Review: Aging with Grace
Aug. 17th, 2012 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI just finished David Snowdon's Aging with Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives (2001). It's not as broad as it sounds: it's mostly about Alzheimer's disease. I'd never heard of this study, though the researcher and some of his subjects (nuns) have been on popular talk shows.
It's a quick read, but I learned only a few things. One is that Alzheimer's disease "afflicts up to 45 percent of Americans over eighty-five years of age." (p. 3) So it seems sort of like prostate cancer; if you live long enough, you get it. Only it's not. "Our data suggest that whatever causes Alzheimer's disease may dramatically slow its assault by about age ninety-five." (pp 215-216) Or the ones that aren't healthy enough to live that long have been selected out.
When he began his study, it was known that people with more education are more likely to suffer from Alzheimer's disease. Because the nuns had such similar upbringings, they were able to check this relation without so many confounding variables (such as economic level and health care quality).
It was also known that the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease tend to have more "tangles" and "plaques" than other brains. These tangles and plaques are tiny and can be detected only after death.
The nun study confirmed that you could have quite a lot of these tangles and plaques in your brain without showing symptoms and vice versa, but also showed that a big deciding factor is whether you also have had strokes. Even mini strokes, in conjunction with these tangles and plaques, were associated with far worse symptoms. So, although (at least at the time this book was written) it was not known how to reduce your chances of developing tangles and plaques in the brain, you could try the things you normally do to reduce your chance of strokes (reduce your blood pressure, stop smoking, treat your diabetes...).
A correlation was also found between the "idea density" of autobiographies written by the sisters at age 20 and their chances of getting Alzheimer's disease. That's a measure of the richness of the language used. And the sisters who had used more words that signify positive emotions in these same essays were also at less risk than those with fewer such words.
So, it's so not fair that if you already have some negatives in your life (low education, low communication skills, less happiness, suffering from strokes, and I forgot to mention depression above) you're more likely to get yet another one (Alzheimer's disease). Hate that.
**
There were also some good stories in addition to the good science. And that's partly because Sister Carmen, in giving Dr. Snowdon permission to study the nuns, gave him this condition: "No matter what you do, I want you to remember who these women are. They are real people. Very dear to us. They are holy people, too. I don't want you to treat them as research subjects. Get to know them. Understand that many of the older sisters were the teachers or mentors of the younger sisters, and we treat them with the care and respect they deserve. We will expect nothing less from you." (p. 15)
No just looking in the archives for Dr. Snowdon. Fortunately, other researchers did the things that had to be done blind (such as rating writing samples and analyzing brains).
And then there was a letter to the editor in response to the word density findings from 74 year old Gordon Carlson who felt he finally understood how he had escaped Alzheimer's disease: "Let me tell you, I have never written a simple declarative sentence in my life. ... I am trying to hold my prose on a tight leash right now, but believe me, eschewing the tortured phrase is hard." (p. 115)
And then there's the nun who taught herself German at the age of five so she could find out ahead of time what her Christmas presents were going to be by listening to her parents talking in German.
Quote of the Day
"It's good to think outside the fox." - PSMitchell in a comment at Unconventional Ways to Hang Art
If you're going to make a typo, this one's pretty fun.
Cake of the Day
This one reminds me of a conversation I had earlier today. A friend said he'd been given notice that he has a surprise waiting for him at home. The workman have found something under his bathroom floor. I confirmed that he did not think it was buried treasure. He said it was something expensive.
Here's hoping he's wrong, and it's really something more like this underneath the flooring:
It's a quick read, but I learned only a few things. One is that Alzheimer's disease "afflicts up to 45 percent of Americans over eighty-five years of age." (p. 3) So it seems sort of like prostate cancer; if you live long enough, you get it. Only it's not. "Our data suggest that whatever causes Alzheimer's disease may dramatically slow its assault by about age ninety-five." (pp 215-216) Or the ones that aren't healthy enough to live that long have been selected out.
When he began his study, it was known that people with more education are more likely to suffer from Alzheimer's disease. Because the nuns had such similar upbringings, they were able to check this relation without so many confounding variables (such as economic level and health care quality).
It was also known that the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease tend to have more "tangles" and "plaques" than other brains. These tangles and plaques are tiny and can be detected only after death.
The nun study confirmed that you could have quite a lot of these tangles and plaques in your brain without showing symptoms and vice versa, but also showed that a big deciding factor is whether you also have had strokes. Even mini strokes, in conjunction with these tangles and plaques, were associated with far worse symptoms. So, although (at least at the time this book was written) it was not known how to reduce your chances of developing tangles and plaques in the brain, you could try the things you normally do to reduce your chance of strokes (reduce your blood pressure, stop smoking, treat your diabetes...).
A correlation was also found between the "idea density" of autobiographies written by the sisters at age 20 and their chances of getting Alzheimer's disease. That's a measure of the richness of the language used. And the sisters who had used more words that signify positive emotions in these same essays were also at less risk than those with fewer such words.
So, it's so not fair that if you already have some negatives in your life (low education, low communication skills, less happiness, suffering from strokes, and I forgot to mention depression above) you're more likely to get yet another one (Alzheimer's disease). Hate that.
**
There were also some good stories in addition to the good science. And that's partly because Sister Carmen, in giving Dr. Snowdon permission to study the nuns, gave him this condition: "No matter what you do, I want you to remember who these women are. They are real people. Very dear to us. They are holy people, too. I don't want you to treat them as research subjects. Get to know them. Understand that many of the older sisters were the teachers or mentors of the younger sisters, and we treat them with the care and respect they deserve. We will expect nothing less from you." (p. 15)
No just looking in the archives for Dr. Snowdon. Fortunately, other researchers did the things that had to be done blind (such as rating writing samples and analyzing brains).
And then there was a letter to the editor in response to the word density findings from 74 year old Gordon Carlson who felt he finally understood how he had escaped Alzheimer's disease: "Let me tell you, I have never written a simple declarative sentence in my life. ... I am trying to hold my prose on a tight leash right now, but believe me, eschewing the tortured phrase is hard." (p. 115)
And then there's the nun who taught herself German at the age of five so she could find out ahead of time what her Christmas presents were going to be by listening to her parents talking in German.
Quote of the Day
"It's good to think outside the fox." - PSMitchell in a comment at Unconventional Ways to Hang Art
If you're going to make a typo, this one's pretty fun.
Cake of the Day
This one reminds me of a conversation I had earlier today. A friend said he'd been given notice that he has a surprise waiting for him at home. The workman have found something under his bathroom floor. I confirmed that he did not think it was buried treasure. He said it was something expensive.
Here's hoping he's wrong, and it's really something more like this underneath the flooring: