Longevity and my two cents

Many of my friends are very interested in things like eating organic, and having fewer pesticides and chemicals in the things they eat. There is a certain amount of emphasis put on being as natural as possible, basically reverting to the eating of previous generations. There are also other things involved in their eating decisions, such as the treatment of animals, and the environment. I think it is great for them to get satisfaction from these endeavors. In the bit of research I have done, however, eating healthy is just one of many factors that lead to a good quality of life, and longevity. Another major factor is obesity. Unfortunately, many of these same friends are overweight. Statistically speaking they would be better off doing whatever they had to to get their weight in a normal range. That would very likely indicate a diet high in fruits and vegetables, which they are already pros at, but also exercise. This is another activity that I see very little emphasis on in the healthy eating community. Another big contributing factor to longevity is stress management. Exercise helps control stress. Vital relationships and time out with friends also plays a role in longevity, probably because of it's tie to relieving stress. Interestingly, I have friends who have really never left their children since they were born years ago. I understand that children are wonderful, and I love mine, but at the same time I find that when I am around them my mind is constantly estimating the likelihood of them falling into catastrophic danger. When I am away from them and I know they are with a trusted grown-up I can concentrate on only one thing, which is just plain less energy consuming. There is a bit of a release in just being responsible for me, and there is also a bit of a self-confidence boost as I remind myself of the other parts of me that are interesting and valuable. There are actually very few friends I can count on to leave their families to foster strong friendships. I understand that all of my friends may not choose to spend their kidless social time with me (I do have a big mouth at times, after all) but I see little evidence that my mom friends are doing it elsewhere.
If raising chickens is a relaxing activity for you, and it contributes to your happiness, and self-satisfaction, then more power to you. The same goes for gardening. Some may say that I am deriding these activities because I don't like doing them and they are not relaxing for me, and that would be completely true. I don't like to garden. I don't want pets or chickens. So yes, I am easing my conscience, but at the same time, I don't see evidence that spending the extra time and money on doing these activities only because the products are more natural will make an appreciable difference in the quality of my life or longevity, especially if I am doing well on a variety of other planes. I exercise regularly, spend time with friends, do my best to relax and appreciate life, have regular sex (another key to longevity, for a variety of reasons). I have a lot of energy and I am completely healthy as far as I and any recent doctor visits can ascertain.
This leaves me with the strongest known factor in the determination of longevity. Genetics. Studies have shown that the length of your parents and grandparents lives is the most consistent determining factor in how long you will live. I have a grandma who will be 99 this year. "Go Grandma!" When I am interrogating my future sons and daughters in law I will make sure to find out how old their grandparents are (JK). Scientists are feverishly working on how to alter and enhance our DNA to make sure we all have the chance to endure a few more years of sitting in a wheelchair being offered a cookie in return for a smile, (like my Grandma) . Your next best bet for life extension after genetics is a calorie restrictive diet. It is another of the few scientifically proven ways of extending lifespan. You can find out more about that here. Notice that little mention is made of what those calories should consist of, though I believe a more-or-less balanced diet is assumed.
In short, I think agonizing over food choices is not the complete story when it comes to having a good and active life. I think running over to pick up that extra box of food from a local organic co-op may be better spent going for a jog, or spending an hour talking to a friend over lunch without kids, (even friends with big mouths and dissenting opinions). Being healthy will always be important. Mainstream media or even mainstream science will never have all of the facts about the food we eat, and what is truly the best for us, especially if those facts are not favorable to big business or big pharmaceuticals. But I also think it is flawed thinking to put all of the burden on advances in food production when it comes to lowering our quality of life. After all, lifespan is vastly longer now than it was in the time when we didn't have pesticides and relied on raw milk.


I had fun watching this entire video so feel free to watch the rest of it at PBS.

Watch the full episode. See more NOVA scienceNOW.

Here are some more links I found interesting:

Longevity and Genes

101 Ways to Increase Longevity and Quality of Life

100 Year Olds are as Unhealthy as the Rest of Us

Longevity and Aging

I also found a lot of great information in Merchants of Immortality

British Soccer Camp 2011

This was Evan's first year participating in any soccer camp. The fact that it was "British Soccer Camp" was purely circumstantial. He was intimidated by his coach (Miles) at first. A couple of the coaches tended to be blunt and down to business. Evan was a bit embarrassed when he was called on by the coach to improve his skills, but an opportunity to stand up and be singled out as MVP after a scrimmage cured all that. The kids were separated by ages into "World Cup" teams at the beginning of the week. Evan was assigned Holland, and the teams got points for random things like wearing their assigned colors, having a good attitude, and scoring goals in games. The final day of camp teams got points for bringing fans, (including pets) making country flags, and wearing team colors. Grandpa was able to come, and all the kids enjoyed that. To top it all off Evan's team won with top points for the week!























We also got the opportunity to host one of the coaches for the week. Adam popped out early in the morning and got back after dark from a full day of coaching and taking in the sights of Wendell. He was talkative and Todd and I had some great conversations with him after the kids went to bed. He educated us about his favorite "football" team. And equipped us to cheer for Hallam FC properly with posters and a hat when he left. He also made sure we knew they played at the oldest football ground in the world (verified by Guinness World Records). We enjoyed getting to know him, and what life is like for him in Sheffield, England. It was great to put our guest room to use, and we look forward to doing it again when we get the chance.

Pitocin and Bonding

During a recent laundry folding session I finally saw the end of "The Business of Being Born". It affected me differently now that I had my idyllic home birth than when I was watching it the first time while pregnant. When I reached the part that talked about how pitocin can interfere with bonding I realized why. My second birth experience was a typical hospital birth. I had few birth options in the area where we lived, and the furthest I could get from an OB/GYN was a practice hosting a dozen or so midwives who could only be seen at random. Labor began as an on and off affair early in the morning. Contractions would start and hurt, then after a few hours ease and go away. We worked our way to the hospital in the evening via the mall where we stopped to buy the new baby a toy. I had to stop a number of times in the mall and breath through contractions. We got to the hospital at 9pm. After determining I was 4 centimeters dilated, I was given two Tylenol, and told to wait until morning. My water was broken when the morning shift was ready to get to work. My carefully orchestrated, multiple-position birth plan went out the window soon into the birth procedure. Nurses told me I was welcome to push aside beeping instruments and hop off the high, railed, inclined bed in my hiney-baring gown between fetal monitoring episodes. Gee, thanks. Within hours of my water being broken pitocin was begun. A few hours later I was still on my back unable to move because contractions were right on top of each other, and I had only progressed to 7 centimeters. I told Todd it was time for IV pain medication. When I was struggling with Evan's birth this was the thing that relaxed me enough to get him out. Wouldn't you know it within 30 minutes of receiving a calming drug in a crazy unfamiliar environment Nina was born. The last thing I remember before lapsing into an exhausted sleep was seeing Nina across the room on a table with a light over it. She was surrounded by nurses I didn't know doing some routine thing that was somehow more vital than leaving me with my baby. I always knew that it took me two weeks to really bond with my new baby. I attributed it to having a toddler and a baby at home. I never experience any post-partum depression with any of my babies. This was due in part to the fact that I made a deal with myself after moaning and groaning my way through pregnancy that I had better be grateful when it was over. Following Cory's completely successful, totally perfect birth and experiencing the pure elation I felt after it, I looked differently at that two week period. Watching the documentary again and looking into the matter further has virtually convinced me of the profound difference between the synthetic and natural hormones.
The information I have found lists the typical cautions about labor augmented by pitocin. These are the fact that pitocin is administered in a continual drip whereas the natural hormone oxytocin is delivered in waves from the brain, giving the body time to rest. Because oxytocin emanates from the brain it sets in play brain functions that act as a morphine type blocker of pain, which is why pitocin contractions tend to hurt more and require synthetic pain reliever to endure. The stress to the baby with these powerful unnatural contractions and to the mother lead to many complications, and often further interventions. The information I was most interested in was the idea that natural oxytocin when it courses out of the brain provides a sense of trust and love that promotes bonding. Oxytocin is beginning to be called the love hormone for it's affects in birth, breast-feeding and even sex. This was the missing piece. I experienced the bonding in a muted, delayed fashion after Evan's birth. I reveled in the explosion of well-being I felt after Cory's birth, and I never got that head start with Nina. Only after two weeks of breast-feeding had I gained the closeness I had lost due to exposure to pitocin.
For me the affect was minimal, and Nina and I recovered with no harm done. But I wonder, if it is true that pitocin can inhibit bonding in the way it absolutely seemed to do in my case, what could that mean to a future generation so dependent on it? What does that mean for the low income mothers that have no choice but to go with the provider medicaid dictates who is likely to be a habitual pitocin user. Then they are provided with free formula via WIC so there is no need for them to attempt to breast feed therefore stifling any chance oxytocin has of promoting natural bonding. Combine this with the daily stress and disadvantaged upbringing that many of the poor are burdened with and where does that leave their children?
I look forward to what science can determine about this link or the lack thereof. In the meantime I hope we don't look at birth with the same cold eyes as an elementary dissection. We know love is not a luxury to a baby and a child, and I believe we ought to invest in allowing every mother to feel as much connection to her offspring as she can for her own sake, but especially for that of our future generation.

You may want to check out these links for more information:
Birthing Naturally
Oxytocin:Wikipedia
5 ways Pitocin is Different than Oxytocin
These are just the beginning. Keep looking and see what you might find.

African American Childhood: Part Two, Exhibit A

Just a note about this. Whether you can tell or not I have been agonizing over the language of this blog entry for quite a while. I wanted it to be kind, fair, and yet still say something real. I hope it accomplishes that, and if it doesn't, please have mercy. I mean well.

Part 2: Exhibit A

I feel that before I delve into what this book (See previous entry) says about African American childhood you need to know a bit about exhibit A: me. A white female raised in suburban America. The reason that is important is that my race and that of African Americans has a pretty touchy history here in the good old US of A. My race has historically severely mistreated African Americans. As for me personally I have never really heard a racial slur, let alone used one or had one used on me. The exception to this has been hearing African American males refer to each other as "niggers", which I don't think really counts as a slur, and Tim Minchin referring to himself as a Ginger, which again seems to negate the title of "racial slur". There was one racially motivated walk-out of African Americans in our high school which turned out to be a misunderstanding, and another walk out which turned out to be a media stunt and a ploy by African American students to get out of class, or so the rumors went. As for my part in these, I attended a meeting hosted by a race relations specialist that we were allowed to skip a class to attend, and when the school hired a full time race relations counselor I interviewed him for the school paper. Almost 100% of the minorities in my high school were bussed into suburbia from an urban setting, meaning that my chances of running into them around town were extremely remote. You can see that I have had limited exposure growing up to minorities in general and racism specifically. When I left suburbia I did what I could to rectify my ignorance, but I have to admit that whatever I did to acquaint myself with the African American plight was seen through my white female eyes. My whiteness colors every memory with a vague glow of innocence, and unawareness. I have read that the African American experience is often shadowed by much different overtones.

I struggle with what to do with the terrible past our country has with relation to our treatment of African Americans as well as the state of their culture today. I wonder what their future will hold. I wonder what my role will be in that and what, as a white female I should think and do when it comes to furthering the well-being of the African American community as a whole. I am a little at a loss. What should my role as an individual be? Personally, I feel like I don't look at people when I meet them and just see race. I see people. I seek out meaningful interactions with people of all kinds, and if those are based on mutual interests and intellectual stimulation, rather than on pigmentation I feel that is fair, but is it?

As far as the African American historical experience goes, I feel an overwhelming sense of awe about it. Awe in the sense that from my cushy perspective I cannot imagine a race of people being so selectively chosen and altered all in my own backyard. The quotes I listed from the book remind me that people, whether an entire race of them, or individuals, can't be subjected to long-term abuse and bounce back immediately after attaining freedom to the thinking and actions of non-abused people. Recovery is especially slow when the abusers continue to put up roadblocks to growth, healing, and even safety. Even though progress has been made, I think we are all still reeling from the massive importation of Africans to this country for the purpose of slavery. For better or worse I believe the imprint of those beginnings are still being felt now. The African American race has grown and changed in an immensely positive way with each generation. European Americans have grown as well, I believe. Just as one person can't change another on a whim, I don't believe groups of people can change each other fundamentally. Past slave owners couldn't just kill the desire for autonomy in slaves, and now I don't believe I and other Caucasians can permanently change the pregnancy or crime rate in any other race just by barging in and meddling. Maybe now the changes in both races need to happen from the inside out. So here I am, exhibit A: suburban white girl. Maybe the best I can do is to continue to accept as equals and friends those from the African American community who come my way just as I would anyone from any other race. Maybe the future can still be equally bright for all of us together if the proper time and environment is given to heal and grow.

The Pool

Last week was our first dip in Grandma and Grandpa's pool for this season, and Cory's first time in their pool ever. We had a blast of course, and I wanted to pass on the cool summer vibe.

African American Childhood: Part One

I found the chapter in the book "American Childhoods" by Joseph E. Illick that talked about African American childhoods interesting for a number of reasons, one of which being that he said come things that were politically incorrect but factually deducible. I love that kind of bravery. Now understandably any view of history is not without its bias so you can say what you will about that. I also feel that I learned some things about the slave experience and the children who suffered through it. I want to present my thoughts on the chapter of African American childhood in two sections. One will be primarily quotes from the chapter that I found very informative, and would like to pass on. I may toss in a few ideas, but most of my ideas will be given in part two, which I am still refining.



pg. 41 "The grim picture shows that the slave family, extended or nuclear, was always vulnerable and that most fathers did not live with their children." This strikes me as eerily similar to the make-up of many African American households, today.

pg. 41 " Certainly slave children saw their parents (but not their white peers) beaten, and their parents in turn beat them - whether because this was traditional practice or to prepare them for their adult lives." This trend is common in families who experience domestic violence. A child who is abused often becomes the abuser in the next generation. How much more must this be the case when a whole race inflicts such treatment on a whole other race.

pg. 43 "This was not a world parents could explain to children , much less justify except as the will of the Lord"

pg. 44 " Richard Wright (author of 'Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth' (New York, 1945)) described his boyhood in a household filled with acrimony and violence; he was alternately preached to and beaten."

pg. 44 " Illegitimate births were common before first marriages; mother and child almost always remained in the grandparental household, which served as a secure social setting for the child or children until the mother made a stable marriage. The first child was the most fondled and stimulated and often became the most self-confident and capable, illegitimate or not."

pg. 46 " African American childhood in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was profoundly affected by the social context of slavery and its aftermath."

pg. 46 "It was enunciated by George Wallace, a segregationist when he began his four terms (elected in 1962, 1970, 1974, 1982) as Governor of Alabama, who reportedly gave barracks lectures during World War II defending his white supremacy position: ' I don't hate them., The coloreds are fine in their place, but they're just like children and it's not something that's going to change. It's written in stone,' It did change, and Wallace recanted. Nevertheless, the idea of African Americans as children has had a history in America dating from the mid-nineteenth century."

pg. 46 " Historian Thomas Webber argues that the planter class aimed to have slaved internalize values which would make them conscious of their own inferiority, 'overflowing with awe, respect and childlike affection for the planter and his family.' happily aware of the rules of slave behavior and convinced that slavery was not only right, but the best of all possible worlds. Slaves were kept ignorant of the outside world and the written word, denied privacy, forbidden to recall their African past, and refused the very privileges that defined their white counterparts as adults.
While Webber argues that most of the values attitudes, and understandings taught by white masters were not accepted by black slaves, he concedes that one must look deep into the slave literature to reach this conclusion. In other words, even if slaves were not convinced by their masters, they had to disguise their true beliefs. How long this masquerade persisted, whether it still goes on, is a matter of debate. But whichever side of the issue is taken, it seems that African American's eventually fulfilled the expectations of the European Americans who wanted to perceive them as perpetual children."

pg. 49 " A turning point in the understanding of black male character came in 1941 when anthropologist Melville Herskovits published "The Myth of the Negro Past". Herskovitz accused scholars and policy makers of basing their work on myths that supported racial prejudice, the first one of which was 'Negroes are naturally of a childlike character,' Pointing to the sophistication of an African worldview, he concluded that' such maladjustments to the American scene as characterize Negro life are to be ascribed largely to the social and economic handicaps these folks have suffered, rather than to any inability to cope with the realities of life.'"

pg.49 "The courage demonstrated by African Americans during the ensuing civil rights struggle surprised most white Americans, as indeed it should have. The long and concerted effort to marginalize blacks and rationalize such treatment on the basis of their being essentially simple , weak, and vulnerable was confounded by their willingness to confront their enemies at lunch counters, schools and courthouses, to create public demonstration where sometimes their very lives were at stake."

pg. 50 "This was not the first generation of African Americans to want freedom, nor the first generation of European Americans to resist granting it. But encouraged by federal action in the armed services and in the courts, not to mention the attention showered on these steps forward and their consequences on television, these black youths were able to act on beliefs long and deeply held."

One of the things I was most reminded of is that the steps that African Americans have taken in fighting for equality were begun not long ago. The last quote was referring to school desegregation that occurred in the 1960's: only 50 years ago. I keep thinking that we are very distanced from the time of blatant segregation, just because I don't remember it being blatant in my lifetime, but that is not actually the case. There will be more about African American culture and me in part two so stay tuned.