Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby's Total Health Newsletter #5. Week ending June 21st 2009
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1. Can We Do Some Housekeeping Together?
2. Yes, You Really Can Make A Difference An inspiring story in today's world
3. Are Mothers Encouraging Pedophiles? Maybe I should hide after saying this!
4. Does Email And Texting Really Reduce IQ As Much As Marijauna?
5. Simple Ways To Stay Sharp As The Years Advance
6. What, In Your Life, Is Worth More Than All The Gold In Fort Knox?

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1. Can We Do Some Housekeeping Together (please?)

I've been cleaning up my numerous subscriber lists and I'd like you to help me do this. It will help you too because there will be fewer muddles and fewer duplicate emails.

All you have to do is enter your email into the subscribe boxes on this page or, if you prefer, go to this page free eBook.

If you do this for me, I'll repay you with a special new eBook I've written entitled "How To Cure Yourself Of Any Disease". Now that sounds crazy and ambitious but - you know me - I must have a good reason for saying that! You really can cure ANYTHING if you understand and use this major health secret.

NOTE: If it says you are already subscribed, you will be getting a copy of the eBook real soon.

Here's a tip too: if you are getting more than one email each time, click on the unsubscribe link for the one that has the words: "netatlantic" in all the gobbledegook at the bottom. That's the list I'm running down.

2. Yes, You Really Can Make A Difference

It's a pleasure to re-run a story I carried in the first incarnation of "Letter From Serendipity". Incredibly, the storyline is still running...

Looks a bit like a genuine hobbit house?

Some of you may know the story of the Pembrokeshire "roundhouse" in Wales (Britain). It's certainly been a cause célèbre in the UK press for a number of years. Two eco-warriors Tony Wrench and Jane Faith built an eco-sustainable home in the woods. For years their existence was a secret. Then they were spotted from an aircraft and in 1999 the city hall planners ordered them to demolish it because it was "damaging the environment"!

In fact they are probably the ONLY civilized couple who are NOT abusing earth's resources: our Earthspace or eco-footprint is about 1.9 hectares each. In the UK we use 6 hectares per person, with the average person in the USA having a footprint of 9.5 hectares. If we were all Americans, we'd need 5 planets to support us. Americans would, on average, need a five-sixths (85%) reduction to be sustainable.

Wales, where all this drama took place, uses 5.25 per person, Tony and Faith use just about 1.9. You would think the planners would go to them for advice! But no, they only talk about sustainability. Meantime they want the home destroyed.

Well, the good news is that they are still there. The authorities are gradually crumbling under the impact of eco-science, public opinion and complex UK law, some of which goes back to Mediaeval times and has all kinds of loopholes. Over and over moves to send in the bulldozers have been thwarted and this defiant couple have shown that it is possible to stand up to bureaucratic bullies.

The whole saga is a delight and an inspiration and can be tasted at:

http://www.thatroundhouse.info/index.htm 

You can answer a questionnaire and find out the size of your own eco-footprint here: http://www.myfootprint.org/

I hope you score well on it!

3. Are Mothers Encouraging Pedophiles?

The amount of hatred and abuse dished out to pedophiles always astonishes me. But given that they are so despised and the phenomenon appals parents so much, why, oh why, would mothers buy their 10-year old daughters their first brassieres with padding and underwired cups? Yet Target stores here in the USA are selling just that!

It leaves me staggered. It's like deliberately taunting the lame and crippled.

I have the same shuddering response to cheerleader competitions and rallies. I accept that nubile and pubescent teenage girls of 13-plus will start getting the hormone hots and dressing up to thrill is part of that. But to see kids 10 and under dressed in tight hose, clinging and sometimes revealing costumes, lipstick and eye shadow seems to me to be asking for trouble.

Am I out on a limb here? Shouldn't we be trying to hold back the sexuality of children until they understand it more? Is it mothers trying to live a vicarous thrill?

4. Does Email And Texting Really Reduce IQ As Much As Marijauna?

I've been reading (and enjoying) a book called "Happier" by Harvard lecturer Tal Ben-Shahar. But I was surprised when he quoted research that was supposed to show that phone calls, email and text messaging reduces IQ more than taking pot!

I wondered why I had never heard of this important research. So I poked around a little. It's hardly research. I agree with Vaughan of Mind Hacks (mindhacks.com) that it's really a marketing ploy, rather than science. But it had Ben-Shahar fooled.

Firstly, it is difficult to determine exactly what the findings were, as the report on which the news stories are based seems unavailable, and therefore probably not peer-reviewed.

The original Hewlett-Packard press-release references it as Research completed in March 2005 by TNS. The identity of TNS is not clear, but perhaps it is TNS Market Research, a marketing company.

Certainly, the original press release ends by promoting an HP efficiency product, suggesting this may be part of a wider promotion, and more marketing campaign than serious science.

So, does modern communication really reduce IQ ? From the New Scientist story, it seems that this conclusion was drawn from an experiment where participants were given an IQ test while they received emails and phone calls they were told to ignore. Unsurprisingly, they did better when uninterrupted.

In other words: when distracted, people do worse on IQ tests. Hardly ground-breaking research.

One significant finding would be if the effects were lasting, but the story from The Scotsman quotes the lead researcher as saying "the impairment only lasts for as long as the distraction".

Furthermore, references to a 'study of 1,000 adults' seems to be a simple survey, asking when and how often people check electronic messages.

In light of these findings, the conclusion that there is "a nationwide state of Info-Mania" appears comical, whereas comparisons to a study on the effects of marijuana on young adults does nothing except trivialise important work on the cognitive effect of drugs.

Although this may have been a triumph for the marketing professionals, it has come at the price of misleading many people about the effects of communication technology on the mind and brain.

No question that emails and phone calls distract me. Drives me crazy, in fact. But it's nice to know it's not making dumb!

5. Three Simple Ways To Stay Really Sharp As The Years Advance

Most of my subscribers, I know, belong to the 50s and beyond age group. We'll probably live forever! Anyway, there's little point if we lose our faculties. If you want to stay sharp, exercise regularly, don't smoke and get a good education, that's the message from a recent study (June 2009).

This is research, published in Neurology [Yaffe, K., Neurology, 2009; vol 72: pp 2029-2035.] Instead of looking at what was wrong with crumblies, this team took a look at what was right with those who could still hack it into their 70s and 80s. Why did they stay sharp mentally, while others around them were gradually turning senile?

It's a complex question but there are some quick, nippy answers you can use.

The study looked at 2,509 people who participated in the Health, Aging and Body Composition study. They were all between the ages of 70 and 79 at the start of the study in 1997, and all were in good health.

During the eight-year study period, 53% of the participants showed normal age-related cognitive decline and 16% showed major cognitive decline. However, 30% of the participants had no decline, including some people who improved on the tests.

People who exercised moderately to vigorously at least once a week were 31% more likely to maintain their cognitive function. People with at least a high school education were nearly three times as likely to stay sharp. Nonsmokers were nearly twice as likely to keep their mental edge.

These are such simple things we can control completely. That's great news. Walk a lot, run sometimes, don't smoke and read at least one non-fiction book a week (I read two!)

While we are on the subject, better stay smart about this too:

6. What, In Your Life, Is Worth More Than All The Gold In Fort Knox?

Since living in America I have become all too familiar with a common business model: to learn to do something well, then sell your knowledge to others and make millions teaching it.

For Marva Collins, that wasn't for her. This extraordinary teacher was one of the best on the planet. She could have become seriously rich. In the 1980s both the Bush (elder) and Reagan administrations offered her the post of Secretary Of Education. It would have meant HUGE prestige and wealth, especially for an African-American woman.

But she didn't want it. She wanted to go on teaching, even though her patch was the rough Westside School in Chicago. Her daily opponents were the destitution, crime, despair and ignorance that stalked her neighborhood.

Marva Collins beat them out and now there are Marva Collins schools in several states and educators from all over the world come to visit her and learn what she does.

This is why she is great:

Tiffany was a child considered autistic and who had not spoken, who had been told by experts that she was an unlovable, unteachable child. Then one day, after much patience, prayers, love and determination, Tiffany's first words to me were "I love you, Mrs. Ollins". The consonant C was left off; but I realized the tears that flowed with Tiffany's declaration made me the wealthiest woman in the world. Today, to see Tiffany writing her numerals, beginning to read single words, talking, and most of all to see the glee in her eyes that says "I, too, am special. I, too, can learn"---this to me is worth all of the gold in Fort Knox.

I leave this issue with a challenge to you. Why don't you try and figure out what, FOR YOU, is worth all the gold in Fort Knox? Even if you don't have it yet, you need to know. And unless you are actively going out to get it, may I say your life is much sadder for that...

FOOTNOTE: During the 2006-2007 school year, Collins' school charged $5,500 for tuition, and parents said the school did a much better job than the Chicago public school system. Meanwhile, during the 2007-2008 year, Chicago public school officials claimed that their budget of $11,300 per student was not enough.

What's In A Word?

Sagacity.

There is a whole raft of words on the brink of disappearing from popular usage. This is one of them.

Sagacity means wisdom. A person who is wise is said to be sagacious. The New World Dictionary defines it as "having or showing keen perception or discernment and sound judgement, foresight etc."

It's the same word as sage (noun) meaning a wise person. Sage (adjective) is also a valid word, meaning "showing wisdom or sound judgement". Thus you could say He is a sage or She is a sage woman.

Nowadays delicious words like this are thrust aside in favor of quicker ones, like "smart" and "switched on" and it's a great pity. Thousands of years have gone into this word group. It comes from the Latin sagax meaning wise and is related to sagire, meaning showing keen perception or discernment. So there is that element of being prescient or clairvoyant. You know, Gandalf, Yoda and those figures! They were sages.

Christ was the ultimate sage for many; Mohammed and Buddha for others.

Now sage is also a plant. I found an old obsolete usage of the word sage, meaning with a keen sense of smell. I wonder if that's related to its strong herbal scented properties! But it's scientific name Salvia, means saving or healing (same root as salvation). That's undoubtedly a reference to its medicinal properties.

Out here in the West, with endless plains, sagebrush is a common plant and stretches in swaths for hundreds of miles. It's actually in the genus Artemisia, which is hugely important medicially.

"The West" with its endless sagebrush

This Week's Quote:

“Mr. Meant-to has a friend, his name is Didn't-Do. Have you met them? They live together in a house called Never-Win. And I am told that it is haunted by the Ghost of Might-have-Been.”

-Marva Collins

So, that's all for this week!

Be well; find the sacred in all you do, otherwise don't do it!

Prof.

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