"Superager:" It's what you want to be

We old people often compare notes on how we’re doing brain-wise. What I and many others notice the most, in terms of decline, is being unable to bring words and names to mind. The concern behind these discussions, of course, is Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. What we wish for is to be superagers, a term coined by a neurologist for old people whose brains are on par with healthy 25-year-olds. 

For me, this degree of mental sharpness brings to mind Warren Buffet (born 1930) and Eric Kandel (born 1929), both of whom I often see being interviewed on television. They’re never grasping for words! Kandel, by the way, is a Nobel prize-winning neuropsychiatrist. Both men still work at their professions. (They also seem to be cheerful types.)

Buffet

Kandel

 To discover the anatomical basis of superagers' acuity, researchers compared the brains of superagers to those of other people of similar age. What they found was that certain regions of the "ordinary" people's brains were diminished in size because of age-related atrophy, while those same regions in superagers’ brains were indistinguishable from those of young people. Those regions, by the way, used to be considered the “emotional” regions, but it turns out they are major hubs for general communication throughout the brain and include the coordination of the five senses into a cohesive experience. (They're called the midcingulate cortex and anterior insula, if anybody cares.)

So far, it looks like the formula for a youthful brain is working hard at something. Many labs have observed increased activity in the brain regions mentioned above when people perform difficult tasks, either physical or mental. Do it till it hurts and then a bit more, they advise. Sorry. Sudoku, crosswords, and those brain games aren’t hard enough.

Dang! Writing this blog probably isn’t hard enough either. Apparently I have to learn a new language or master a musical instrument or learn to pole vault or some other improbable achievement.

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Unintended consequences of drugs

My husband had been suffering with sciatica, so I urged him to take Advil (ibuprofen), which he did—although not regularly. Then he came down with colitis (the collagenous variety), which is an inflammation of the large intestines (colon). He’d had it once before. The gastroenterologist informed him that Advil likely triggered this new flare-up. My bad. To make matters worse, he's now developed muscle pain and weakness, a side effect of the colitis medication, which he's stopped taking.

As for me, I'm convinced that mega doses of Advil resulted in my getting a bad cold--a rare occurrence for me (I get a cold maybe once every five or ten years). An orthopedic surgeon had recommended that I take four Advil morning and night to alleviate bursitis in my hip. After about five days of this regimen, I came down with the cold. At this point, I quit the Advil regimen and began researching its side effects. I discovered that ibuprofen and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatories definitely suppress the immune system. It looks like even the most benign-seeming medications have side effects.

I just read about a woman whose blood pressure kept fluctuating dangerously between high and low. It turns out that the inhaler she’d been using for asthma contained a steroid called fluticasone, which imitates cortisol, an essential “fight or flight” hormone. Because of this, her adrenal gland shut down, such that her body wasn’t responding properly to stressful situations.

More than 6 percent of all hospital admissions are because of adverse reactions to medications. For people over 65, it’s more like 12 percent who are admitted because of a medication-linked problem

I’m not saying we should never take drugs when we’re sick. They can be lifesaving. We just need to be aware of their unintended consequences. I’m learning to live without Advil.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

Myths about weight loss

I gained six pounds over last few months. Maybe it was the holidays. At any rate, I'm not dieting. I'm waiting for them to drop off on their own. So far, I've dropped 2-1/2. As I’ve said in earlier posts, your body wants to be a certain weight.

Losing weight and keeping it off is next to impossible. Nevertheless, you see all kinds of advice on dieting, and most are myths. Here are some examples based on obesity research:

• Losing weight slowly works better than losing it quickly: Not true. Studies show that after three years everyone who had lost weight regained it irrespective of whether they’d lost it quickly or slowly.
• Avoiding snacks helps you maintain weight loss: There’s no evidence that snacks undermine weight loss.
• Building muscle speeds up your metabolism: Building muscle has almost no effect on resting metabolism, which is what your muscles are mostly doing (you aren’t running around flexing your muscles all day). If a 175-pound man adds 4-1/2 pounds of muscle, he’ll burn an extra 24 calories a day.

Sad but true: not only does your body slow its metabolism to compensate for weight loss, if you lose 10 percent or more of your weight by dieting, your muscles start using genes that make them more efficient. That is, they’ll burn 20 to 30 percent fewer calories for the same exercise. Your body wants to stay the same!

Is there hope? Not much. No diet or weight-loss regimen is guaranteed to work, but people can often maintain a loss of 5 percent of their weight. According to anecdotal evidence, people who succeed in keeping weight off do so by constant vigilance: controlling what they eat, exercising a lot, and putting up with hunger. Forget that!

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Hearing loss is declining. I am amazed.

I have about a fifty percent hearing loss in my left ear. I’ve had it since childhood—probably the result of measles. I first noticed it when I found I could barely discern words when listening on the phone with my left ear. Mostly it doesn’t bother me and I can hear OK. The only time it’s a problem is when someone is sitting on my left and talking. I have to swivel my head around and face them to hear clearly.

I’d been assuming that, what with amplifiers and all, young people would be losing their hearing as a result of listening to loud music. Prolonged exposure to noise above 85 decibels will damage your hearing. The threshold of sound perception is 10 decibels. The sound of leaves rustling is 30 decibels. A noisy restaurant is 70 decibels. Amplified rock music is 110 to 130 decibels—a rate that can damage hearing after 4 to 40 minutes exposure per day (depending on the decibels).

Here’s how the damage happens: sounds hit your eardrum and cause it to vibrate. The vibrations pass through the three small bones in the middle ear and are then transmitted to the inner ear where tiny hairs transform the sound vibrations into nerve impulses. It’s those tiny hairs that are damaged when exposed to excessive loud noise.

The researchers who collected data on hearing loss were as surprised as I was. They, too, expected the rate to rise. They are surmising that the decline in hearing loss is a result of the closing of loud factories, such as textile factories, immunizations to prevent measles, and reduced use of some medications that can cause hearing loss.

I can’t stand loud music and wear earplugs at Jazzercise. The young people like it loud. I still don’t understand why they’re not all deaf.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.