Discover Ikaria, the Greek Island With the Oldest Life Expectancy in the World

in Health, Life | June 21st, 2021

Boil­er­plate human inter­est sto­ries about the habits of par­tic­u­lar­ly spry cen­te­nar­i­ans just don’t cut it any­more. Liv­ing a long, healthy, and hap­py life, we know, involves more than mak­ing the right indi­vid­ual choic­es. It means liv­ing in soci­eties that make good choic­es read­i­ly avail­able and sup­port the indi­vid­u­als mak­ing them. Nutri­tion research has borne this out — just scan the lat­est pop­u­lar food book titles for the word “Mediter­ranean,” for exam­ple, or input the same search term in an aca­d­e­m­ic data­base, and you’ll pull up hun­dreds of results. Even fad diets have shift­ed from pro­mot­ing indi­vid­ual celebri­ties to cel­e­brat­ing whole regions.

Sci­en­tists have iden­ti­fied a hand­ful of places around the world, in fact, where diet and oth­er ordi­nary lifestyle and social fac­tors have led to the out­comes gov­ern­ments spend bil­lions try­ing, and fail­ing, to achieve. One of these regions is — yes — square­ly in the Mediter­ranean, the Greek island of Ikaria, “named one of the health­i­est places on earth,” writes Greek City Times, “a spot of excep­tion­al longevi­ty. Here, there are more healthy peo­ple over 90 than any oth­er place on the plan­et.” Ikaria is just one of five so-called “Blue Zones” — which also include Sar­dinia, Italy, Oki­nawa, Japan, Nicoya, Cos­ta Rica, and Loma Lin­da, Cal­i­for­nia — where inhab­i­tants reg­u­lar­ly live healthy lives into their 90s and beyond.

In the Vice video above, you can meet some of the res­i­dents of Ikaria, where 1 in 3 peo­ple live past 90, and learn about some of the fac­tors that con­tribute to long life in blue zones, and in Ikaria in par­tic­u­lar. Great weath­er does­n’t hurt. Most impor­tant, how­ev­er, is local, fresh food, and lots of it. “The most impor­tant thing is the food,” says an Ikar­i­an cook as she pre­pares a batch of fresh-caught fish. “Because you live with it. You eat the right way, every­thing works the right way.” This is a much bet­ter way of say­ing “you are what you eat.” As Max Fish­er points out in a bul­let­ed list of the Greek Island’s “secrets to long life,” things “work­ing the right way” plays a huge role in longevi­ty.

Not only do old­er peo­ple in Ikaria walk every­where and con­tin­ue work­ing into their elder­ly years – hap­pi­ly but not under duress – they also report very healthy sex lives, part of a net­work of habits that social­ly rein­force each oth­er, Fish­er writes. Hear Ikar­i­an res­i­dents above con­trast their lives on the island with their lives in fast-paced mod­ern cities where they trad­ed health and well­be­ing for more mon­ey. Read Fisher’s full list (excerpt­ed below) at The Wash­ing­ton Post.

1) Plen­ty of rest.

2) An herbal diet.

3) Very lit­tle sug­ar, white flour, or meat.

4) Mediter­ranean diet.

5) No processed food.

6) Reg­u­lar nap­ping.

7) Healthy sex lives after 65.

8) Stay busy and involved.

9) Yes, exer­cise.

10) Lit­tle stress of any kind.

11) “Mutu­al­ly rein­forc­ing” habits.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

10 Longevi­ty Tips from Dr. Shigea­ki Hino­hara, Japan’s 105-Year-Old Longevi­ty Expert

How to Live to Be 100 and Beyond: 9 Diet & Lifestyle Tips

Book Read­ers Live Longer Lives, Accord­ing to New Study from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Life Lessons From 100-Year-Olds: Time­less Advice in a Short Film

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

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De-Mystifying Mindfulness: A Free Online Course by Leiden University

in Health, Neuroscience, Online Courses | May 27th, 2021

From Chris Goto-Jones–now Dean of Human­i­ties and Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Victoria–comes a free course which was named ‘one of the best online cours­es of all time’ in 2020. The course descrip­tion for De-Mys­ti­fy­ing Mind­ful­ness reads:

Inter­est in med­i­ta­tion, mind­ful­ness, and con­tem­pla­tion has grown expo­nen­tial­ly in recent years. Rather than being seen as mys­ti­cal prac­tices from ancient Bud­dhism or eso­teric phi­los­o­phy, they are increas­ing­ly seen as tech­nolo­gies root­ed in evi­dence from psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ro­science. Mind­ful­ness has become the basis for numer­ous ther­a­peu­tic inter­ven­tions, both as a treat­ment in health­care and as a means of enhanc­ing well-being and hap­pi­ness. For mil­lions around the world, mind­ful­ness has become a life-style choice, enhanc­ing and enrich­ing every­day expe­ri­ence. Mind­ful­ness is big busi­ness.

But, what actu­al­ly is mind­ful­ness? Is it real­ly good for you? Can any­one learn it? How can you rec­og­nize char­la­tans? Would you want to live in a mind­ful soci­ety, and would it smell like san­dal­wood? What does it feel like to be mind­ful? Are you mind­ful already, and how would you know?

Evolv­ing from the pop­u­lar Hon­ours Acad­e­my course at Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty [in the Nether­lands], this inno­v­a­tive course com­bines con­ven­tion­al schol­ar­ly inquiry from mul­ti­ple dis­ci­plines (rang­ing from psy­chol­o­gy, through phi­los­o­phy, to pol­i­tics) with expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing (includ­ing spe­cial­ly designed ‘med­i­ta­tion labs,’ in which you’ll get chance to prac­tice and ana­lyze mind­ful­ness on your­self). In the end, the course aims to pro­vide a respon­si­ble, com­pre­hen­sive, and inclu­sive edu­ca­tion about (and in) mind­ful­ness as a con­tem­po­rary phe­nom­e­non.

You can take De-Mys­ti­fy­ing Mind­ful­ness for free by select­ing the audit option upon enrolling. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

De-Mys­ti­fy­ing Mind­ful­ness will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

How Mind­ful­ness Makes Us Hap­pi­er & Bet­ter Able to Meet Life’s Chal­lenges: Two Ani­mat­ed Primers Explain

Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

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How to Take the Perfect Nap, According to Cognitive Scientist Sara Mednick

in Health, Neuroscience | May 18th, 2021

Nap­ping is seri­ous busi­ness, despite the fact that when some of us think of naps, we think about preschool. We’ve been taught to think of naps as some­thing to out­grow. Yet as we age into adult­hood, so many of us find it hard to get enough sleep. Mil­lions cur­rent­ly suf­fer from sleep depri­va­tion, whose effects range from mem­o­ry loss to, well… death, if we cred­it the dire warn­ings of neu­ro­sci­en­tist Matthew Walk­er. “Sleep,” Walk­er says, “is a non-nego­tiable bio­log­i­cal neces­si­ty.”

In light of the lat­est research, nap­ping begins to seem more like urgent pre­ven­tive care than an indul­gence. In fact, sleep expert Sara Med­nick says, naps are a “mir­a­cle drug” that “increas­es alert­ness, boosts cre­ativ­i­ty, reduces stress, improves per­cep­tion, sta­mi­na, motor skills, and accu­ra­cy, enhances your sex life,” helps you lose weight, feel hap­pi­er, and so on, all with­out “dan­ger­ous side effects” and with a cost of noth­ing but time.

If this sounds like hype, con­sid­er the qual­i­ty of the source – Dr. Sara Med­nick, a pro­fes­sor of Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine (UCI) and a fel­low at the Cen­ter for the Neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy of Learn­ing and Mem­o­ry. Med­nick runs a “sev­en-bed­room sleep lab at UCI,” notes her site, that works “lit­er­al­ly around-the-clock to dis­cov­er meth­ods for boost­ing cog­ni­tion through a range of dif­fer­ent inter­ven­tions, includ­ing nap­ping.”

Maybe you’re sold on the ben­e­fits and sim­ple plea­sures of a nap — but maybe it’s been a few years since you’ve sched­uled one. How long, exact­ly, should a grown-up nap last? The ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above, script­ed by Med­nick, answers that ques­tion with a short course on sleep cycles: how we move through dif­fer­ent stages as we snore, reach­ing the deep­est sleep at stage 3 and con­clud­ing a cycle with R.E.M. The length of the nap we take can depend on the kinds of tasks we need to per­form, and whether we need to wake up quick­ly and get on to oth­er things.

Med­nick expands sub­stan­tial­ly on her evi­dence-based advo­ca­cy for naps in her book Take a Nap! Change Your Life. (See her dis­cuss her research on sleep and mem­o­ry in the short video just above.) In the book’s intro­duc­tion, she tells the sto­ry of her “jour­ney from skep­tic to nap advo­cate.” Here, she uses uses a dif­fer­ent metaphor. Naps, she says, are a “secret weapon” — one she reached for just min­utes before she stood up at the Salk Insti­tute to present research on naps. “I nev­er imag­ined,” she writes of her jour­ney into nap­ping, “that a healthy solu­tion to fac­ing life’s mul­ti­ple chal­lenges could be as sim­ple and attain­able as a short nap.” Giv­en how much sleep we’re all los­ing late­ly, maybe it’s not so sur­pris­ing after all.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sleep or Die: Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Matthew Walk­er Explains How Sleep Can Restore or Imper­il Our Health

What Hap­pens To Your Body & Brain If You Don’t Get Sleep? Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Matthew Walk­er Explains

Dr. Weil’s 60-Sec­ond Tech­nique for Falling Asleep

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

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Beautiful 19th-Century Indian Drawings Show Hatha Yoga Poses Before They Reached the West

in Art, Books, Health, Religion | May 6th, 2021

Yoga as an ath­let­ic series of pos­tures for phys­i­cal health came into being only about 100 years ago, part of a wave of gym­nas­tics and cal­is­then­ics that spread around the West­ern world in the 1920s and made its way to India, com­bin­ing with clas­si­cal Indi­an spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and asanas, a word which trans­lates to “seat.”  Yoga, of course, had exist­ed as a clas­si­cal spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline in India for thou­sands of years. (The word is first found in the Rig Veda), but it had lit­tle to do with fit­ness, as yoga schol­ar Mark Sin­gle­ton found when he delved into the roots of yoga as we know it.

Asana prac­tice was often mar­gin­al, even scorned by some 19th cen­tu­ry Indi­an teach­ers of high caste as the domain of “fakirs” and men­di­cant beg­gars. “The first wave of ‘export yogis,’” writes Sin­gle­ton, “head­ed by Swa­mi Vivekanan­da, large­ly ignored asana and tend­ed to focus instead on pranaya­ma [breath prac­tice], med­i­ta­tion, and pos­i­tive think­ing…. Vivekanan­da pub­licly reject­ed hatha yoga in gen­er­al and asana in par­tic­u­lar.”

In the 20th cen­tu­ry, yoga became asso­ci­at­ed with Indi­an nation­al­ism and anti-colo­nial resis­tance, and import­ed West­ern pos­es were com­bined with asanas for a pro­gram of intense phys­i­cal train­ing.

West­ern­ized yoga has obscured oth­er tra­di­tions around the world that devel­oped over hun­dreds or thou­sands of years. For his book with James Mallinson, Roots of Yoga, Sin­gle­ton con­sult­ed “yog­ic texts from Tibetan, Ara­bic, Per­sian, Ben­gali, Tamil, Pali, Kash­miri, Old Marathi, Avad­hi, Braj Bhasha, and Eng­lish,” notes the Pub­lic Domain Review, who bring our atten­tion to this ear­ly 19th-cen­tu­ry series of images from a text called the Joga Pradīpikā, made before clas­si­cal yoga became known in the west by adven­tur­ous thinkers like Hen­ry David Thore­au.

A few mil­len­nia before it was the prove­nance of lycra-clad teach­ers in bou­tique stu­dios, asana prac­tice com­bined rig­or­ous, often quite painful-look­ing, med­i­ta­tive pos­tures with mudras (“seals”), hand ges­tures whose ori­gins “remain obscure,” though yoga his­to­ri­an Georg Feuer­stein argues “they are undoubt­ed­ly the prod­ucts of inten­sive med­i­ta­tion prac­tice dur­ing [which] the body spon­ta­neous­ly assumes cer­tain sta­t­ic as well as dynam­ic pos­es.” The col­lec­tion of draw­ings in the 118-page book depicts 84 asanas and 24 mudras, “with explana­to­ry notes in Bra­ja-Bhasha verse,” notes the British Library, and one image (top) relat­ed to Kun­dali­ni yoga.

What­ev­er the var­i­ous prac­tices of yog­ic schools in both the East­ern and West­ern world, “the meth­ods and lifestyles devel­oped by the Indi­an philo­soph­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al genius­es over a peri­od of at least five mil­len­nia all have one and the same pur­pose,” writes Feuer­stein in his sem­i­nal study, The Yoga Tra­di­tion: “to help us break through the habit pat­terns of our ordi­nary con­scious­ness and to real­ize our iden­ti­ty (or at least union) with the peren­ni­al Real­i­ty. Indi­a’s great tra­di­tions of psy­chos­pir­i­tu­al growth under­stand them­selves as paths of lib­er­a­tion. Their goal is to lib­er­ate us from our con­ven­tion­al con­di­tion­ing and hence also free us from suf­fer­ing.”

Under a broad umbrel­la, yoga has flour­ished as an incred­i­ble wealth of tra­di­tions, philoso­phies, reli­gious prac­tices, and schol­ar­ship whose strands weave loose­ly togeth­er in what most of us know as yoga in a syn­the­sis of East and West. Learn more at the Pub­lic Domain Review, and have a look at their new book of his­toric images, Affini­ties, here, a curat­ed jour­ney through visu­al cul­ture.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Get Start­ed with Yoga: Free Yoga Lessons on YouTube

How Yoga Changes the Brain and May Guard Against Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

Son­ny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Prac­tic­ing Yoga Made Him a Bet­ter Musi­cian

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The Archive of Healing Is Now Online: UCLA’s Digital Database Provides Access to Thousands of Traditional & Alternative Healing Methods

in Archives, Health | April 1st, 2021

Pho­to by Kather­ine Han­lon on Unsplash

Folk med­i­cine is, or should be, anti­thet­i­cal to cap­i­tal­ism, mean­ing it should not be pos­si­ble to trade­mark, copy­right, or oth­er­wise own and sell plants and nat­ur­al reme­dies to which every­one has access. The entire rea­son such prac­tices devel­oped over the course of mil­len­nia was to help com­mu­ni­ties of close affil­i­a­tion sur­vive and thrive, not to fos­ter mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion between com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als. The impulse to prof­it from suf­fer­ing has dis­tort­ed what we think of as heal­ing, such that a strict­ly allo­path­ic, or “West­ern,” approach to med­i­cine relies on ethics of exclu­sion, exploita­tion, and out­right harm.

What we tend to think of as mod­ern med­i­cine, the Archive of Heal­ing writes, “is object-ori­ent­ed (phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven) and struc­tured by his­tor­i­cal injus­tice against women and peo­ple of col­or.” The Archive, a new dig­i­tal project from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Los Ange­les, offers “one of the most com­pre­hen­sive data­bas­es of med­i­c­i­nal folk­lore in the world,” Valenti­na Di Lis­cia writes at Hyper­al­ler­gic. “The inter­ac­tive, search­able web­site boasts hun­dreds of thou­sands of entries describ­ing cures, rit­u­als, and heal­ing meth­ods span­ning more than 200 years and sev­en con­ti­nents.”

In coun­tries like the Unit­ed States, where health­care is treat­ed as a scarce com­mod­i­ty mil­lions of peo­ple can­not afford, access to knowl­edge about effec­tive, age-old nat­ur­al wis­dom has become crit­i­cal. There may be no treat­ments for COVID-19 in the data­base, but there are like­ly tra­di­tion­al reme­dies, rit­u­als, prac­tices, treat­ments, oint­ments, etc. for just about every oth­er ill­ness one might encounter. The archive was curat­ed over a peri­od of more than thir­ty years by “a team of researchers at UCLA, work­ing under the direc­tion of Dr. Way­land Hand and then Dr. Michael Owen Jones,” the site notes in its brief his­to­ry.

The mate­r­i­al from the col­lec­tion, which was orig­i­nal­ly called the “archive of tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine,” came from “data on heal­ing from over 3,200 pub­li­ca­tions, six uni­ver­si­ty archives, as well as first-hand and sec­ond-hand infor­ma­tion from anthro­po­log­i­cal and folk­loric field­notes.” In 2016, when Dr. Del­ga­do Short­er took over as direc­tor of the pro­gram, he “reor­ga­nized it with an eye to social shar­ing and allow­ing for users to sub­mit new data and com­ment on exist­ing data,” notes UCLA’s School of the Arts and Archi­tec­ture in an inter­view with Short­er, who describes the project’s aims thus:

The whole goal here is to democ­ra­tize what we think of as heal­ing and knowl­edge about heal­ing and take it across cul­tures in a way that’s respect­ful and gives atten­tion to intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights.

This may seem like a del­i­cate bal­anc­ing act, between the schol­ar­ly, the folk­loric, and the realms of rights, remu­ner­a­tion, and social pow­er. The Archive strikes it with an ambi­tious set of tenets you can read here, includ­ing an empha­sis on offer­ing tra­di­tion­al and Indige­nous heal­ing prac­tices “out­side of often expen­sive allo­path­ic and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal approach­es, and not as alter­na­tives but as com­ple­men­tary modal­i­ties.”

The archive states as one of its the­o­ret­i­cal bases that health should be treat­ed “as a social goal with social meth­ods that affirm rela­tion­al­i­ty and kin­ship.” Those wish­ing to get involved with the Archive as part­ners or advi­so­ry board mem­bers can learn how at their About page, which also fea­tures the fol­low­ing dis­claimer: “State­ments made on this web­site have not been eval­u­at­ed by the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion. The infor­ma­tion con­tained here­in is not intend­ed to diag­nose, treat, cure or pre­vent any dis­ease.” Use the infor­ma­tion wise­ly, at your own risk, in oth­er words.

To use the Archive of Heal­ing, you will need to reg­is­ter with the site first.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

The Illus­trat­ed Med­i­c­i­nal Plant Map of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (1932): Down­load It in High Res­o­lu­tion

Down­load 100,000+ Images From The His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, All Free Cour­tesy of The Well­come Library

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

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A Celebration of Typewriters in Film & Television: A Supercut

in Film, Health, Writing | March 19th, 2021

There are a num­ber of ways to come at video essay­ist Ariel Avis­sar’s two-minute super­cut of type­writ­ers in action on film and tele­vi­sion.

Cin­e­ma buffs will itch to con­nect The Typewriter’s clips to titles. Here are some of the ones we were able to iden­ti­fy:

Zodi­ac

Stranger Than Fic­tion

Cit­i­zen Kane

Find­ing For­rester

The Mag­ic of Belle Isle

The Shin­ing

Adap­ta­tion

Mad Men

Bar­ton Fink

All the President’s Men

Mis­ery

Ruby Sparks

Trum­bo

And then there are the type­writer enthu­si­asts, more con­cerned with make and mod­el than any­thing relat­ing to cin­e­ma:

Roy­al

Under­wood

Olivet­ti

Olympia

Clark Nova

Smith Coro­na

IBM Selec­tric

Giv­en the obses­sive nature of both camps, it’s not sur­pris­ing that there would be some crossover.

Here’s a delight­ful­ly nerdy inves­ti­ga­tion of the onscreen type­writ­ers in Naked Lunch, David Cronenberg’s adap­ta­tion of William S. Burrough’s nov­el.

This collector’s top 10 list gives extra con­sid­er­a­tion to scripts that “place type­writ­ers at the heart of the sto­ry.” First and sec­ond place fea­ture type­writ­ers on their posters.

An IBM Selec­tric III in Avissar’s super­cut caused one view­er to rem­i­nisce about the anachro­nis­tic use of Selec­tric IIs in Mad Men’s first sea­son sec­re­tar­i­al pool. Cre­ator Matthew Wein­er admits the choice was delib­er­ate. The first Selec­tric mod­el is peri­od appro­pri­ate, but much more dif­fi­cult to find and chal­leng­ing to main­tain, plus their man­u­al car­riage returns would have cre­at­ed a headache for sound edi­tors.

Avissar’s round up also serves to remind us of a par­tic­u­lar­ly mod­ern problem—the ongo­ing quest to por­tray texts and social media mes­sages effec­tive­ly on big and small screens. This dilem­ma didn’t exist back when type­writ­ers were the pri­ma­ry text-based devices. A close up of what­ev­er page was rolled onto the plat­en got the job done with a min­i­mum of fuss.

Two of the most cel­e­brat­ed type­writer sequences in film his­to­ry did not make the cut, pos­si­bly because nei­ther fea­tures actu­al work­ing type­writ­ers: the NSFW anthro­po­mor­phic type­writer-bug in David Cronenberg’s adap­ta­tion of William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch and Jer­ry Lewis’ inspired pan­tomime in Who’s Mind­ing the Store, per­formed, like Avissar’s super­cut, to the tune of com­pos­er Leroy Ander­son­’s The Type­writer.

Up for anoth­er chal­lenge? Which top Hol­ly­wood star is “obsessed with type­writ­ers”?

Watch more of Ariel Avissar’s super­cuts, includ­ing a super­moon trib­ute and The Silence of the Lambs’ “clever, care­ful fin­gers” on his Vimeo chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball” (Cir­ca 1881)

Dis­cov­er the Inge­nious Type­writer That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion: The Keaton Music Type­writer Patent­ed in 1936

Ray Brad­bury Wrote the First Draft of Fahren­heit 451 on Coin-Oper­at­ed Type­writ­ers, for a Total of $9.80

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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What Are the Real Causes of Zoom Fatigue? And What Are the Possible Solutions?: New Research from Stanford Offers Answers

in Current Affairs, Health, Psychology, Stanford | March 2nd, 2021

The tech­nol­o­gy we put between our­selves and oth­ers tends to always cre­ate addi­tion­al strains on com­mu­ni­ca­tion, even as it enables near-con­stant, instant con­tact. When it comes to our now-pri­ma­ry mode of inter­act­ing — star­ing at each oth­er as talk­ing heads or Brady Bunch-style gal­leries — those stress­es have been iden­ti­fied by com­mu­ni­ca­tion experts as “Zoom fatigue,” now a sub­ject of study among psy­chol­o­gists who want to under­stand our always-con­nect­ed-but-most­ly-iso­lat­ed lives in the pan­dem­ic, and a top­ic for Today show seg­ments like the one above.

As Stan­ford researcher Jere­my Bailen­son vivid­ly explains to Today, Zoom fatigue refers to the burnout we expe­ri­ence from inter­act­ing with dozens of peo­ple for hours a day, months on end, through pret­ty much any video con­fer­enc­ing plat­form. (But, let’s face it, most­ly Zoom.) We may be famil­iar with the symp­toms already if we spend some part of our day on video calls or lessons. Zoom fatigue com­bines the prob­lems of over­work and tech­no­log­i­cal over­stim­u­la­tion with unique forms of social exhaus­tion that do not plague us in the office or the class­room.

Bailen­son, direc­tor of Stan­ford University’s Vir­tu­al Human Inter­ac­tion Lab, refers to this kind of burnout as “Non­ver­bal Over­load,” a col­lec­tion of “psy­cho­log­i­cal con­se­quences” from pro­longed peri­ods of dis­em­bod­ied con­ver­sa­tion. He has been study­ing vir­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion for two decades and began writ­ing about the cur­rent prob­lem in April of 2020 in a Wall Street Jour­nal op-ed that warned, “soft­ware like Zoom was designed to do online work, and the tools that increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty weren’t meant to mim­ic nor­mal social inter­ac­tion.”

Now, in a new schol­ar­ly arti­cle pub­lished in the APA jour­nal Tech­nol­o­gy, Mind, and Behav­ior, Bailen­son elab­o­rates on the argu­ment with a focus on Zoom, not to “vil­i­fy the com­pa­ny,” he writes, but because “it has become the default plat­form for many in acad­e­mia” (and every­where else, per­haps its own form of exhaus­tion). The con­stituents of non­ver­bal over­load include gaz­ing into each oth­ers’ eyes at close prox­im­i­ty for long peri­ods of time, even when we aren’t speak­ing to each oth­er.

Any­one who speaks for a liv­ing under­stands the inten­si­ty of being stared at for hours at a time. Even when speak­ers see vir­tu­al faces instead of real ones, research has shown that being stared at while speak­ing caus­es phys­i­o­log­i­cal arousal (Takac et al., 2019). But Zoom’s inter­face design con­stant­ly beams faces to every­one, regard­less of who is speak­ing. From a per­cep­tu­al stand­point, Zoom effec­tive­ly trans­forms lis­ten­ers into speak­ers and smoth­ers every­one with eye gaze.

On Zoom, we also have to expend much more ener­gy to send and inter­pret non­ver­bal cues, and with­out the con­text of the room out­side the screen, we are more apt to mis­in­ter­pret them. Depend­ing on the size of our screen, we may be star­ing at each oth­er as larg­er-than-life talk­ing heads, a dis­ori­ent­ing expe­ri­ence for the brain and one that lends more impact to facial expres­sions than may be war­rant­ed, cre­at­ing a false sense of inti­ma­cy and urgency. “When someone’s face is that close to ours in real life,” writes Vig­nesh Ramachan­dran at Stan­ford News, “our brains inter­pret it as an intense sit­u­a­tion that is either going to lead to mat­ing or to con­flict.”

Unless we turn off the view of our­selves on the screen — which we gen­er­al­ly don’t do because we’re con­scious of being stared at — we are also essen­tial­ly sit­ting in front of a mir­ror while try­ing to focus on oth­ers. The con­stant self-eval­u­a­tion adds an addi­tion­al lay­er of stress and tax­es the brain’s resources. In face-to-face inter­ac­tions, we can let our eyes wan­der, even move around the room and do oth­er things while we talk to peo­ple. “There’s a grow­ing research now that says when peo­ple are mov­ing, they’re per­form­ing bet­ter cog­ni­tive­ly,” says Bailen­son. Zoom inter­ac­tions, con­verse­ly, can inhib­it move­ment for long peri­ods of time.

“Zoom fatigue” may not be as dire as it sounds, but rather the inevitable tri­als of a tran­si­tion­al peri­od, Bailen­son sug­gests. He offers solu­tions we can imple­ment now: using the “hide self-view” but­ton, mut­ing our video reg­u­lar­ly, set­ting up the tech­nol­o­gy so that we can fid­get, doo­dle, and get up and move around.… Not all of these are going to work for every­one — we are, after all, social­ized to sit and stare at each oth­er on Zoom; refus­ing to par­tic­i­pate might send unin­tend­ed mes­sages we would have to expend more ener­gy to cor­rect. Bailen­son fur­ther describes the phe­nom­e­non in the BBC Busi­ness Dai­ly pod­cast inter­view above.

“Video­con­fer­enc­ing is here to stay,” Bailen­son admits, and we’ll have to adapt. “As media psy­chol­o­gists it is our job,” he writes to his col­leagues in the new arti­cle, to help “users devel­op bet­ter use prac­tices” and help “tech­nol­o­gists build bet­ter inter­faces.” He most­ly leaves it to the tech­nol­o­gists to imag­ine what those are, though we our­selves have more con­trol over the plat­form than we col­lec­tive­ly acknowl­edge. Could we maybe admit, Bailen­son writes, that “per­haps a dri­ver of Zoom fatigue is sim­ply that we are tak­ing more meet­ings than we would be doing face-to-face”?

Read about the “Zoom Exhaus­tion & Fatigue Scale (ZEF Scale)” devel­oped by Bailen­son and his col­leagues at Stan­ford and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gothen­burg here. Then take the sur­vey your­self, and see where you rank in the ZEF cat­e­gories of gen­er­al fatigue, visu­al fatigue, social fatigue, moti­va­tion­al fatigue, and emo­tion­al fatigue.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Infor­ma­tion Over­load Robs Us of Our Cre­ativ­i­ty: What the Sci­en­tif­ic Research Shows

In 1896, a French Car­toon­ist Pre­dict­ed Our Social­ly-Dis­tanced Zoom Hol­i­day Gath­er­ings

Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Free Back­grounds for Vir­tu­al Meet­ings: Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away & More

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

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How the Food We Eat Affects Our Brain: Learn About the “MIND Diet”

in Health, Science | February 10th, 2021

We humans did a num­ber on our­selves, as they say, when we invent­ed agri­cul­ture, glob­al trade routes, refrig­er­a­tion, pas­teur­iza­tion, and so forth. Yes, we made it so that mil­lions of peo­ple around the world could have abun­dant food. We’ve also cre­at­ed food that’s full of emp­ty calo­ries and lack­ing in essen­tial nutri­ents. For­tu­nate­ly, in places where healthy alter­na­tives are plen­ti­ful, atti­tudes toward food have changed, and nutri­tion has become a para­mount con­cern.

“As a soci­ety, we are com­fort­able with the idea that we feed our bod­ies,” says neu­ro­sci­en­tist Lisa Mosconi. We research foods that cause inflam­ma­tion and increase can­cer risk, etc. But we are “much less aware,” says Mosconi—author of Brain Food: The Sur­pris­ing Sci­ence of Eat­ing for Cog­ni­tive Pow­er—“that we’re feed­ing our brains too. Parts of the foods we eat will end up being the very fab­ric of our brains…. Put sim­ply: Every­thing in the brain that isn’t made by the brain itself is ‘import­ed’ from the food we eat.”

We learn much more about the con­stituents of brain mat­ter in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above by Mia Naca­mul­li. Amino acids, fats, pro­teins, traces of micronu­tri­ents, and glucose—“the brain is, of course, more than the sum of its nutri­tion­al parts, but each com­po­nent does have a dis­tinct impact on func­tion­ing, devel­op­ment, mood, and ener­gy.” Post-meal blahs or insom­nia can be close­ly cor­re­lat­ed with diet.

What should we be eat­ing for brain health? Luck­i­ly, cur­rent research falls well in line with what nutri­tion­ists and doc­tors have been sug­gest­ing we eat for over­all health. Anne Linge, reg­is­tered dietit­ian and cer­ti­fied dia­betes care and edu­ca­tion spe­cial­ist at the Nutri­tion Clin­ic at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Med­ical Cen­ter-Roo­sevelt, rec­om­mends what researchers have dubbed the MIND diet, a com­bi­na­tion of the Mediter­ranean diet and the DASH diet.

“The Mediter­ranean diet focus­es on lots of veg­eta­bles, fruits, nuts and heart-healthy oils,” Linge says. “When we talk about the DASH diet, the pur­pose is to stop high blood pres­sure, so we’re look­ing at more serv­ings of fruits and veg­eta­bles, more fiber and less sat­u­rat­ed fat.” The com­bi­na­tion of the two, reports Angela Cab­o­ta­je at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Med­i­cine blog Right as Rain, results in a diet high in folate, carotenoids, vit­a­min E, flavonoids and antiox­i­dants. “All of these things seem to have poten­tial ben­e­fits to the cog­ni­tive func­tion,” says Linge, who breaks MIND foods down into the 10 cat­e­gories below:

Leafy greens (6x per week)
Veg­eta­bles (1x per day)
Nuts (5x per week)
Berries (2x per week)
Beans (3x per week)
Whole grains (3x per day)
Fish (1x per week)
Poul­try (2x per week)
Olive oil (reg­u­lar use)
Red wine (1x per day)

As you’ll note, red meat, dairy, sweets, and fried foods aren’t includ­ed: researchers rec­om­mend we con­sume these much less often. Harvard’s Health­beat blog fur­ther breaks down some of these cat­e­gories and includes tea and cof­fee, a wel­come addi­tion for peo­ple who pre­fer caf­feinat­ed bev­er­ages to alco­hol.

“You might think of the MIND diet as a list of best prac­tices,” says Linge. “You don’t have to fol­low every guide­line, but wow, if how you eat can pre­vent or delay cog­ni­tive decline, what a fab­u­lous thing.” It is, indeed. For a schol­ar­ly overview of the effects of nutri­tion on the brain, read the 2015 study on the MIND diet here and anoth­er, 2010 study on the crit­i­cal impor­tance of “brain foods” here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Live to Be 100 and Beyond: 9 Diet & Lifestyle Tips

Nutri­tion­al Psy­chi­a­try: Why Diet May Play an Essen­tial Role in Treat­ing Men­tal Health Con­di­tions, Includ­ing Depres­sion, Anx­i­ety & Beyond

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

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