We Eat Well, Exercise But Die Before We're Thirty

Submitted by tonyplant on January 8, 2007 - 12:21.

I came across this cartoon that inspired the title and reminded me of something that I've seen attributed to Terry Pratchett:

You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abcesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say 'yes'.

As ever, I fall back onto consideration of Ben Friedman's The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. Friedman persuasively argues that economic growth is essential to moral, social, political and cultural progress.

I wonder why we are not happier or more satisified. Are we meant to compare ourselves to others or to an idea of what we wanted for ourselves and find our lives lacking? Or has economic growth given us more diverse and intense sources of hedonism but not provided comparable opportunities for engagement or a meaningful life? I find the latter difficult to believe. Yet I meet so many people who are relying upon an external or a change in circumstance (such as a lottery win) before they will be happy. The idea that we can change ourselves and be happy seems to be ridiculous or dangerous.

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Rely On The Kindness Of Strangers

Submitted by tonyplant on June 9, 2006 - 17:52.

According to Wired, researcher David Baker is relying on the kindness of strangers to generate the key to an AIDS vaccine or a cure for cancer by creating a virtual super-computer. Sometimes, in addition to techno-stars, we need basic services and kindnesses. An individual contribution to Baker's search for scientific solutions might be

that old PC sitting under a layer of dust in your closet or the one on your desk doing little else but running a screen saver.

Baker's Rosetta@home project is putting together the spare computing power of tens of thousands of PCs throughout the world to work away at scientific problems over the internet. Owners install free software on the PCs and

when the machine is idle, it figures out how an individual protein — a building block of life — might fold or contort, displaying the possibilities in a screen saver. When the PC is done crunching, it sends the results back to Baker's team and grabs more work.

More than 60,000 people currently donate computer time and Baker is looking to increase that number ten-fold.

Rosetta@home is a tremendously exciting project and is creating virtual communities of people who feel actively involved in the research effort and the potential medical impact of the work. What would happen if we could harness people's goodwill to produce a virtual community of people willing to improve their own well-being and that of others? In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell promotes the idea that small actions can spark “social epidemics”, that are good for our well-being. What small actions could we do and what would we be willing to do? Is the greatest apprehension the fear of the open-ended commitment and of exploitation? Does the Rosetta@home project work because there is a clearly defined limit to the contributions (e.g., spare computing power, when the computer is turned on?).

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Laughter Really Is Good For Us

Submitted by tonyplant on May 5, 2006 - 15:03.

It's World Laughter Day on Sunday and I'm running an event in my local park. A study by Cambridge University recently reported on behavioural changes that add to our longevity:

 

• giving up smoking means an extra five years
• moderate exercise adds three years
• eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day adds three years.

The study neglected to mention that there are studies that suggest that happiness (including the sense that life offers meaning and engagement as well as pleasure) adds up to nine extra years of life. This finding was reported by the study that researched Alzheimer's disease among 678 nuns: the findings of many papers indicate that positive emotions are correlated with survivor rates. The study began in 1986: researchers traced the nun population to the early 1900s. Of the least cheerful nuns, starting from age 30, only 34 percent lived to be 85, and 11 percent lived to age 94. Of the most cheerful, 90 percent lived to age 85, and 54 percent lived to 94, starting at age 30. In a paper examining Positive Emotions In Early Life And Longevity the researchers concluded that:

Positive emotions experienced early in life predicted longevity more than 60 years later.

At 9 years, the benefits of positive emotion outweigh the negative effects of obesity, smoking or alcoholism.

 

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Laughter Is the Best Medicine

Submitted by tonyplant on April 3, 2006 - 15:06.

The Guardian carries a piece on Laughter really is the best medicine.

scientists have proved what everyone else takes for granted - that laughter really is good for you. It turns out that even the anticipation of watching a funny video can raise the levels of immune-boosting hormones in the blood and the benefits can last up to a day.

There are well established health benefits for laughter and for positive emotions associated with it. More technically, in this study, the researcher established that:

the anticipation of a laughter eustress [positive stress] event initiates changes in neuroendocrine response prior to the onset of the event itself...From our prior studies, this modulation appears to be concomitant with mood state changes, and taken together, these would appear to carry important, positive implications for wellness, disease-prevention and most certainly stress-reduction.

All of which is as maybe. Doesn't scheduling time with laughter to improve the workings of our immune systems and overall well-being sound more enjoyable than most other interventions? I would hope that regular laughter sessions might be a lifestyle modification that most people were willing to adopt and practise regularly. We have nothing to give up but a sense of our seriousness and some perspectives that might stop us from enjoying our lives as much as we can, or enjoying the well-being that is open to us.

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