Humainologie dialogue Zoom link and book synopsis for this coming Wednesday August 5
- Arthur Clark
- Aug 2, 2020
- 6 min read
Both the book synopsis and the Zoom link for our dialogue this coming Wednesday August 5 (starting at 6:30 PM) are already available, so I will provide them here, along with some background for my contribution on the aging game. Later, perhaps on Tuesday, I’ll send out the structured list of topics.
First, here’s the Zoom link provided by Greg for Wednesday:
Link, Meeting ID & Passcode
Meeting ID: 815 1359 1699 Passcode: 189280
And here’s background for my contribution, with the book synopsis appended below this message:
Sunset can be the most beautiful time of the day. The same is true of life. Daniel Levitin (neuroscientist, cognitive psychologist, and bestselling author) would agree with that. My synopsis of his book Successful Aging is appended below, and here is a presentation about the book by Levitin himself
in which you will note his sensitivity and his sense of humor. As a bonus to help you in the aging game, here’s a video on how just 6 minutes a week of intensive aerobic exercise might be an ideal addition to your game plan:
Get fit in 6 minutes per week – AND help reduce the deterioration associated with aging
Once you have read the synopsis of Levitin’s book, my good question for you for our dialogue might be: As you grow older, what is one habit you would like to establish to help you make the most of that time of your life? (You might recall the book Atomic Habits by James Clear and bring that approach into your game plan.)
I hope to see you on Wednesday. It would be impossible for me to overstate how very important your contributions are if our Group Genius is to continue growing and achieve its full potential here in our City of Calgary. This is our chance.
Carpe diem,
Arthur
Book: (Daniel Levitin) Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives (2020)
Julia “Hurricane” Hawkins of Baton Rouge, Louisiana had been an avid gardener and a schoolteacher but never a competitive athlete – until the age of 75. And then, writes Levitin, “She competed as a cyclist in the National Senior Games, winning bronze and gold medals. Twenty-five years later, she branched out, taking up running at age one hundred. Hawkins again competed in the National Senior Games at age 101, establishing the record for women one hundred and older in the hundred-yard dash at 39.62 seconds. She also competed in the fifty-yard dash against other runners as ‘young’ as ninety, finishing in 18.31 seconds. …In June 2019, at age 103, she won gold medals in the 50- and 100-meter races.”
As with so many other things, we often have debilitating misconceptions about aging, which limit opportunities we might otherwise have. Cultural misconceptions about aging also limit possibilities for a better future, locally and globally. Because of a variety of changes that often take place with aging (better impulse control, improved self-discipline, enhanced emotional stability, greater inclination to get along with others, and a vast range of experience to draw from when making decisions), it is hardly surprising when the author asserts, “Older adults can bring a much-needed compassion to a world being rent by impatience, intolerance, and lack of empathy.” As for what you will face as you grow older, the author writes: “I argue here for a very different vision of old age, one that sees our final decades as a period of blossoming, a resurgence of life that does not chase after our younger years, but instead embraces the gifts that time can bring.”
Many things deteriorate with advancing age. The author describes the neuropathology of mental decline: “Another big factor in mental decline has to do with myelin, that fatty coating around axons that serves as insulator. White-matter tracts – the transmission lines of the brain… - decay with age starting at age fifty or so…. While the gray matter of the human frontal lobe and hippocampus shrinks an average of about 14 percent between the ages of thirty and eighty, shrinkage of white matter is even more drastic, averaging 24 percent. …This leads to a generalized slowing in older adults, affecting all of our mental systems, including the transmission of perceptual information, memory, decision making, and motor movements.”
We should distinguish mild cognitive impairment from dementia. “Mild cognitive impairment is defined as cognitive decline greater than what would normally be expected for an individual’s age and education level but that does not interfere notably with activities of daily life. In about 50 percent of patients it leads to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and can be an early warning sign for it; other times it exists independently. That is, some mild cognitive impairment patients will maintain the same level of impairment for many years (good news), whereas for others it is a transitional stage toward dementia.”
Among the most valuable parts of the book is the chapter on perception, one of seven chapters in Part One, The Continually Developing Brain. From it we learn afresh something akin to what Stoic philosophers had emphasized: When something disturbs you, it is not the thing itself, but your reaction to the thing that is disturbing. Whether it’s disturbing or delightful, you experience the world through your sensory systems. In the external world, there is no such thing as red, green, blue; or bitter, sour, sweet; or high and low notes (as you experience them). Instead there are wavelengths of light, frequencies of sound waves, and so on, which your visual, gustatory, auditory, tactile, and olfactory receptors pick up, transmit to various parts of your brain, and give you the magic show you think of as the world. Furthermore, those pathways and the synapses in the brain itself are constantly remodeling. Your vestibular system helps you with balance and proprioception and can rapidly remodel its connections to compensate for distortions of visual input, for example in experiments where subjects wear goggles that create those distortions. Think about the implications of this lively synaptic remodeling for everything in your life! You can remodel your responses to all sorts of things! A Stoic mantra provided by Ryan Holiday is: “You control how you play the game.” That includes the aging game. Hey, this might be even more interesting than basketball!
Part Two of the book, The Choices We Make, has four chapters: “The Internal Clock,” “Diet,” “Exercise,” and “Sleep.” His recommendations on diet are simpler and less austere than the protocol put forward by UCLA neurologist Dale Bredesen, but he does cite the recommendations of Bredesen supportively, adding “The Bredesen Protocol is still in its early stages of validation – the primary proof of concept was based on only ten patients.” He also emphasizes that the “American diet is too high in processed foods, sugar, salt, and red meat.” And he finds the best dietary advice in Michael Pollan’s 2008 book In Defense of Food: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
In various parts of the book, Levitin refers to his COACH principles of successful aging: Curiosity, Openness, Association (as in social interactions), Conscientiousness, and Healthy Practices. Take Openness: Be open to new experiences. Taking up crossword puzzles for the first time when you’re 75 is likely to give you more benefit than simply continuing to do crossword puzzles if you’ve done them for many years.
Levitin points out that human evolution has not selected for the kind of late-life bounce-back resilience that Julia “Hurricane” Hawkins has because beyond the reproductive years, there’s no evolutionary advantage to it. Yet throughout the book, he sees opportunities in the difficulties of aging, providing countless examples of individuals who have continued to be productive, purposeful, and happy, as they change the world around them.
In Part Three: The New Longevity, in the chapter on cognitive enhancement (“Living Smarter”), he notes that outdoor exercise has a more broadly beneficial effect on cognitive enhancement than something like sudoku, which will make you better at sudoku without enhancing your cognitive capacity in other areas. He devotes many pages in that chapter to various pharmaceuticals and to emerging technology to include implants and does not neglect the related ethical issues.
In the final chapter, “Living Better,” we learn that on average, older people are happier than younger people. “This holds true across seventy-two countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe.” So if you have passed the mid-century mark, brace yourself. What lies ahead could be the happiest time of your life. That final chapter is packed with key points. “The single most important factor in determining successful aging is the personality trait of Conscientiousness.” Be purposeful. “As individuals, as community members, as a society, it is in all of our best interests to help construct a culture that embraces the gifts of the elderly, weaving cross-generational interactions into the fabric of everyday experience,” writes Levitin in concluding his book.
In an Appendix, “Rejuvenating Your Brain,” he provides these ten basics: 1) Don’t retire. Don’t stop being engaged with meaningful work. 2) Look forward. Don’t look back. (Reminiscing doesn’t promote health.) 3) Exercise. Get your heart rate going. Preferably in nature. 4) Embrace a moderated lifestyle with healthy practices. 5) Keep your social circle exciting and new. 6) Spend time with people younger than you. 7) See your doctor regularly, but not obsessively. 8) Don’t think of yourself as old (other than taking prudent precautions). 9) Appreciate your cognitive strengths – pattern recognition, crystallized intelligence wisdom, accumulated knowledge. 10) Promote cognitive health through experiential learning: traveling, spending time with grandchildren, and immersing yourself in new activities and situations. Do new things.
You know there are challenges ahead of you. That experiment with the goggles shows how adaptable we are. If your goal were to become a world-class athlete, you would practice every day to improve your game, remodeling those synapses relentlessly. The aging game is as important as any game you will ever play. The sooner you get started, the better your game will be.
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