Live Long, Die Short – by Dr. Roger Landry
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First know: “die short” is not about your height—although on average, short people do live longer, partly because insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) promotes both tallness and accelerated DNA damage (thus, aging and cancer), and partly because if someone is very tall, it can cause circulatory problems, and without a nice easy flow of blood through the brain, bad things happen (such as accumulation of harmful detritus in the brain, and increased stroke risk too).
Next know: “die short” is, in this book, actually about shortening the decline at the end of life. Sometimes people say “I don’t want to live 10 years longer; they’ll be the 10 most miserable years”, but in fact if we look after our health, we will be healthy for perhaps >9.5 of our last 10 years, while an unhealthy person may just get their expected “10 most miserable years” 10 or 20 years earlier (and then die).
So, in short (so to speak), it’s about increasing healthspan.
To enjoy the longest and healthiest healthspan, Dr. Landry offers 10 tips. We’ll not keep them a secret; they are:
- Use it or lose it
- Keep moving
- Challenge your brain
- Stay connected
- Lower your risks
- Never act your age
- Wherever you are, be fully there
- Find your purpose
- Have children in your life
- Laugh to a better life
Each of these has a chapter devoted to them, in section 2 of the book (section 1 is about what we know about healthy aging, and section 3 is about where we go from here).
You’ll notice that one item not generally found on such lists is “have children in your life”; to be clear, they don’t have to be your children, and/but they do have to be actual current children; any now-grown-up progeny aren’t what’s being talked about here (wonderful as they may be, any support role they may play gets filed under “stay connected” instead).
The style is mostly impersonal pop-science with occasional personal anecdotes, and the book’s formatting (many subheadings within chapters) makes it easy to read a bit at a time, if that’s your preference. There’s a modest, but extant, bibliography.
Bottom line: if you’d like to stay younger as you get older, this book goes into a lot of detail about 10 ways to do just that.
Click here to check out Live Long, Die Short, and live long, die short!
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Our family is always glued to separate devices. How can we connect again?
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It’s Saturday afternoon and the kids are all connected to separate devices. So are the parents. Sounds familiar?
Many families want to set ground rules to help them reduce their screen time – and have time to connect with each other, without devices.
But it can be difficult to know where to start and how to make a plan that suits your family.
First, look at your own screen time
Before telling children to “hop off the tech”, it’s important parents understand how much they are using screens themselves.
Globally, the average person spends an average of six hours and 58 minutes on screens each day. This has increased by 13%, or 49 minutes, since 2013.
Parents who report high screen time use tend to see this filtering down to the children in their family too. Two-thirds of primary school-aged children in Australia have their own mobile screen-based device.
Australia’s screen time guidelines recommended children aged five to 17 years have no more than two hours of sedentary screen time (excluding homework) each day. For those aged two to five years, it’s no more than one hour a day. And the guidelines recommend no screen time at all for children under two.
Yet the majority of children, across age groups, exceed these maximums. A new Australian study released this week found the average three-year-old is exposed to two hours and 52 minutes of screen time a day.
Some screen time is OK, too much increases risks
Technology has profoundly impacted children’s lives, offering both opportunities and challenges.
On one hand, it provides access to educational resources, can develop creativity, facilitates communication with peers and family members, and allows students to seek out new information.
On the other hand, excessive screen use can result in too much time being sedentary, delays in developmental milestones, disrupted sleep and daytime drowsiness.
Disrupted sleep can leave children tired the next day.
Yulia Raneva/ShutterstockToo much screen time can affect social skills, as it replaces time spent in face-to-face social interactions. This is where children learn verbal and non-verbal communication, develop empathy, learn patience and how to take turns.
Many families also worry about how to maintain a positive relationship with their children when so much of their time is spent glued to screens.
What about when we’re all on devices?
When families are all using devices simultaneously, it results in less face-to-face interactions, reducing communication and resulting in a shift in family dynamics.
The increased use of wireless technology enables families to easily tune out from each other by putting in earphones, reducing the opportunity for conversation. Family members wearing earphones during shared activities or meals creates a physical barrier and encourages people to retreat into their own digital worlds.
Wearing earphones for long periods may also reduce connection to, and closeness with, family members. Research from video gaming, for instance, found excessing gaming increases feelings of isolation, loneliness and the displacement of real-world social interactions, alongside weakened relationships with peers and family members.
How can I set screen time limits?
Start by sitting down as a family and discussing what limits you all feel would be appropriate when using TVs, phones and gaming – and when is an appropriate time to use them.
Have set rules around family time – for example, no devices at the dinner table – so you can connect through face-to-face interactions.
One rule might be no devices at the dinner table.
Monkey Business Images/ShutterstockConsider locking your phone or devices away at certain periods throughout the week, such as after 9pm (or within an hour of bedtime for younger children) and seek out opportunities to balance your days with physical activities, such kicking a footy at the park or going on a family bush walk.
Parents can model healthy behaviour by regulating and setting limits on their own screen time. This might mean limiting your social media scrolling to 15 or 30 minutes a day and keeping your phone in the next room when you’re not using it.
When establishing appropriate boundaries and ensuring children’s safety, it is crucial for parents and guardians to engage in open communication about technology use. This includes teaching critical thinking skills to navigate online content safely and employing parental control tools and privacy settings.
Parents can foster a supportive and trusting relationship with children from an early age so children feel comfortable discussing their online experiences and sharing their fears or concerns.
For resources to help you develop your own family’s screen time plan, visit the Raising Children Network.
Elise Waghorn, Lecturer, School of Education, RMIT University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Many Faces Of Cosmetic Surgery
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Cosmetic Surgery: What’s The Truth?
In Tuesday’s newsletter, we asked you your opinion on elective cosmetic surgeries, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- About 48% said “Everyone should be able to get what they want, assuming informed consent”
- About 28% said “It can ease discomfort to bring features more in line with normalcy”
- 15% said “They should be available in the case of extreme disfigurement only”
- 10% said “No elective cosmetic surgery should ever be performed; needless danger”
Well, there was a clear gradient of responses there! Not so polarizing as we might have expected, but still enough dissent for discussion
So what does the science say?
The risks of cosmetic surgery outweigh the benefits: True or False?
False, subjectively (but this is important).
You may be wondering: how is science subjective?
And the answer is: the science is not subjective, but people’s cost:worth calculations are. What’s worth it to one person absolutely may not be worth it to another. Which means: for those for whom it wouldn’t be worth it, they are usually the people who will not choose the elective surgery.
Let’s look at some numbers (specifically, regret rates for various surgeries, elective/cosmetic or otherwise):
- Regret rate for elective cosmetic surgery in general: 20%
- Regret rate for knee replacement (i.e., not cosmetic): 17.1%
- Regret rate for hip replacement (i.e., not cosmetic): 4.8%
- Regret rate for gender-affirming surgeries (for transgender patients): 1%
So we can see, elective surgeries have an 80–99% satisfaction rate, depending on what they are. In comparison, the two joint replacements we mentioned have a 82.9–95.2% satisfaction rate. Not too dissimilar, taken in aggregate!
In other words: if a person has studied the risks and benefits of a surgery and decides to go ahead, they’re probably going to be happy with the results, and for them, the benefits will have outweighed the risks.
Sources for the above numbers, by the way:
- What is the regret rate for plastic surgery?
- Decision regret after primary hip and knee replacement surgery
- A systematic review of patient regret after surgery—a common phenomenon in many specialties but rare within gender-affirmation surgery
But it’s just a vanity; therapy is what’s needed instead: True or False?
False, generally. True, sometimes. Whatever the reasons for why someone feels the way they do about their appearance—whether their face got burned in a fire or they just have triple-J cups that they’d like reduced, it’s generally something they’ve already done a lot of thinking about. Nevertheless, it does also sometimes happen that it’s a case of someone hoping it’ll be the magical solution, when in reality something else is also needed.
How to know the difference? One factor is whether the surgery is “type change” or “restorative”, and both have their pros and cons.
- In “type change” (e.g. rhinoplasty), more psychological adjustment is needed, but when it’s all over, the person has a new nose and, statistically speaking, is usually happy with it.
- In “restorative” (e.g. facelift), less psychological adjustment is needed (as it’s just a return to a previous state), so a person will usually be happy quickly, but ultimately it is merely “kicking the can down the road” if the underlying problem is “fear of aging”, for example. In such a case, likely talking therapy would be beneficial—whether in place of, or alongside, cosmetic surgery.
Here’s an interesting paper on that; the sample sizes are small, but the discussion about the ideas at hand is a worthwhile read:
Does cosmetic surgery improve psychosocial wellbeing?
Some people will never be happy no matter how many surgeries they get: True or False?
True! We’re going to refer to the above paper again for this one. In particular, here’s what it said about one group for whom surgeries will not usually be helpful:
❝There is a particular subgroup of people who appear to respond poorly to cosmetic procedures. These are people with the psychiatric disorder known as “body dysmorphic disorder” (BDD). BDD is characterised by a preoccupation with an objectively absent or minimal deformity that causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning.
For several reasons, it is important to recognise BDD in cosmetic surgery settings:
Firstly, it appears that cosmetic procedures are rarely beneficial for these people. Most patients with BDD who have had a cosmetic procedure report that it was unsatisfactory and did not diminish concerns about their appearance.
Secondly, BDD is a treatable disorder. Serotonin-reuptake inhibitors and cognitive behaviour therapy have been shown to be effective in about two-thirds of patients with BDD❞
~ Dr. David Castle et al. (lightly edited for brevity)
Which is a big difference compared to, for example, someone having triple-J breasts that need reducing, or the wrong genitals for their gender, or a face whose features are distinct outliers.
Whether that’s a reason people with BDD shouldn’t be able to get it is an ethical question rather than a scientific one, so we’ll not try to address that with science.
After all, many people (in general) will try to fix their woes with a haircut, a tattoo, or even a new sportscar, and those might sometimes be bad decisions, but they are still the person’s decision to make.
And even so, there can be protectionist laws/regulations that may provide a speed-bump, for example:
Take care!
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5 Ways To Naturally Boost The “Ozempic Effect”
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Dr. Jason Fung is perhaps most well-known for his work in functional medicine for reversing diabetes, and he’s once again giving us sound advice about metabolic hormone-hacking with dietary tweaks:
All about incretin
As you may gather from the thumbnail, this video is about incretin, a hormone group (the most well-known of which is GLP-1, as in GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, etc) that slows down stomach emptying, which means a gentler blood sugar curve and feeling fuller for longer. It also acts on the hypothalmus, controlling appetite via the brain too (signalling fullness and reducing hunger).
Dr. Fung recommends 5 ways to increase incretin levels:
- Enjoy dietary fat: healthy kinds, please (e.g. nuts, seeds, eggs, etc—not fried foods), but this increases incretin levels more than carbs
- Enjoy protein: again, prompts higher incretin levels of promotes satiety
- Enjoy fiber: this is more about slowing digestion, but when it’s fermented in the gut into short-chain fatty acids, those too increase incretin secretion
- Enjoy bitter foods: these don’t actually affect incretin levels, but they can bind to incretin receptors, making the body “believe” that you got more incretin (think of it like a skeleton key that fits the lock that was designed to be opened by a different key)
- Enjoy turmeric: for its curcumin content, which increases GLP-1 levels specifically
For more information on each of these, here’s Dr. Fung himself:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Semaglutide for Weight Loss?
- Ozempic vs Five Natural Supplements
- How To Prevent And Reverse Type 2 Diabetes ← this was our “Expert Insights” feature on Dr. Fung’s work
Take care!
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Does This New Machine Cure Depression?
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Let us first talk briefly about the slightly older tech that this may replace, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
TMS involves electromagnetic fields to stimulate the left half of the brain and inhibit the right half of the brain. It sounds like something from the late 19th century—“cure your melancholy with the mystical power of magnetism”—but the thing is, it works:
The main barriers to its use are that the machine itself is expensive, and it has to be done in a clinic by a trained clinician. Which, if it were treating one’s heart, say, would not be so much of an issue, but when treating depression, there is a problem that depressed people are not the most likely to commit to (and follow through with) going somewhere probably out-of-town regularly to get a treatment, when merely getting out of the door was already a challenge and motivation is thin on the ground to start with.
Thus, antidepressant medications are more often the go-to for cost-effectiveness and adherence. Of course, some will work better than others for different people, and some may not work at all in the case of what is generally called “treatment-resistant depression”:
Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!
Transcranial stimulation… At home?
Move over transcranial magnetic stimulation; it’s time for transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS).
First, what it’s not: electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Rather, it uses a very low current.
What it is: a small and portable headset (as opposed to the big machine to go sit in for TMS) that one can use at home. Here’s an example product on Amazon, though there are more stylish versions around, this is the same basic technology.
In a recent study, 45% of those who received treatment with this device experienced remission in 10 weeks, significantly beating placebo (bearing in mind that placebo effect is strongest when it comes to invisible ailments such as depression).
See also: How To Leverage Placebo Effect For Yourself ← this explains more about how the placebo effect works, to the extent that it can even be an adjuvant tool to augment “real” therapies
And as for the study, here it is:
…which rather cuts through the “depressed people don’t make it to the clinic consistently, if at all” problem. Of course, it still requires adherence to its use at home, for example three 30-minute sessions per week, but honestly, “lie/sit still” is likely within the abilities of the majority of depressed people. However…
Important note: you remember we said “in 10 weeks”? That may be critical, because shorter studies (e.g. 6 weeks) have previously returned without such glowing results:
Home-Use Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for the Treatment of a Major Depressive Episode
This means that if you get this tech for yourself or a loved one, it’ll be necessary to persist for likely 10 weeks, certainly more than 6 weeks, and not abandon it after a few sessions when it hasn’t been life-changing yet. And that may be more of a challenge for a depressed person, so likely an “accountability buddy” of some kind is in order (partner, close friend, etc) to help ensure adherence and generally bug you/them into doing it consistently.
And then, of course, you/they might still be in the 55% of people for whom it didn’t work. And that does suck, but random antidepressant medications (i.e., not personalized) don’t fare much better, statistically.
Want something else against depression meanwhile?
Here are some strategies that not only can significantly help, but also are tailored to be actually doable while depressed:
The Mental Health First-Aid You’ll Hopefully Never Need ← written by your writer who has previously suffered extensively from depression and knows what it is like
Take care!
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Procrastination, and how to pay off the to-do list debt
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Procrastination, and how pay off the to-do list debt
Sometimes we procrastinate because we feel overwhelmed by the mountain of things we are supposed to be doing. If you look at your to-do list and it shows 60 overdue items, it’s little wonder if you want to bury your head in the sand!
“What difference does it make if I do one of these things now; I will still have 59 which feels as bad as having 60”
So, treat it like you might a financial debt, and make a repayment plan. Now, instead of 60 overdue items today, you have 1/day for the next 60 days, or 2/day for the next 30 days, or 3/day for the next 20 days, etc. Obviously, you may need to work out whether some are greater temporal priorities and if so, bump those to the top of the list. But don’t sweat the minutiae; your list doesn’t have to be perfectly ordered, just broadly have more urgent things to the top and less urgent things to the bottom.
Note: this repayment plan means having set repayment dates.
Up front, sit down and assign each item a specific calendar date on which you will do that thing.
This is not a deadline! It is your schedule. You’ll not try to do it sooner, and you won’t postpone it for later. You will just do that item on that date.
A productivity app like ToDoist can help with this, but paper is fine too.
What’s important here, psychologically, is that each day you’re looking not at 60 things and doing the top item; you’re just looking at today’s item (only!) and doing it.
Debt Reduction/Cancellation
Much like you might manage a financial debt, you can also look to see if any of your debts could be reduced or cancelled.
We wrote previously about the “Getting Things Done” system. It’s a very good system if you want to do that; if not, no worries, but you might at least want to borrow this one idea….
Sort your items into:
Do / Defer / Delegate / Ditch
- Do: if it can be done in under 2 minutes, do it now.
- Defer: defer the item to a specific calendar date (per the repayment plan idea we just talked about)
- Delegate: could this item be done by someone else? Get it off your plate if you reasonably can.
- Ditch: sometimes, it’s ok to realize “you know what, this isn’t that important to me anymore” and scratch it from the list.
As a last resort, consider declaring bankruptcy
Towards the end of the dot-com boom, there was a fellow who unintentionally got his 5 minutes of viral fame for “declaring email bankruptcy”.
Basically, he publicly declared that his email backlog had got so far out of hand that he would now not reply to emails from before the declaration.
He pledged to keep on top of new emails only from that point onwards; a fresh start.
We can’t comment on whether he then did, but if you need a fresh start, that can be one way to get it!
In closing…
Procrastination is not usually a matter of laziness, it’s usually a matter of overwhelm. Hopefully the above approach will help reframe things, and make things more manageable.
Sometimes procrastination is a matter of perfectionism, and not starting on tasks because we worry we won’t do them well enough, and so we get stuck in a pseudo-preparation rut. If that’s the case, our previous main feature on perfectionism may help:
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Anti-Inflammatory Piña Colada Baked Oats
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If you like piña coladas and getting songs stuck in your head, then enjoy this very anti-inflammatory, gut-healthy, blood-sugar-balancing, and frankly delicious dish:
You will need
- 9 oz pineapple, diced
- 7 oz rolled oats
- 3 oz desiccated coconut
- 14 fl oz coconut milk (full fat, the kind from a can)
- 14 fl oz milk (your choice what kind, but we recommend coconut, the kind for drinking)
- Optional: some kind of drizzling sugar such as honey or maple syrup
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 350℉ / 180℃.
2) Mix all the ingredients (except the drizzling sugar, if using) well, and put them in an ovenproof dish, compacting the mixture down gently so that the surface is flat.
3) Drizzle the drizzling sugar, if drizzling.
4) Bake in the oven for 30–40 minutes, until lightly golden-brown.
5) Serve hot or cold:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Bromelain vs Inflammation & Much More ← as found (uniquely!) in pineapple
- Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy? ← coconut certainly can!
- The Best Kind Of Fiber For Overall Health? ← it’s β-glucan, as found in abundance in oats
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
