stress

As Denyse and Pharaoh can attest, running like crazy around a grassy field is the best thing ever. :)

Dan Buettner, writer for National Geographic, and a team studied communities around the world where a higher percentage of people lived to older ages, even into their 100s. In this TED video, Dan describes three communities they found where folks both grow older and grow older better. He refers to the talk as "How to Live Past 100+", but really it's about how to better your chances of a longer, healthier life -- more years and better ones.

At the end, he outlines the nine common elements they distilled from studying the Nuoro Province in Sardinia, Okinawa, and Loma Linda, right down the road here in Southern California.

The big do's:

1. Move Naturally -- physical activity every day, but not in gyms.
2. Right Outlook -- downshifting intensity during the day, sense of purpose.
3. Eat Wisely -- wine, plants (legumes, nuts, leafy greens), some meat, but don't overeat.
4. Connect -- belong in your family, friends, tribe.

Fascinating talk. I was worried it was going to be a bit snake oily, but it wound up being quite interesting.

Denyse and I were in a car accident on Sunday afternoon -- no one was seriously hurt, but check out D's car:

(click for larger)

Apparently it is going to be totaled, which is really sad. Things could have been way worse, of course, but the car did its job of crumpling itself instead of crumpling us.

You know that whole cliché about getting lemons from life and turning them into lemonade? Poppycock. Instead, if life gives you a wheelchair and you need to ride the rails, turn yourself into an Ambassador from Mars: "I am not normal. I am a VIP. I should act like one." from feyandstrange --

I drove down the platform in solitary state, feeling awfully conspicuous. This is where I began to be reminded of what happens when a VIP is boarding a train or plane, and a bunch of fuss happens and they go on first, and all that. I told myself to be very polite and act like a VIP, and maybe I'd feel more like I was getting special treatment instead of being a Very Special Problem....

(via they must need bears)

The Observer has a great article on Andrew Ritchie, a self-confessed "obsessive" former programmer and engineer, who parlayed his obsession with creating the perfect folding bicycle into a manufacturing success story:

...a machine that is fun and efficient to ride but can be quickly folded into a package smaller than an average suitcase, carried up and down stairs, tucked behind a train seat or secreted under a desk.

And yes, he bicycles to work every day. Given the direction fuel prices are going lately, it might be a good time to start looking into bicycle commuting. Besides, it's just plain cool tech. (via lifehacker)

Why Shakespeare Is For All Time by Theodore Dalrymple, from City Journal, Winter 2003:

...Yet the prescription of (Prozac) (and others like it) to millions of people has not noticeably reduced the sum total of human misery or the perplexity of life. A golden age of felicity has not arrived: and the promise of a pill for every ill remains, as it always will, unfulfilled....Anyone who had read his Shakespeare would not have been surprised by this disappointment. When Macbeth asks a physician:

Canst thou not minister to a
mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a
rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles
of the brain,
And with some sweet
oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom
of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

The physician replies laconically: Therein the patient / Must minister to himself.

What is Stress?

"Stress" is a small word describing a large collection of issues and conditions.

Medically (and very roughly) speaking, stress can be thought of as a physical reaction to intense emotion or physical input. There are many kinds of physical manifestations, depending on the type and severity of the stimulus in question.

Unmanaged stress is known to cause all kinds of nasty physical problems, not to mention the emotional trauma of it all.

Dealing with Stress: The Ultimate Hack?

On a more day-to-day level, stress is coming at us from all directions (both exterior and interior), in all locations (work, home, road), and of all kinds of intensity. Billion-dollar industries have sprung up dedicated to reducing or minimizing stress or its symptoms.

Of course, we are often more in control of these situations than we realize.

Whether it's free or costs big bucks, whether it's in the quiet of your bedroom or in a noisy club, whether it can be done in your back yard or requires traveling to other continents -- we all have our ways of reducing stress.

Or rather, it behooves us to have those ways. The consequences are truly awful.

How to reduce stress

One word: exercise. A few more words: cycling and hiking are loves of mine, not to mention gym trips and long walks. Keeps me sane.

See also

• Wikipedia:Stress_(medicine)