Memory

I've always been interested in the memory process. I feel like I have a pretty good memory for most things, except names. I can remember things I've read especially well.

Over the last few days I've been busy reading grant proposals to the National Institutes of Health. The topics cover a wide range of issues around health and health care. One deals, in part, with the measurement of pain, well-being, and other subjective feelings. The researchers found that the perception of pain during a medical procedure might be quite different from the memory of that pain later. As a result, they argue "They [these results] suggest that the decisions that people make for the future are sometimes guided by erroneous evaluations of the past." So, we might decide not to have another mammogram based on our inaccurate memory of the pain or discomfort associated with it. Actually, this statement seems like it could apply to lots of issues in life. We might decide to take a certain job based on our erroneous evaluation of past job experiences, for instance.

Thinking more about memory, it occurred to me today that I may be, in fact most likely am, the only person who remembers some particular past event. Of course, events and feelings that I experienced alone and never shared would be one obvious example. But what about some shared event or encounter? I'm sure there are encounters of which I have no recall. In fact, I not infrequently will have someone approach me and carry on a vigorous discussion in which I have no idea who this person is, or how they know me. Sorry to say, students, this often happens with you. I may know your name for a semester, but often once I've handed in my grades, unless I have some further contact with you, I've forgotten who you are. So, on the flip side, there must be events and people that I recall and nobody else does. How would I even know which ones they are, and should I even care????

Obesity Research

This is such a good topic to follow Girl Scout Cookies!!

I was trained as a demographer. There are three basic areas of demography--mortality, fertility, and migration. These are the only three ways in which the size and characteristics of a population can change. Early on I decided to focus on mortality. Partly because I really liked the professor who taught that course and partly because it was the closest to medicine (which is what I always wished I would have studied.) Also, death was a clear cut event. In fertility research there was a lot of discussion about intentions, attitudes, knowledge...too messy for me.

As it turns out, most people who die are old, so most people who study mortality are studying older people. It is true that there is great interest in infant and child mortality, because a life "saved" at that point has greater demographic, social, and economic consequences. Still, you can't get around the fact that in the US today nearly 90 percent of people born live to be age 65. It also turns out that most people are sick before they die, so in order to understand the changes in mortality you need to understand the changes in morbidity.

When I was in graduate school in the mid to late 1980s one of the big questions of the field centered on the fact that life expectancy was steadily increasing. The questions was, "Are those years of added life years of good health or years of disability?" At the time we had very little information on which to base an answer and there were contradictory pieces of evidence. Slowly the consensus emerged that a greater proportion of the added years were years of good health. Great.

In recent years, however, the question has re-emerged. There is an increased prevalence of obesity in the adult population. We know that obesity is related to a variety of health problems. Will this increase in population obesity translate into greater disability and poor health in later life down the road? That is the new question, and the motivation for my academic research.

I spent Friday at Cornell University attending a small conference on obesity research. It included physicians, nutritionists, economists, and other assorted types (like me.) The keynote address was one of the best lectures I've heard in a long time (and I hear a lot of them.) Michael Rosenbaum from Columbia University talked about why it is so hard to lose weight and keep off the weight. I'm sure you have all heard about "set points," your body's natural equilibrium. Turns out you can put your setpoint higher, but not lower. If you lose weight you need to continue those new behaviors forever or you will regain the weight. That is, if you cut your diet by 200 calories a day you will need to continue to do that for life. If you increased your activity by 20 minutes a day, you will need to continue to do that for life. I found this somewhat discouraging, as did most of the attendees. He was basically arguing that interventions targeted toward losing weight are TOO LATE. You need to stop people from gaining weight to begin with. It also explains why it is so hard to maintain a weight loss. In order to do so you must make fundamental changes in your diet and lifestyle that maintain forever. That is hard for people to do.

Let me just share how difficult that can be. One of the interesting things about obesity conferences is that the food is always VERY healthy. Desserts are fresh fruit, breads are whole grain, the protein is beans, tofu, or salmon. I love this food and have no problem with that....but I have to admit that on the way home I stopped at McDonald's for a quarter pounder (no cheese), fries, and a diet Coke.....all of that good eating down the drain.....and my struggle continues......

Girl Scout cookies

It's Girl Scout cookie time in Upstate New York! I have a box of thin mints in my offie and they probably won't last the week....or maybe even the day. Thin Mints are really the only cookie for me from the GS menu, I don't find many of the others that special. I'm not a peanut butter cookie fan, so the DoSiDos and Tagalongs don't excite me. I like the Trefoils okay, they are good with a cup of hot tea. The chocolate chip cookies are too dry. I have taken a liking to the Samoas, a newer cookie with coconut, caramel and chocolate (how could you go wrong there!) This year I bought a box of Dulce de Leche cookies, they are a caramel chip cookie with a drizzle of caramel on the top. I like them, but they aren't a "must have." In past years there have been sandwich cookies, a variety of lemon cookie variations, and I remember a square shortbread type cookie with chocolate on one side...something about animals.

The Thin Mint is just perfect. When I was younger, the cookie inside was not chocolate, though. I like to lick off the chocolate mint coating and then eat the cookie, but that is not as easy with this new cookie. Also, they used to have the trefoil imprinted on them.

In NY the cookies come from Little Brownie bakeries, so maybe in Indiana we used a different bakery. In my Girl Scout days, we didn't collect orders ahead of time. Instead, you were given a selection of cookies by the "cookie mother" and then sold them. When you ran out, you went back and got more or swapped the slow sellers for more popular varieties. The cookie mother had to estimate what cookies would sell, how many would be needed, and run a warehouse operation out of her house. I remember boxes and boxes of cookies stacked in our entry one year. I think I've seen recipes using the Thin Mints in pie crusts, or with whipped cream or ice cream, but why ruin a perfectly good cookie? I like mine straight up.

Books I've just read

Time for a book report. I just finished 3 books, but I wouldn't recommend any of them very highly.

The first is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The book takes place on the island of Guernsey just after WW II. The most interesting part of the book was learning about how the Germans occupied Guernsey during the war and basically cut the island off from the rest of the world. The rest of the story is a predictable sort of love story. It is written as a series of letters, which is a neat device, but seems like a cheap way to write a book. I've often thought of writing a story taking emails I've written and received and weaving them together. Maybe some day I'll get there.

The second book was Loving Frank. It is a fictional account of Frank Llyod Wright's several year affair with a woman whose name I've forgotten. It is a true story, but the fiction comes in the creation of dialogue and scenes that could only be imagined. The woman, Mamah, is caught up in the early feminist and suffragist movement. She is torn between following her heart to Frank or staying with her children. She chooses Frank, he is her soulmate. Do soulmates exist? I have always doubted that notion, but maybe I'm just not romantic enough. The story follows her enchantment, her abandonment of her family, her struggles and doubts. The ending is no surprise to those familiar with the true story, she dies in a tragic murder at Wright's Wisconsin estate.

The third book is The God of Small Things. This story takes place in India. It is a commentary on the class system, but on a basic level is a story of forbidden love and family dysfunction. A pair of young twins are caught up in a family drama that affects their lives from then on. I find it hard to describe the story, without completely revealing the plot and twists. I enjoyed the book, but it is not an easy read and takes some work. Partly I had difficulty with the character names and getting a good image of the people in my mind. I'm still thinking about the title.

Well, just thought I'd catch people up on my reading adventures. I'll let you know when I get to a book I can really recommend. Did I already talk about the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? I really enjoyed that one......

Birthdays

I've been away for awhile. Sorry to let you all down. I'm sure people have been anxiously looking for an update. Here it is.

Well, I am now 52 years old. I guess I have to admit that I am middle aged now. The current period life expectancy for white women in the United State is just about 80 years. At age 52 life expectancy is about 30 years. Of course, higher education increases both of those numbers, and these are period, not cohort estimates, so they assume no future improvements in health care. We can think of them as minimums (I hope, although the situation in Russia shows that you can't always count on that.)

Still, birthdays just aren't what they used to be. I'm not sure when that changed exactly, maybe after my 21st! I remember that turning 40 seemed somewhat relevant, but all the time I was 38 I was thinking I was almost 40, then when I was 39 I WAS almost 40, then I was 40, then at 41 and 42 I had JUST REACHED my 40s....so turning 40 was like a 5 year process. I didn't feel that way about 50 at all.

There are some interesting historical accounts of age and the meaning of age. Some historians who have studied diaries and letters of "common folk" (of course, how common were they if they were keeping diaries....) find that birthdays and age are rarely mentioned. Social life was organized around what you could do, not how old you were. If, as a man, you were able to support yourself, then you were old enough to marry. If, as a woman, you were able to bear children, then you were old enough to raise them. Our whole concept of time and age really developed with the Industrial Revolution and the concomitant arrival of public education and railroads. Suddenly age and time were more relevant. Over time, age grading become important, child labor laws developed, and educational requirements were introduced. At the same time notions of a "work day" and "retirement" were developing. Now, birthdays had relevance as they marked your movement through the age system and your access to new rights and responsibilities.

Interestingly, in some ways age now is less relevant as a marker of ability, health, or maturity. There are movements to breakdown the age graded system and replace it with one that is more flexible and matches the longer life expectancy and better health of the population.

Things I don't understand

I saw an ad the other day for this item, a combined calculator alarm clock. Who needs one of these? What would you use it for? Help in counting sheep? Maybe you wake up from a wild dream and just feel the need to calculate the square root of 97 (I wonder if it has a square root function..) Or maybe you can't sleep until you finally know the answer to 987 divided by 32... Maybe you want to calculate how many hours you have slept, or how many hours until the alarm rings... I don't understand.

Chairlift stories

I wrote awhile back about taking the "plunge" to go skiing. Well, I did that a few weeks ago and find myself skiing better than ever. I guess the knee recovery can be considered complete and my extra efforts at strength training are paying off. I ski at a very small hill near our house. The main hill is serviced by a double chairlift. If I make it out there on a weekday afternoon, I don't have to wait at all to get on and ride by myself.

On the weekends, however, the story is different. Saturdays and Sundays have a pretty long line and the lift attendants make sure "singles" (those skiing alone) match up to make the line go faster. I don't mind riding with a stranger and have had some great conversations on the few minute ride to the top.

My favorite companions are kids. A few weeks ago I was just walking up to the line for the first time when a young girl, maybe 8 or 9, approached me and asked if I was a single. That alone was unusual, because usually kids are too shy to partner up in line. I answered that I was, indeed, single and would be happy to ride with her. We chatted as we waited in line. She talked about her pets, her family, her school. Just as we were getting ready to load, she turned to me and said, "Your gray hair makes you look a lot older than you are." I'm used to gray hair comments, and replied, "Well, how old do you think I am?" My companion was very diplomatic and answered, "Your hair makes you look like you are maybe 70, but you don't talk like you are 70." I didn't want to press my luck and left it at that!

Yesterday, I found myself riding with a young man. He was silent in line, but once we were in the privacy of our liftchair, he opened up. Turns out his name is Christopher, but he prefers to be called Chris. I pointed out our similarity, my name is Christine, but I prefer to be called Chris. I told him I only used "Christine" when I wanted to act grown up. "But," he countered, "you ARE a grown up!" I guess the gray hair did me in again!