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.
I freely admit it—like a great many people these days, I have a social media addiction. My drug of choice, Twitter, can seem like a particularly schizoid means of acquiring and sharing information (or knee-jerk opinion, rumor, innuendo, nonsense, etc.) and a particularly accelerated form of distractibility that never, ever sleeps. Given the profound degree of over-stimulation such outlets provide, we might be justified in thinking we owe our short attention spans to 21st century technological advances. Not necessarily, says Michigan State University professor Natalie Phillips—who studies 18th and 19th century English literature from the perspective of a 21st century cognitive theorist, and who cautions against “adopting a kind of historical nostalgia, or assuming those of the 18th century were less distracted than we are today.”
Early modern writers were just as aware of—and as concerned about—the problem of inattention as contemporary critics, Phillips argues, “amidst the print-overload of 18th-century England.” We might refer, for example, to Alexander Pope’s epic satire “The Dunciad,” a hilariously apocalyptic jeremiad against the proliferation of careless reading and writing in the new media environment of his day. (A world “drowning in print, where everything was ephemeral, of the moment.”)
Phillips focuses on the work of Jane Austen, whom, she believes, “was drawing on the contemporary theories of cognition in her time” to construct distractible characters like Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennett. Taking her cues from Austen and other Enlightenment-era writers, as well as her own inattentive nature, Phillips uses contemporary neuroscience to inform her research, including the use of brain imaging technology and computer programs that track eye movements.
In collaboration with Stanford’s Center for Cognitive and Biological Imaging (CNI), Phillips devised an experiment in 2012 in which she asked literary PhD candidates—chosen, writes Stanford News, “because Phillips felt they could easily alternate between close reading and pleasure reading”—to read a full chapter from Austen’s Mansfield Park, projected onto a mirror inside an MRI scanner. At times, the subjects were instructed to read the text casually, at others, to read closely and analytically. Afterwards, they were asked to write an essay on the passages they read with attention. As you’ll hear Phillips describe in the short NPR piece above, the neuroscientists she worked with told her to expect only the subtlest of differences between the two types of reading. The data showed otherwise. Phillips describes her surprise at seeing “how much the whole brain, global activations across a number of different regions, seems to be transforming and shifting between the pleasure and the close reading.” As CNI neuroscientist Bob Dougherty describes it, “a simple request to the participants to change their literary attention can have such a big impact on the pattern of activity during reading,” with close reading stimulating many more areas of the brain than the casual variety. What are we to make of these still inconclusive results? As with many such projects in the emerging interdisciplinary field of “literary neuroscience,” Phillips’ goal is in part to demonstrate the continued relevance of the humanities in the age of STEM. Thus, she theorizes, the practice and teaching of close reading “could serve—quite literally—as a kind of cognitive training, teaching us to modulate our concentration and use new brain regions as we move flexibly between modes of focus.”
The study also provides us with a fascinating picture—quite literally—of the ways in which the imaginative experience of reading takes place in our bodies as well as our minds. Close, sustained, and attentive reading, Phillips found, activates parts of the brain responsible for movement and touch, “as though,” writes NPR, “readers were physically placing themselves within the story as they analyzed it.” Phillips’ study offers a scientific look at a mysterious experience serious readers know well—“how the right patterns of ink on a page,” says Dougherty, “can create vivid mental imagery and instill powerful emotions.” As with the so-called “hard problem of consciousness,” we may not understand exactly how this happens anytime soon, but we can observe that the experience of close reading is a rewarding one for our entire brain, not just the parts that love Jane Austen. While not everyone needs convincing that “literary study provides a truly valuable exercise of people’s brains,” Phillips’ research may prove exactly that.
Katy Davis (AKA Gobblynne) created an immensely popular video animating Dr. Brené Brown’s insights on The Power of Empathy. Now, she returns with another animal-filled animation that could also put you on the right mental track. Narrated by Dan Harris, this one lays out the basics of meditation and deals with some common misconceptions and points of frustration. Give it a quick watch, and if you want to give meditation a first, second or third try, check out these Free Guided Meditations From UCLA. If you know of other helpful meditation resources, feel free to let us know in the comments.
As one particularly astute observer of human emotions might put it, it is a truth universally acknowledged that we can’t all be Albert Einstein. In fact, none of us can. That unique experience was denied even Einstein’s son Hans Albert, though he did go on to his own distinguished career as an engineer and professor of hydraulics. Einstein father and son had a strained relationship, yet the great physicist had a hand in his son’s success, inspiring him to pursue his scientific passion. But Einstein’s paternal encouragement extended further, beyond scientific pursuits and to a general theory of learning and enjoyment that suggests we can be happiest and most productive when being most ourselves.
While living in Berlin in 1915, Einstein wrote a poignant letter to his son, just two days after finishing his theory of general relativity. His tone swings from buoyant to pained—lamenting his family’s “awkward” separation and proposing to spend more time with Albert, as he calls him. His son can “learn many good and beautiful things from me,” writes Einstein, “These days I have completed one of the most beautiful works of my life.”
Einstein also writes, “I am very pleased that you find joy with the piano. This and carpentry are in my opinion for your age the best pursuits.” An amateur musician himself, Einstein understood the value of developing an informal avocation. “Mainly play the things on the piano which please you,” he tells his son, “even if the teacher does not assign those.” Doing what you love, the way you like to do it, he goes on, “is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.”
This great theme of total immersion in a creative endeavor surfaced several decades later in another scientist’s work, that of Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, described by Martin Seligman—former President of the American Psychological Association—as “the world’s leading researcher” in the field of positive psychology. Presented in his popular TED talk above, and at more length in his books on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi’s insights into human flourishing mirror Einstein’s: he calls such creative immersion “flow,” or the state of “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake.”
The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.
Contrary to our usual conceptions of using one’s “skills to the utmost,” Csikszentmihalyi tells us that the reward for entering such a state is not the material benefits it generates, but the positive emotions. These, as Einstein theorized, not only motivate us to become better, but they also provide a source of meaning no amount of financial gain above a minimum level can offer. “The lack of basic material resources contributes to unhappiness,” Csikszentmihalyi’s data demonstrates, “but the increase in material resources does not increase happiness.” While none of us can be Einstein, Csikszentmihalyi tells us we can all benefit from Einstein’s advice, by doing whatever we do to the best of our abilities and without any motive other than sheer pleasure.
If you live in a big city like Los Angeles or San Francisco, you’ll discover that there are just a bewildering variety of yoga styles out there — there’s Ashtanga Yoga if you want a real work out, there’s Yin Yoga if you want to chill out and there’s Bikram Hot Yoga if you want heat stroke. Add to this list Laughter Yoga. Yes, Laughter Yoga.
For a segment of the 2001 BBC series The Human Face, John Cleese, a man who knows something about laughter, ventured to Mumbai, India to see what Laughter Yoga is all about. He interviews the man behind it all, Dr. Madan Kataria, who argues that laughter is brilliant at lowering stress and improving the immune system. And best of all, you don’t even need mats or unflattering pants to do it. You just need a group of like-minded people and a willingness to look silly. In the video, which you can see above, Cleese yuks it up with a group of Mumbai locals.
“We all know what a good laugh feels like,” he tells the camera. “But what struck me was how easy it was to get started. When you have a lot of warm, friendly, funny faces coming at you, you respond very naturally…I’m struck by how laughter connects you to people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy”
Apparently, you don’t even have to be in an especially jolly mood to reap the health benefits of Laughter Yoga. Forced laughter tricks the body into releasing endorphins too. In Laughter Yoga, as with life, the motto is “fake it til you make it.”
So if you are interested in laughing like a madman in the privacy of your own home, Dr. Kataria has an instructional video for you, which you can see right above. There are a surprising number of laughing exercises available — from the milkshake move, where you pantomime guzzling a drink, to the argument laughter, where you wag a finger, to the Visa laughter where you pretend to laugh through the tears as you open your credit card statement. So go ahead and try it. You’ll feel better.
Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veeptopus, featuring lots of pictures of badgers and even more pictures of vice presidents with octopuses on their heads. The Veeptopus store is here.
When coffee first came to the western world during the 17th century, it didn’t taste particularly good. So the people importing and peddling the new commodity talked up the health benefits of the new drink. The first known English advertisement for coffee, dating back to 1652, made these claims: Coffee is “very good to help digestion.” It also “quickens the Spirits, and makes the Heart Lightsome.” And it “is good against sore Eys, and the better if you hold your Head o’er it, and take in the Steem that way.”
It turns out that chocolate had a similar introduction to the West. Writing at the always interesting Public Domain Review,Christine A. Jones recounts how when chocolate “first arrived from the Americas into Europe in the 17th century it was a rare and mysterious substance, thought more of as a drug than as a food.” The Spanish, who conquered the Aztecs in 1521, first documented the chocolate they encountered there in 1552. And then, in 1631, they placed chocolate in the annals of medical history when Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma, a Spanish physician and surgeon, wrote a medical essay called Curioso Tratado de la naturaleza y calidad del chocolate. The essay made the case that chocolate, if taken correctly, could help balance the body’s humors (Blood, Yellow Bile, Black Bile & Phlegm) and ward off disease. (You can bone up on the ancient science of Humorism here.) When translated into English in 1651, the treatise now called Chocolate; or, an Indian Drinke came prefaced by an introduction that touted chocolate’s health benefits:
It is an excellent help to Digestion, it cures Consumptions, and the Cough of the Lungs, the New Disease, or Plague of the Guts, and other Fluxes, the Green Sicknesse, Jaundise, and all manner of Inflamations, Opilations, and Obstructions. It quite takes away the Morphew, Cleanseth the Teeth, and sweetneth the Breath, Provokes Urine, Cures the Stone, and strangury, Expells Poison, and preserves from all infectious Diseases.
And it featured one of the first recipes for hot chocolate:
To every 100. Cacaos, you must put two cods of the*Chiles long red Pepper, of which I have spoken before, and are called in the Indian Tongue, Chilparlagua; and in stead of those of the Indies, you may take those of Spaine which are broadest, & least hot. One handfull of Annis-seed Orejuelas, which are otherwise called Pinacaxlidos: and two of the flowers, called Mechasuchil, if the Belly be bound. But in stead of this, in Spaine, we put in six Roses of Alexandria beat to Powder: One Cod of Campeche, or Logwood: Two Drams of Cinamon; Almons, and Hasle-Nuts, of each one Dozen: Of white Sugar, halfe a pound: of Achioteenough to give it the colour.
The latest installment from PBS’ BrainCraft video series introduces us to two scientific studies that teach us a thing or two about what brings us happiness. One set of results comes from Dr. John Gottman’s Family Research Laboratory (a.k.a. the “Love Lab”); the other from the Harvard Grant Study, a 75-year study that has traced the lives and development of 268 Harvard sophomores from the classes of 1939–1944. Although the study focuses on privileged white men (the demographic that attended Harvard College during the 1930s and 40s), the Harvard Grant Study has yielded conclusions that apply to a broader population.
One of the longest-running studies of adult development, the study has found, for example, that alcoholism has some of the most ruinous effects on marriages, family finances and personal health. Likewise, it reveals that liberals have sex much further into old age than their conservative peers.
But those aren’t the big takeaways — the conclusions that talk about happiness. If you watch the interview below with George Vaillant, the longtime director of the study, you will hear him conclude that happiness isn’t about “conforming, keeping up with the Joneses. It is about playing, and working, and loving. And loving is probably the most important. Happiness is love.”
According to Vaillant, “warmth of relationships throughout life have the greatest positive impact on ‘life satisfaction.’ ” When we have warm relationships with our parents, spouses, friends and family, we experience less daily anxiety and a greater sense of overall pleasure; we have better health (including lower levels of dementia later in life); and we’re more effective at work and make more money.
Essentially The Beatles had it right, “All you need is love. Love is all you need.”
You can read more about the Harvard study over at The Atlantic.
This week, Rebecca Onion’s always interesting blog on Slate features historical maps that illustrate the toll measles took on America before the advent of vaccines. The map above brings you back to 1890, when measles-related deaths were concentrated in the South and the Midwest. That year, according to the U.S. census, 8,666 people died from the disease. Fast forward to the period moving from 1912 to 1916, and you’ll find that there were 53,00 measles-related deaths in the US.
America continued to struggle with the disease, until 1962, when scientists mercifully invented a vaccine, and the rate of measles infections and deaths began to plummet. The authors of “Measles Elimination in the United States,” published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases (2004),note that “Since 1997, the reported annual incidence [of measles] has been <1 case/1 million population” — meaning that the disease had been pretty much eradicated in the US. But not elsewhere. The authors go on to warn, “Measles is the greatest vaccine-preventable killer of children in the world today and the eighth leading cause of death among persons of all ages worldwide.” It doesn’t take much to deduce that if we dismiss the science that has served us so well, we could see dreadfully colored maps all over again. Except this time the dark orange will likely be concentrated on the left coast.
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