Prime Time: A New Look At Aging

Brain going lame? You may be to blame

You remember seeing big figures on how many of the brain’s nerve cells disintegrate after the age of 30. Dr. Marian Diamond said Herb Caen, the late San Francisco Chronicle columnist, once reported it was on the order of  30,000 cells per second.  She called to ask him his source. “I got it from another newspaper,” he said.

Her research at the the University of California at Berkeley shows that a normal, healthy brain does not grow new nerve cells after birth, but it does not lose very many after adolescence and can create new branches or, as she calls them, dendrites, even during the later years of life.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the brain, to continue adding branches and remain healthy,  needs oxygen in greater quantities than, say, napping provides.  A regimen like Yoga can teach us breathing techniques, she suggested. The brain also needs nutrients from foods like tofu, which comes from a  food group other than ice cream and chocolates. Brain cells, which are made up of protein, appreciates supplements from foods like fish and chicken; nothing was said about cheeseburgers or mashed potatoes with gravy.

 “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is another myth, she said. “You have to consider the condition of the old dog.”

Her findings rely on the study of rats. And here’s something to consider: Take three mama rats, each with three babies, and raise them in an enriched environment that includes a variety of games and an ideal diet. Compare them with a mama rat and three of her pups living alone in cramped quarters. The brains of the game-playing, socially active group show significantly more growth of nerve cell branches. And it happens among the older as well as the young animals.

When a trip to Germany revealed that their rats lived about 800 days, Dr. Diamond added another element to a group in an enriched environment. “We tried TLC,” she said. The tender loving care extended the rats’ lives to 900 days, which equates to more than 100 years for humans. 

Change is crucial in enriching an environment. For rats, that means changing the toys, she said. For people, the frequency and duration of newness are factors. Activities with other people stimulate the brain. It needn’t be constant. Another factor is pleasure, which often hinges on successfully reducing destructive forms of stress.

We can take opportunities for more multi-sensory experiences, she said, and I deduced that she does not have TV in mind. Instead, she recommends choosing and planning activities. Variety, it turns out, also enhances the brain. The active participant also needs some time to be alone, she added.

Dr. Diamond is the author of “Enriching Your Heredity,” the winner of a number of teaching awards, and has written some 150 scientific papers on the brain. She likes to quote one of her former professors. After learning the results of one of her breakthrough studies, he observed, “He who lives with his wits dies with his wits.”

What really counts is growth

      Charles McCabe was a columnist with so many opinions to get off his chest that he sometimes stacked up a dozen columns ahead of his San Francisco Chronicle deadline. Joseph Alioto said McCabe was the only Catholic he knew who went to confession in public and got paid for it. Until his death at the age of 68, he devoted at least eight columns to the subject of aging. They’re in a pair of books, “The Fearless Spectator” and “The Charles McCabe Reader,” containing the best of his work.

      He grew up poor and angry with the world and himself, but, “There is likewise nothing in myself that I more deplore than this tendency to rail at things that I cannot do much about. . .” he concluded.

      “To survive you must curb feeling. You must learn, when you see a friend’s name in the obituary pages, to burke reminiscences of golden days, and to look sternly at work that is at hand.

      “If you are lucky enough. . .that to see the world is to laugh at it, then your final days may go in grace.”

      One thing that kept McCabe going was curiosity. “I wanted to know how the whole crazy plot would turn out. . .” he said. “I wouldn’t have missed the past decades of my life for anything. The chief use of my life has been that I have grown, or think I have grown. My chief pleasure in the later part of my life has been the observation of that growth. . .I can hardly wait to see the man who awaits me at the end of the tunnel of the next decade, if I last it out. I would like to be kinder, to love myself less, to wish to help people more. I would like my faults to be blunted by the kind arm of time. I would like to continue to wake up in the morning with the feeling that I have useful work to do.”

      Give up your grudges, he urged. “They are a weight and an encumbrance. . .The wretched past has no right to encroach on the present. In fact, the sensible man has a positive duty to prevent this. Fortunately. . .just growing older does the trick. Here’s hoping you will be able to say, as the Abbe Sieyes replied when asked what he did during the French Revolution: ‘I survived.’”

      A quote from a press handout caused him to ruminate: “The idea is held by far too many people that life is essentially a struggle against death, rather than a process constantly to be savored and enjoyed. . .We should concern ourselves always with taking things on, rather than sloughing things off. New interests should be sought like paying ore. Everywhere and whenever it can be arranged, the pulse should quicken.”

Poetry and Ameliorating Depression

 

Ted's p.o.v.

 

      A major impetus for my poetry appreciation came from the unlikely source first known as Burma-Vita, then, finally, Burma-Shave. At the start of the company’s campaign, small signs on pine boards salvaged from barns carried conventional bromides, all in capital letters. Soon the messages appeared in catchy couplets proclaiming, for example, along one stretch of highway: “He played / a sax / had no B.O / but his whiskers scratched  / so she let him go / Burma-Shave.”

      It was an era when suppliers of other grooming accessories shouted in print about your body’s pungent aroma, crinkly skin and generally miserable appearance, according to “The Verse By the Side of the Road” by Frank Rowsome, Jr. Whimsical Burma-Shave signs provided a fetching counterpoint with the likes of: “The answer to / a maiden’s / prayer / is not a chin / of stubby hair. . .”

      Alexander Woollcott once said that it’s as difficult to read one Burma-Shave sign as it is to eat just one salted peanut. The captivating ads proved addictive to entire families, truck drivers and, for a while, horses traveling the country’s roadways.

      (Horses loved to scratch their backs on signs attached to 9-foot poles. They broke so many, though, the company installed 10-footers.)

      The ad campaign boosted sales to the point where one company executive would later declare, “We never knew there was a depression.”

      It all began with a liniment Clinton Odell developed in Minneapolis.  With some modifications it became a brushless shaving cream, but American men clearly weren’t ready to forsake their strops and brushes even for concoctions from Burma.  That was the prevailing mood until both men and women began reading and reciting the likes of: “His face was smooth / and cool as ice / And oh Louise! / he smelled / so nice. . .”

       Odell’s son, Allan, who wrote most of the initial ads, could also skewer the competition at times, as in: “Beneath this stone / lies Elmer Gush / Tickled to death / by his / shaving brush. . .”

      Electric razors also got their come-uppance. “A silky cheek / shaved smooth / and clean / is not obtained / with a mowing machine. . .”

      My favorite? “Every shaver / now can snore / six more / minutes / than before. . .”

      Some days it seemed most of America’s adults penned poetry after Burma Shave started a series of contests for the best jingles. As many as 50,000 entries arrived for a specific contest, vying for a $100 prize.  Some were bad, some were bawdy, but the best succeeded like apple pan dowdy. One of the rejects said: “The other woman / in his life / said “Go back home / and scratch / your wife. . .”

      The firm pioneered public service ads with “Keep well / to the right / of the oncoming car/ Get your close shaves / from the half-pound jar. . .”  Or, “Past / schoolhouses / take it slow / Let the little / shavers grow. . .” Police chiefs and highway patrol administrators swore these and others like them reduced car accidents and injuries.

      Farmers often reported broken signs and volunteered to replace them if the company sent new ones. You can imagine the consternation if a section was missing from: “If your peach / keeps out / of reach / better practice / what we preach. . .”

      As speed limits increased so did the sign size from 12 to 18 inches high and to 40 inches wide.  The distance between each sign increased from 100 to 150 feet, so motorists could see: “She put / a bullet / thru his hat / but he’s had / closer shaves than / that. . .”

      When Philip Morris acquired Burma-Shave in 1963, the signs were soon phased out. There are still a few left today in the Smithsonian, including Allan Odell’s favorite: “Within this vale / of toil / and sin / your head grows bald / but not your chin. . .”

 

 

Sex after 50. . . 60 . . . 70 . . . etc.

Here's Ted 

 

      “There are some men who are 80 who have sex daily.”

      Brenda Love stated this matter-of-factly after I asked her the question I imagined geezers like me wanted asked—“Does age have much effect on the frequency of sex?”

      Ms. Love, you see, has experience in this. . . What I mean to say is, she’s done considerable research. . . Well, let’s just say she’s the author of the Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices, a former counselor, and before that a certified emergency medical technician. All of which, I feel, qualifies her to talk about seniors and sex.

      When she mentioned the 80-year-old man, I didn’t confess that I lie on surveys, too, but I did ask what seniors can do to continue enjoying this practice, even if performed in the usual ways.

      “You need to focus on good health,” she said. “If you don’t exercise and keep the body in good shape, you can’t do a lot of things.” The cumulative effects of smoking and drinking also will cause problems in the romance department, she added.

      “Attitude is certainly a factor,” she declared. “Don’t buy into the idea sex is just for younger people. As people age, they make better lovers because they do spend more time on foreplay rather than rushing through it.”

      Ms. Love allowed as how some seniors take their time with foreplay out of necessity rather than as an option before fiveplay.

     A strict religious upbringing in Texas made her reluctant to discuss billing and cooing and related birds-and-bees type small talk.

      “I made a checklist—and it was a short list back then—of things  we  might  enjoy  doing, or at  least would be willing to try once. And this took the fear out of it.”

      Now at the age of 45, she’s done such fearful things as appearing on TV and radio talk shows and lecturing throughout the United States.

      Concerned men of all ages, she said, inquire about impotence. Urologists are able to install implants that provide an uplifting boost of the morale of men with problems, but the big news is the “Muse System” being brought by the Vivus Company.

      There’s this plastic device with a section about the size of a pencil lead at the top. The little tip is inserted into the urethra and, voila, in 20 minutes an attention-getting change occurs and lasts for from 20 minutes to two hours. The product will be on the market in 1997 if all goes well.

      Back when she started as a volunteer on a sex information telephone hot line, she found her training hadn’t dealt with the topics of her first two calls—date rape and exhibitionism. So she started researching these and other subjects. The notebook that evolved during the next four years reflected 10,000 hours of reading, and numerous on-the-scene visits, including various 12-step programs and one call on a nudist colony.

      The practices she discovered range from a man who likes having oranges thrown at him to people aroused by, ugh, licking the eyeballs of their inamorata. Who relies on the encyclopedia? Therapists, the FBI and a few rock stars are among a wide variety of buyers.

      As for sex and seniors, Brenda Love, who now lives in California, sums it all up in one word: “Adrenaline.”

________

As a callow fellow, the author confused the golfer’s warning of “Fore!” with  the term “foreplay,” and has been over par ever since.

Talk Too Much?

“I’ve had it.”
A board member of an organization to which I belong said this. She quit because another member monopolized meetings with her chatter.

 Chances are you may know a compulsive talker or two. You may wonder, how do others cope?
 “Our Bible study group includes one woman who does go on,” says Russ. “Our leader will say something like, ‘Perhaps we could discuss that a little later; that point isn’t relevant.’” But the people in whose homes the meetings occur lead the group. Not all of them possess the assertiveness to stanch the verbiage, says Marian, Russ’s wife. (“. . .You can all have opportunity to give a message, one after another, and everyone will learn. . .”  I Corinthians, 14:29)

 A therapist I know says, “Shock treatment may be necessary for compulsive talkers.” He uses it with his brother, who spreads words with abandon. “He’s talking to himself, not me,” the therapist says. “Sometimes I just walk out.”

  Edith is selective. “If it’s someone I like, I’ll put up with it,” she says. When a friend got carried away, Edith said, “Stop! I’d like to get a word in edgewise.”

 What happened?

 “Oh, she laughed it off, and apologized for going on,” Edith says. Yes. They’re still friends.
 Samuel Johnson liked the word “bustle” for activity he regarded as foolish. The late San Francisco Chronicle columnist Charles McCabe employed it. “The worst of all bustling is the verbal kind,” he said. “A silence lasting no more than a few seconds seems to threaten some people in some way. There is a necessity to fill that silence, fill it with anything that comes to mind . . .”

 Doctors call the condition “logorrhea.” McCabe said one treatment works, even though it’s brutal. “You just stare at the person and say, ‘You talk too much.’ The result may be a punch in the nose. But you also get quite a much desired silence.”

 Betty, employs the Golden Rule. When her apartment complex neighbors emit unending effluvia, “I listen to them,” she says. “I let them talk. They’re lonely. Some of them have no family around. They’re usually pleasant people.”