Brain Food

Mmm, Mayo Clinic -

"'This study is exciting because it demonstrates that aging does not need to be a passive process. By simply engaging in cognitive exercise, you can protect against future memory loss,' said the study author Yonas Geda, a neuropsychiatrist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota."

Try out Text Twist. It's a great brain workout. There's a free online version (of course).

I Guess Laughter Truly Is the Best Medicine (ugh, that's sappy)

ThirdAge has an article about a former nurse and nursing home manager who uses laughter therapy. She doesn't even tell jokes. It's funny that laughter is so powerful that it doesn't even need to be real to be healthful.

Please note that the last 3 are not benefits, but simply statements, and maybe facts, I don't know -

The Health Benefits of Laughter

• Laughing reduces the hormones and chemicals produced by stress cortisol and adrenaline.
• It releases dopamine and endorphins, our feel good chemicals.
• Relieves and relaxes muscle discomfort.
• Reduces inflammation, excellent for arthritis sufferers.
• Reduces blood pressure 30 minutes of laughter per day reduces the risk of a second heart attack.
• Burns calories -- 50 laughs is equivalent to 15 minutes on a bike or 10 minutes on a rowing machine.
• Humans are the only animals capable of laughter.
• Adults laugh or smile approximately 17 times a day on average.
• We use 72 muscles to frown and only 14 to smile.

I feel like I should tell a joke now. I've got it! I'll post the video of Louis C.K. from Late Night that everyone's been posting to Facebook -

This Is Why You're Fat

Did you know this??? I was shocked and I'm not being sarcastic for once. From the New York Times -

How sweet it is! The American diet, that is. While the current recommendation is a maximum intake of eight teaspoons of sugars a day, one 12-ounce can of regular soda (or a 20-ounce bottle of VitaminWater) delivers eight or nine teaspoons. That means you are at or over the limit before you’ve eaten a single cookie or container of fruit-flavored yogurt, or even some commercial tomato soups or salad dressings with added sugars. The result is an average daily intake of more than 20 teaspoons of sweet calories.

That first paragraph says basically all you need to know, but you may read the entire article here, though there is something worth noting in that a Dr. Bray who was contacted during the research for the article recommends drinking diet soda instead of the sugarful kind and asserts that aspartame "has none of the once-feared health effects".

By the way, "This is why you're fat" is a lovely snapshot of Americana that you may find here. I'm still hoping they'll post the Classic Sextuple with cheese that I got for Boden at Wendy's, but it just might not be sickeningly glutenous enough to make it onto such a discriminating website.

Here We Go Towards Nationalization...

From The Buffalo News -

[New York] State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday threatened to sue Excellus BlueCross and BlueShield and Univera Healthcare for fraud, accusing them of fraudulently using nine-year-old rate information from an already faulty database to reimburse out-of-network doctors and hospitals.

If you have a dispute with an insurer for something like an out-of-network charge, be aware that insurance companies are not acting in your best interest. They use these opportunities to squeeze every dime they can out of people whom they figure are too small to fight back. Do your best to fight it yourself, but if you can't handle it, try a medical billing advocate.

Save

I saw two billboards over the weekend that I thought were worth repeating:

"There is no such thing as saver's remorse"

"Better save than sorry"

Clever aren't they? I think they are good to think about considering the economic situation. On a brighter note, the national savings rate went from 0% in the first 9 months of 2008 to 2.9% in the last 3 months of 2008.

The Butt Stops Here

"The Butt Stops Here!" I've done it again. Thank you. Oh, thank you so much. I'd like to thank my Irish heritage and my parents' having 4 sons for the development of my exceptional sense of humor. Moving along...

It seems that monetary incentives work for just about everything but long-term risk management of a publicly traded financial services corporation. A new study shows that smokers who are given financial incentives to quit smoking are about 3 times as likely to stay smoke-free.

This is the gist of the article from MSN Health & Fitness -

All of the employees were given information about available smoking-cessation programs in their areas. Members of the financial incentive group were also told they would be given $100 for the completion of a smoking cessation program. Then, they would receive an additional $250 if they successfully quit smoking within six months from the start of the study, and they were promised another $400 if they stayed smoke-free for another six months. Smoke-free status was assessed using either a hair or urine sample to test for a substance known as cotinine, which is present when someone has smoked.

Nine to 12 months after the study began, 14.7 percent of the incentive group had kicked tobacco, compared to just 5 percent in the information-only group. Between 15 and 18 months after the study's start, 9.4 percent of those in the incentive group had stayed off cigarettes, compared to just 3.6 percent in the control group.

TMQ Sign-off

Some words of wisdom from a pretty smart guy -

TMQ Season Sign-Off: Tuesday Morning Quarterback folds its tent and steals off into the desert till August, though will resurface briefly around the NFL draft. As usual, I recommend you employ the offseason to engage in spiritual growth. Take long walks. Perform volunteer work in your community. Exercise more and eat less. Attend worship services of any faith. Drink less coffee, more green tea. Appreciate the beauty of nature -- God did not make nature by accident. Read one of the great books you've always meant to read. Be with your family and friends. As Barbara Bush said to the graduating class of Wellesley College in 1990, "At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a child, a friend or a parent."

Of newly released works, in political books, I recommend "The Party Faithful" by Amy Sullivan; in science, "Why Evolution Is True" by Jerry Coyne; in psychology, "Beyond Revenge" by Michael McCullough (explains why the desire for retribution is an evolutionary proclivity we must overcome); in general nonfiction, "Traffic" by Tom Vanderbilt (hilariously shows that traffic jams have plagued society at least since the days of the Caesars); in economics, "Good Capitalism Bad Capitalism" by William Baumol, Robert Litan and Carl Schramm; in history, "A Nation on Fire" by Clay Risen (about the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. -- the night before King died, he said, "Only when it's dark can you see the stars"); in self-published books, "The Losing Game" by T.E. Scott, which argues Wall Street is a giant hustle designed to separate investors from their money; in sports, "Positive Sports Parenting" by Jim Thompson, a book every youth-league and high-school coach and parent should read; in humor, "Our Dumb World" by the writers of The Onion; in fiction, "Bridge of Sighs" by Richard Russo and "Lark and Termite" by Jayne Anne Phillips.

Read, mediate, serve others: Do these things, and you will feel justified in racing back to the remote, the swimsuit calendars and the microbrews when the football artificial universe resumes anew in the autumn.

You may find Gregg Easterbrook's final TMQ column of the season here.

Scraping By On 500K/Year

Even though it's more than the president himself gets paid (though he has lots of perks like Air Force One), this article in the New York Times shows how tough it can be to live on such a meager pittance. I think it probably qualifies as "cruel and unusual punishment".