zoech in The Tele­graph, “used more than 1,500 years before Col­gate began mar­ket­ing the first com­mer­cial brand in 1873.” Dat­ing from the 4th cen­tu­ry AD, the Egypt­ian papyrus (not shown above), writ­ten in Greek, describes a “pow­der for white and per­fect teeth” that, when mixed with sali­va, makes a “clean tooth paste.” The recipe is as fol­lows, Zoech sum­ma­rizes: “…one drach­ma of rock salt—measure equal to one hun­dredth of an ounce—two drach­mas of mint, one drach­ma of dried iris flower and 20 grains of pep­per, all of them crushed and mixed togeth­er.”

Zoech quotes Den­tist Heinz Neu­man, who remarked, “Nobody in the den­tal pro­fes­sion had any idea that such an advanced tooth­paste for­mu­la of this antiq­ui­ty exist­ed.” Hav­ing tried the ancient recipe at a den­tal con­fer­ence in Aus­tria, he found it “not unpleas­ant”

It was painful on my gums and made them bleed as well, but that’s not a bad thing, and after­wards my mouth felt fresh and clean. I believe that this recipe would have been a big improve­ment on some of the soap tooth­pastes used much lat­er.

Dis­cov­ered among “the largest col­lec­tion of ancient Egypt­ian doc­u­ments in the world,” the doc­u­ment, says Her­mann Har­rauer, head of the papyrus col­lec­tion as the Nation­al Library in Vien­na, “was writ­ten by some­one who’s obvi­ous­ly had some med­ical knowl­edge, as he used abbre­vi­a­tions for med­ical terms.”

When we sur­vey the den­tal reme­dies of Medieval Eng­land, we do indeed find that mod­ern den­tal care is far bet­ter than much of what was avail­able then. Most den­tal cures of the time, writes Trevor Ander­son in a Nature arti­cle, “were based on herbal reme­dies, charms and amulets.” For exam­ple, in the 1314 Rosa Angli­ca, writer John of Gad­des­den reports, “some say that the beak of a mag­pie hung from the neck cures pain in the teeth.” Anoth­er rem­e­dy involves stick­ing a nee­dle into a “many foot­ed worm which rolls up in a ball when you touch it.” Touch the aching tooth with that roly-poly nee­dle and “the pain will be erased.”

How­ev­er, “there is also doc­u­men­tary evi­dence,” writes Ander­son, “for pow­ders to clean teeth and attempts at fill­ing car­i­ous cav­i­ties,” as well as some sur­gi­cal inter­ven­tion. In Gilber­tus Angli­cus’ 13th cen­tu­ry Com­pendi­um of Med­i­cine, read­ers are told to rub teeth and gums with cloth after eat­ing to ensure that “no cor­rupt mat­ter abides among the teeth.” In The Tro­tu­la—a com­pendi­um of folk reme­dies from the 11th or 12th century—we find many recipes for what we might con­sid­er tooth­paste, though their effi­ca­cy is dubi­ous. Danièle Cybul­skie at Medievalists.net quotes one recipe “for black teeth”:

…take wal­nut shells well cleaned of the inte­ri­or rind, which is green, and… rub the teeth three times a day, and when they have been well rubbed… wash the mouth with warm wine, and with salt mixed if desired.

Anoth­er, more extrav­a­gant, recipe sounds imprac­ti­cal.

Take burnt white mar­ble and burnt date pits, and white natron, a red tile, salt, and pumice. From all of these make a pow­der in which damp wool has been wrapped in a fine linen cloth. Rub the teeth inside and out.

Yet a third recipe gives us a lux­u­ry vari­ety, its ingre­di­ents well out of reach of the aver­age per­son. We are assured, how­ev­er, that this for­mu­la “works the best.”

Take some each of cin­na­mon, clove, spike­nard, mas­tic, frank­in­cense, grain, worm­wood, crab foot, date pits, and olives. Grind all of these and reduce them to a pow­der, then rub the affect­ed places.

Whether any of these for­mu­las would have worked at all, I can­not say, but they like­ly worked bet­ter than charms and amulets. In any case, while medieval Euro­pean texts tend to con­firm cer­tain of our ideas about poor den­tal hygiene of the past, it seems that the dai­ly prac­tices of more ancient peo­ples in Egypt and else­where might have been much more like our own than we would sus­pect.

via The Tele­graph/Medievalists.net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How a Good Night’s Sleep — and a Bad Night’s Sleep — Can Enhance Your Creativity

in Creativity, Health, Neuroscience, Psychology | December 29th, 2015

Sleep

Cre­ative Com­mons image, “Sleep,” by Masha Kras­no­va-Shabae­va

You decide you need some med­ical advice, so you take to the inter­net. Whoops! There’s your first mis­take. Now you are bom­bard­ed with con­tra­dic­to­ry opin­ions from ques­tion­able sources and you begin to devel­op symp­toms you nev­er knew exist­ed. It’s all down­hill from there. So I’ll say this upfront: I have no med­ical qual­i­fi­ca­tions autho­riz­ing me to dis­pense infor­ma­tion about sleep dis­or­ders. The only advice I’d ven­ture, should you have such a prob­lem, is to go see a doc­tor. It might help, or not. I can cer­tain­ly sym­pa­thize. I am a chron­ic insom­ni­ac.

The down­side to this con­di­tion is obvi­ous. I nev­er get enough sleep. When­ev­er I con­sult the inter­net about this, I learn that it’s prob­a­bly very dire and that I may lose my mind or die young(ish). The upside—which I learned to mas­ter after years of try­ing and fail­ing to sleep like nor­mal people—is that the nights are qui­et and peace­ful, and thus a fer­tile time cre­ative­ly.

Med­ical issues aside, what do we know about sleep, insom­nia, and cre­ativ­i­ty? Let us wade into the fray, with the pro­vi­so that we will like­ly reach few con­clu­sions and may have to fall back on our own expe­ri­ence to guide us. In sur­vey­ing this sub­ject, I was pleased to have my expe­ri­ence val­i­dat­ed by an arti­cle in Fast Com­pa­ny. Well, not pleased, exact­ly, as the author, Jane Porter, cites a study in Sci­ence that links a lack of sleep to Alzheimer’s and the accu­mu­la­tion of “poten­tial­ly neu­ro­tox­ic waste prod­ucts.”

And yet, in praise of sleep­less­ness, Porter also rec­om­mends turn­ing insom­nia into a “pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tool,” nam­ing famous insom­ni­acs like Mar­garet Thatch­er, Bill Clin­ton, Charles Dick­ens, Mar­cel Proust, and Madon­na (not all of whom I’d like to emu­late). She then quotes psy­chol­o­gist Tomas Chamor­ro-Pre­muz­ic of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, who made the dubi­ous-sound­ing claim in Psy­chol­o­gy Today that “insom­nia is to excep­tion­al achieve­ment what men­tal ill­ness is to cre­ativ­i­ty.” Every­thing about this anal­o­gy sounds sus­pect to me.

But there are more sub­stan­tive views on the mat­ter. Anoth­er study, pub­lished in Cre­ativ­i­ty Research Jour­nal, sug­gests insom­nia may be a symp­tom of “notable cre­ative poten­tial,” though the authors only go as far as say­ing the two phe­nom­e­non are “asso­ci­at­ed.” The arrow of causal­i­ty may point in either direc­tion. Per­haps the most prag­mat­ic view on the sub­ject comes from Michael Perlis, psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, who says, “What is insom­nia, but the gift of more time?”

Den­nis Dra­belle at The Wash­ing­ton Post, also an insom­ni­ac, refers to a recent study (as of 2007) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Can­ter­bury that sug­gests “insom­nia and orig­i­nal­i­ty may go hand in hand.” He also points out that the notion of sleep­less­ness as pro­duc­tive, though “coun­ter­in­tu­itive,” has plen­ty of prece­dent. Dra­belle men­tions many more famous cas­es, from W.C. Fields to Theodore Roo­sevelt to Franz Kaf­ka. The list could go on and on.

Actor and musi­cian Matt Berry tells The Guardian how, after years of toss­ing and turn­ing, he final­ly har­nessed his sleep­less hours to write and record an album, Music for Insom­ni­acs. “I knew that this was dead time,” says Berry, “and I could be doing some­thing instead of sit­ting wor­ry­ing about not being asleep.” Anoth­er musi­cian, Dave Bay­ley of band Glass Ani­mals, “owes his career in music to insom­nia,” The Guardian writes, then notes a phe­nom­e­non sleep researchers call—with some skep­ti­cism—“cre­ative insom­nia.” Oth­er musi­cians like Chris Mar­tin, Moby, Tricky, and King Krule have all suf­fered the con­di­tion and turned it to good account.

The Guardian also notes that each of these poor souls has found “sleep­less nights inspir­ing as well as tor­ment­ing.” Insom­nia is not, in fact a gift or tal­ent, but a painful con­di­tion that Porter and Dra­belle both acknowl­edge can be asso­ci­at­ed with depres­sion, addic­tion, and oth­er seri­ous med­ical con­di­tions. One might make good use of the time—but per­haps only for a time. A site called Sleep­dex—-which offers “resources for bet­ter sleep”—puts it this way:

Occa­sion­al insom­nia appears to help some peo­ple pro­duce new art and work, but is a detri­ment to oth­ers. It is per­haps true that more peo­ple find it a detri­ment than find it use­ful. Long-term insom­nia and the accom­pa­ny­ing sleep debt are almost sure­ly neg­a­tive for cre­ativ­i­ty.

This brings us to the sub­ject of sleep—good, rest­ful sleep—and its rela­tion­ship to cre­ativ­i­ty. Sleep­dex cites sev­er­al research stud­ies from Swiss and Ital­ian uni­ver­si­ties, UC San Diego, and UC Davis. The gen­er­al con­clu­sion is that REM sleep—that peri­od dur­ing which dreams “are the most nar­ra­tive­ly coher­ent of any dur­ing the night”—is also an impor­tant stim­u­lus for cre­ativ­i­ty. There are the numer­ous anec­dotes from artists like Sal­vador Dali, Paul McCart­ney, and count­less oth­ers about famous works of art tak­ing shape in dream states (Kei­th Richards says he heard the riff from “Sat­is­fac­tion” in a dream).

And there are the exper­i­men­tal data, pur­port­ed­ly con­firm­ing that REM sleep enhances “cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing.” Euro­pean sci­en­tists have found that peo­ple were more like­ly to have cre­ative insights after a long peri­od of rest­ful sleep, when the right brain gets a boost. Like­wise, Tom Stafford at the BBC describes the “post-sleep, dream­like men­tal state—known as sleep iner­tia or the hypnopom­pic state” that infus­es our “wak­ing, direct­ed thoughts with a dust­ing of dream­world mag­ic.” It isn’t that insom­ni­acs don’t expe­ri­ence this, of course, but we have less of it, as peri­ods of REM sleep can be short­er and often inter­rupt­ed by the need to scram­ble out of bed and get to work or get the kids to school not long after hit­ting the pil­low.

Stafford points us toward a UC Berke­ley study (appar­ent­ly the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia has some sort of monop­oly on sleep research) “that helps illus­trate the pow­er of sleep to fos­ter unusu­al con­nec­tions, or ‘remote asso­ciates’ as psy­chol­o­gists call them.” Like near­ly all of the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture on sleep, this study express­es lit­tle doubt about the impor­tance of sleep to mem­o­ry func­tion and prob­lem solv­ing. Big Think col­lects sev­er­al more stud­ies that con­firm the find­ings.

On the whole, when it comes to the links between sleep—or sleeplessness—and cre­ativ­i­ty, the data and the sto­ries point in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. This is hard­ly sur­pris­ing giv­en the slip­per­i­ness of that thing we call “cre­ativ­i­ty.” Like “love” it’s an abstract qual­i­ty every­one wants and no one knows how to make in a lab­o­ra­to­ry. If it’s extra time you’re after—and very qui­et time at that—I can’t rec­om­mend insom­nia enough, though I wouldn’t rec­om­mend it at all as a vol­un­tary exer­cise. If it’s the spe­cial cre­ative insights only avail­able in dream states, well, you’d best get lots of sleep. If you can, that is. Cre­ative insomniacs—like those wan­der­ing in the con­fines of a dream world—know all too well they don’t have much choice in the mat­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

The Psy­chol­o­gy of Messi­ness & Cre­ativ­i­ty: Research Shows How a Messy Desk and Cre­ative Work Go Hand in Hand

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Power of Pessimism: Science Reveals the Hidden Virtues in Negative Thinking

in Health, Psychology | November 12th, 2015

These days, you don’t real­ly hear many peo­ple mak­ing the case for pes­simism. Quite the con­trary, pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy is now en vogue. And its founder, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Mar­tin Selig­man, has writ­ten best­sellers with titles like Learned Opti­mism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. But maybe, as Alain de Bot­ton sug­gests above, there’s an argu­ment to be made for pes­simism – for hav­ing a sober, if not neg­a­tive, out­look on life. And maybe there’s sci­ence that val­i­dates that point of view.

This sec­ond video, cre­at­ed by New York Mag­a­zine, sum­ma­rizes the research of NYU pro­fes­sor Gabriele Oet­tin­gen, attribut­ing to her the belief that “pes­simism can be a bet­ter moti­va­tor for achiev­ing goals than opti­mism,” see­ing that opti­mism tends to lull us into com­pla­cen­cy and slack­en our desire to achieve impor­tant per­son­al goals, like los­ing weight.

Cou­ple that with this: a 2013 study released in Psy­chol­o­gy and Aging, a jour­nal pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion (APA), con­clud­ed that “Old­er peo­ple who have low expec­ta­tions for a sat­is­fy­ing future may be more like­ly to live longer, health­i­er lives than those who see brighter days ahead.” The lead author of the study Frieder R. Lang, PhD, added: “Our find­ings revealed that being over­ly opti­mistic in pre­dict­ing a bet­ter future was asso­ci­at­ed with a greater risk of dis­abil­i­ty and death with­in the fol­low­ing decade.” “Pes­simism about the future,” it seems, “may encour­age peo­ple to live more care­ful­ly, tak­ing health and safe­ty pre­cau­tions” that sun­ny opti­mists might not oth­er­wise take.

I should add this caveat: sci­en­tists don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly find virtue in pure, unadul­ter­at­ed pes­simism. Rather, they find ben­e­fits in what they call “defen­sive pes­simism.” This is a strat­e­gy, as sum­ma­rized by The Wall Street Jour­nal, where peo­ple “low­er their expec­ta­tions and think through all the pos­si­ble neg­a­tives that could hap­pen in order to avoid them.” Frieder R. Lang, author of the Psy­chol­o­gy & Aging study men­tioned above, told WSJ, “Those who are defen­sive­ly pes­simistic about their future may be more like­ly to invest in prepara­to­ry or pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures, where­as we expect that opti­mists will not be think­ing about those things.” Sim­i­lar virtues might be attrib­uted to “defen­sive opti­mism,” but we’ll have to wait and see what the inevitable sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies have to say about that.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

The Psy­chol­o­gy of Messi­ness & Cre­ativ­i­ty: Research Shows How a Messy Desk and Cre­ative Work Go Hand in Hand

John Cleese Explores the Health Ben­e­fits of Laugh­ter

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This Is Your Brain on Exercise: Why Physical Exercise (Not Mental Games) Might Be the Best Way to Keep Your Mind Sharp

in Health, Neuroscience | November 3rd, 2015

brain exercise

In the Unit­ed States and the UK, we’ve seen the emer­gence of a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar brain train­ing indus­try, premised on the idea that you can improve your mem­o­ry, atten­tion and pow­ers of rea­son­ing through the right men­tal exer­cis­es. You’ve like­ly seen soft­ware com­pa­nies and web sites that mar­ket games designed to increase your cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. And if you’re part of an old­er demo­graph­ic, wor­ried about your aging brain, you’ve per­haps been inclined to give those brain train­ing pro­grams a try. Whether these pro­grams can deliv­er on their promis­es remains an open question–especially see­ing that a 2010 sci­en­tif­ic study from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty and the BBC con­clud­ed that there’s “no evi­dence to sup­port the wide­ly held belief that the reg­u­lar use of com­put­erised brain train­ers improves gen­er­al cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing in healthy par­tic­i­pants…”

And yet we should­n’t lose hope. A num­ber of oth­er sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies sug­gest that phys­i­cal exercise–as opposed to men­tal exercise–can mean­ing­ful­ly improve our cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, from child­hood through old age. One study led by Charles Hill­man, a pro­fes­sor of kine­si­ol­o­gy and com­mu­ni­ty health at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, found that chil­dren who reg­u­lar­ly exer­cise, writes The New York Times:

dis­played sub­stan­tial improve­ments in … exec­u­tive func­tion. They were bet­ter at “atten­tion­al inhi­bi­tion,” which is the abil­i­ty to block out irrel­e­vant infor­ma­tion and con­cen­trate on the task at hand … and had height­ened abil­i­ties to tog­gle between cog­ni­tive tasks. Telling­ly, the chil­dren who had attend­ed the most exer­cise ses­sions showed the great­est improve­ments in their cog­ni­tive scores.

And, heart­en­ing­ly, exer­cise seems to con­fer ben­e­fits on adults too. A study focus­ing on old­er adults already expe­ri­enc­ing a mild degree of cog­ni­tive impair­ment found that resis­tance and aer­o­bic train­ing improved their spa­tial mem­o­ry and ver­bal mem­o­ry. Anoth­er study found that weight train­ing can decrease brain shrink­age, a process that occurs nat­u­ral­ly with age.

If you’re look­ing to get the gist of how exer­cise pro­motes brain health, it comes down to this:

Exer­cise trig­gers the pro­duc­tion of a pro­tein called brain-derived neu­rotroph­ic fac­tor, or BDNF, which helps sup­port the growth of exist­ing brain cells and the devel­op­ment of new ones.

With age, BDNF lev­els fall; this decline is one rea­son brain func­tion dete­ri­o­rates in the elder­ly. Cer­tain types of exer­cise, name­ly aer­o­bic, are thought to coun­ter­act these age-relat­ed drops in BDNF and can restore young lev­els of BDNF in the age brain.

That’s how The Chica­go Tri­bune sum­ma­rized the find­ings of a 1995 study con­duct­ed by researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-Irvine. You can get more of the nuts and bolts by read­ing The Tri­bune’s recent arti­cle, The Best Brain Exer­cise May be Phys­i­cal. (Also see Can You Get Smarter?)

You’re per­haps left won­der­ing what’s the right dose of exer­cise for the brain? And guess what, Gretchen Reynolds, the phys ed colum­nist for The Times’ Well blog, wrote a col­umn on just that this sum­mer. Although the sci­ence is still far from con­clu­sive, a new study con­duct­ed by The Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Cen­ter found that small dos­es of exer­cise could lead to cog­ni­tive improve­ments. Writes Reynolds, “the encour­ag­ing take­away from the new study … is that briskly walk­ing for 20 or 25 min­utes sev­er­al times a week — a dose of exer­cise achiev­able by almost all of us — may help to keep our brains sharp as the years pass.”

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via New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neu­ro­science of Read­ing Great Lit­er­a­ture

New Research Shows How Music Lessons Dur­ing Child­hood Ben­e­fit the Brain for a Life­time

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

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Sun Ra Plays a Music Therapy Gig at a Psychiatric Hospital; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

in Health, Jazz, Music | September 11th, 2015

For some time now it has been fash­ion­able to diag­nose dead famous peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness­es we nev­er knew they had when they were alive. These post­mortem clin­i­cal inter­ven­tions can seem accu­rate or far-fetched, and most­ly harmless—unless we let them col­or our appre­ci­a­tion of an artist’s work, or neg­a­tive­ly influ­ence the way we treat eccen­tric liv­ing per­son­al­i­ties. Over­all, I tend to think the state of a cre­ative individual’s men­tal health is a top­ic best left between patient and doc­tor.

In the case of one Her­man Poole Blount, aka Sun Ra—com­pos­er, band­leader of free jazz ensem­ble the Arkestra, and “embod­i­ment of Afro­fu­tur­ism”—one finds it tempt­ing to spec­u­late about pos­si­ble diag­noses, of schiz­o­phre­nia or bipo­lar dis­or­der, for exam­ple. Plen­ty of peo­ple have done so. This makes sense, giv­en Blount’s claims to have vis­it­ed oth­er plan­ets through astral pro­jec­tion and to him­self be an alien from anoth­er dimen­sion. But ascrib­ing Sun Ra’s enlight­en­ing, enliven­ing mytho-theo-phi­los­o­phy to ill­ness or dys­func­tion tru­ly does his bril­liant mind a dis­ser­vice, and clouds our appre­ci­a­tion for his com­plete­ly orig­i­nal body of work.

In fact, Sun Ra him­self discovered—fairly ear­ly in his career when he went by the name “Sonny”—that his music could per­haps alle­vi­ate the suf­fer­ing of men­tal ill­ness and help bring patients back in touch with real­i­ty. In the late 50’s, the pianist and composer’s man­ag­er, Alton Abra­ham, booked his client at a Chica­go psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal. Sun Ra biog­ra­ph­er John Szwed tells the sto­ry:

Abra­ham had an ear­ly inter­est in alter­na­tive med­i­cine, hav­ing read about scalpel-free surgery in the Philip­pines and Brazil. The group of patients assem­bled for this ear­ly exper­i­ment in musi­cal ther­a­py includ­ed cata­ton­ics and severe schiz­o­phren­ics, but Son­ny approached the job like any oth­er, mak­ing no con­ces­sions in his music.

Sun Ra had his faith in this endeav­or reward­ed by the response of some of the patients. “While he was play­ing,” Szwed writes, “a woman who it was said had not moved or spo­ken for years got up from the floor, walked direct­ly to his piano, and cried out ‘Do you call that music?’” Blount—just com­ing into his own as an orig­i­nal artist—was “delight­ed with her response, and told the sto­ry for years after­wards as evi­dence of the heal­ing pow­ers of music.” He also com­posed the song above, “Advice for Medics,” which com­mem­o­rates the men­tal hos­pi­tal gig.

It is sure­ly an event worth remem­ber­ing for how it encap­su­lates so many of the respons­es to Sun Ra’s music, which can—yes—confuse, irri­tate, and bewil­der unsus­pect­ing lis­ten­ers. Like­ly still inspired by the expe­ri­ence, Sun Ra record­ed an album in the ear­ly six­ties titled Cos­mic Tones for Men­tal Ther­a­py, a col­lec­tion of songs, writes All­mu­sic, that “out­raged those in the jazz com­mu­ni­ty who thought Eric Dol­phy and John Coltrane had already tak­en things too far.” (Hear the track “And Oth­er­ness” above.) But those will­ing to lis­ten to what Sun Ra was lay­ing down often found them­selves roused from a debil­i­tat­ing com­pla­cen­cy about what music can be and do.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Hear Sun Ra’s 1971 UC Berke­ley Lec­ture “The Pow­er of Words”

A Sun Ra Christ­mas: Hear His 1976 Radio Broad­cast of Poet­ry and Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Neuroscience of Drumming: Researchers Discover the Secrets of Drumming & The Human Brain

in Health, Music, Neuroscience, Psychology | August 11th, 2015

An old musician’s joke goes “there are three kinds of drum­mers in the world—those who can count and those who can’t.” But per­haps there is an even more glob­al divide. Per­haps there are three kinds of peo­ple in the world—those who can drum and those who can’t. Per­haps, as the pro­mo­tion­al video above from GE sug­gests, drum­mers have fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent brains than the rest of us. Today we high­light the sci­en­tif­ic research into drum­mers’ brains, an expand­ing area of neu­ro­science and psy­chol­o­gy that dis­proves a host of dumb drum­mer jokes.

“Drum­mers,” writes Jor­dan Tay­lor Sloan at Mic, “can actu­al­ly be smarter than their less rhyth­mi­cal­ly-focused band­mates.” This accord­ing to the find­ings of a Swedish study (Karolin­s­ka Insti­tutet in Stock­holm) which shows “a link between intel­li­gence, good tim­ing and the part of the brain used for prob­lem-solv­ing.” As Gary Cle­land puts it in The Tele­graph, drum­mers “might actu­al­ly be nat­ur­al intel­lec­tu­als.”

Neu­ro­sci­en­tist David Eagle­man, a renais­sance researcher The New York­er calls “a man obsessed with time,” found this out in an exper­i­ment he con­duct­ed with var­i­ous pro­fes­sion­al drum­mers at Bri­an Eno’s stu­dio. It was Eno who the­o­rized that drum­mers have a unique men­tal make­up, and it turns out “Eno was right: drum­mers do have dif­fer­ent brains from the rest.” Eagle­man’s test showed “a huge sta­tis­ti­cal dif­fer­ence between the drum­mers’ tim­ing and that of test sub­jects.” Says Eagle­man, “Now we know that there is some­thing anatom­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent about them.” Their abil­i­ty to keep time gives them an intu­itive under­stand­ing of the rhyth­mic pat­terns they per­ceive all around them.

That dif­fer­ence can be annoying—like the pain of hav­ing per­fect pitch in a per­pet­u­al­ly off-key world. But drum­ming ulti­mate­ly has ther­a­peu­tic val­ue, pro­vid­ing the emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal ben­e­fits col­lec­tive­ly known as “drum­mer’s high,” an endor­phin rush that can only be stim­u­lat­ed by play­ing music, not sim­ply lis­ten­ing to it. In addi­tion to increas­ing peo­ple’s pain thresh­olds, Oxford psy­chol­o­gists found, the endor­phin-filled act of drum­ming increas­es pos­i­tive emo­tions and leads peo­ple to work togeth­er in a more coop­er­a­tive fash­ion.

Clash drum­mer Top­per Head­on dis­cuss­es the ther­a­peu­tic aspect of drum­ming in a short BBC inter­view above. He also calls drum­ming a “primeval” and dis­tinct­ly, uni­ver­sal­ly human activ­i­ty. For­mer Grate­ful Dead drum­mer Mick­ey Hart and neu­ro­sci­en­tist Adam Gaz­za­ley have high hopes for the sci­ence of rhythm. Hart, who has pow­ered a light show with his brain­waves in con­certs with his own band, dis­cuss­es the “pow­er” of rhythm to move crowds and bring Alzheimer’s patients back into the present moment.

Whether we can train our­selves to think and feel like drum­mers may be debat­able. But as for whether drum­mers real­ly do think in ways non-drum­mers can’t, con­sid­er the neu­ro­science of Stew­art Copeland’s polyrhyth­mic beats, and the work of Ter­ry Bozzio (below) play­ing the largest drumk­it you’ve ever seen.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play­ing an Instru­ment Is a Great Work­out For Your Brain: New Ani­ma­tion Explains Why

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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New Study: Immersing Yourself in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflammation & Increase Life Expectancy

in Art, Health, Life, Philosophy, Psychology | August 7th, 2015

caspar-david-friedrich-wanderer

Of all the philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts Immanuel Kant is known for, the one I’ve had to strug­gle the least to grasp is his descrip­tion of the sub­lime, a state in which we are over­awed by the scale of some great work of man or nature. It’s an expe­ri­ence, in typ­i­cal Kant­ian fash­ion, that he explains as being not about the thing itself, but rather the idea of the thing. Yet the con­cept of the sub­lime isn’t his. Philoso­phers from the Greek teacher Long­i­nus in the 1st cen­tu­ry to Edmund Burke and oth­er Eng­lish Enlight­en­ment thinkers in Kan­t’s own 18th cen­tu­ry have had their take on it. For the clas­si­cal writ­ers, the sub­lime was rhetor­i­cal, for the Brits, it was empir­i­cal. But above all, the sub­lime is peak aesthetics—a supra-ratio­nal expe­ri­ence of art or nature one can­not get one’s head around. To be so ful­ly absorbed, so strick­en with awe, won­der, and, yes, even fear—all of these philoso­phers believed in some fashion—is to have an expe­ri­ence crit­i­cal to tran­scend­ing our lim­i­ta­tions.

We may not, in either com­mon speech or aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy, talk much about the sub­lime these days, but what­ev­er we call the feel­ing of being absorbed in art, music, or nature, it turns out to have phys­i­cal ben­e­fits as well as men­tal and emo­tion­al. “There seems to be some­thing about awe,” says pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy Dacher Kelt­ner. “It seems to have pro­nounced impact on mark­ers relat­ed to inflam­ma­tion.”

In oth­er words, immers­ing your­self in art or nature is good for the joints, and it could pos­si­bly pre­empt var­i­ous dis­eases trig­gered by inflam­ma­tion. Kelt­ner and his fel­low researchers at UC Berke­ley con­duct­ed a study which found that “awe, won­der and beau­ty pro­mote [low­er and over­all] health­i­er lev­els of cytokines”—pro­teins that “sig­nal the immune sys­tem to work hard­er.” He goes on to say that “the things we do to expe­ri­ence these emotions—a walk in nature, los­ing one­self in music, behold­ing art—has [sic] a direct influ­ence upon health and life expectan­cy.”

Nev­er mind that Kant and Burke thought of the sub­lime and the beau­ti­ful as two very dif­fer­ent things. Whether we become total­ly over­whelmed by, or just find deep appre­ci­a­tion in an aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence, the emo­tions pro­duced “might be just as salu­bri­ous as hit­ting the gym,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic. That may seem a crude way of think­ing about the spir­i­tu­al and emo­tion­al grandeur of the sub­lime, but it brings our phys­i­cal being into the dis­cus­sion in ways many philoso­phers have neglect­ed. Grant­ed, the researchers them­selves admit the causal link is uncer­tain: it might be bet­ter health that leads to more expe­ri­ences of awe, and not the oth­er way around. But cer­tain­ly no harm—and a great deal of good—can come from con­duct­ing the exper­i­ment on your­self. Read an abstract (or pur­chase a copy) of the Berke­ley team’s arti­cle here, and learn more about their work with the Uni­ver­si­ty’s Greater Good Sci­ence Cen­ter, which aims to “spon­sor ground­break­ing sci­en­tif­ic research into social and emo­tion­al well-being.”

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neu­ro­science of Read­ing Great Lit­er­a­ture

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Why Sitting Is The New Smoking: An Animated Explanation

in Biology, Health | August 4th, 2015

Dur­ing the past year, sit­ting has become the new smok­ing. “Past stud­ies have found,” declares a 2014 arti­cle in The New York Times, “the more hours that peo­ple spend sit­ting, the more like­ly they are to devel­op dia­betes, heart dis­ease and oth­er con­di­tions, and poten­tial­ly to die pre­ma­ture­ly — even if they exer­cise reg­u­lar­ly.” What’s the sci­ence behind this alarm­ing claim? The ani­mat­ed TED-ED video (above) begins to paint the pic­ture. But it does­n’t get into the lat­est and per­haps most impor­tant research. Accord­ing to sci­ence writer Gretchen Reynolds, a recent Swedish study pub­lished in the British Jour­nal of Sports Med­i­cine sug­gests that when you sit all day, your telom­eres (the tiny caps on the ends of DNA strands) get short­er. Which is not a good thing. As telom­eres get short­er, the rate at which the body ages and decays speeds up. Con­verse­ly, the study found “that the telom­eres in [those] who were sit­ting the least had length­ened. Their cells seemed to be grow­ing phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly younger.”

Sev­er­al months ago, KQED radio in San Fran­cis­co aired a pro­gram ded­i­cat­ed to this ques­tion, fea­tur­ing med­ical and ergonom­ics experts. To delve deep­er into it, lis­ten below. Or click here.

Mean­while, if you have advice on how to incor­po­rate move­ment into your day, please share it with your fel­low read­ers in the com­ments sec­tion below.

And if your mind imme­di­ate­ly drifts to buy­ing a stand­ing desk, then check out our relat­ed post: Who Wrote at Stand­ing Desks? Kierkegaard, Dick­ens and Ernest Hem­ing­way Too

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