Learning, Longevity & Alz

By H. Bernard Wechsler Platinum Quality Author

Americans are competitive, study scores and believe in a better future. If you lived in Andorra, (look between France and Spain), your longevity would average 83.5 years. The U.S. averages 78 years.

The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrial countries on health care yet in 2007, men average 75 and women 81 years of life expectancy.

Don’t get nervous from the service (post traumatic stress disorder), in Zambia 2007, men and women cash in their chips on average at 34 years of age.

Google: United Nations World Population Prospects, September 2007.

Life Long Learning

Let’s forget boring advice like more exercise (a zero-sum game), improve nutrition (it tastes like cardboard), and avoid stress (when we stop breathing), and hear something that Surprises Broca.

The language center of your brain (left hemisphere) is run by a partnership including Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas. They power up your facial neurons, speech production, and language processing. Comprehension (understanding all you hear and read) involves Broca, and he gets bored easily and rocks your attention span.

Wake Up, Broca

You can add up to nine years to your longevity and lower the risk of Alzheimer’s up to 40% through schooling and learning. Sure, if you get knocked down by a GM truck all bets are off, but figures don’t lie, though liars can figure.

If you Google world countries by the subsets: race, religion, urban or rural and schooling, you will discover the leading cause of long life by up to nine years is education and learning level.

If you are enjoying life (it gets better) and want to hang in, become a life-long-learner. There are specific programs to improve your eyes, integrate your left and right brain, and pump up your Orbito-Frontal Cortex. We can reveal many two-minute strategies for Pareto’s Vital 20%. Slackers need not apply.

Fluent Readers

Most of us find it inconceivable that being a fluent reader, (articulate, coherent and comprehensive) is significant to your longevity. You reading style impressed Mrs. Harrison, your 3rd grade teacher, but after decades, it’s time for improvements. According to Dr. David W. Baker, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University (Archives of Internal Medicine 7.23.07) literacy, requiring reading and some math, predicts when Atropos cuts the thread of your life.

She is one of the three Greek sisters of Fate (Moira). Clotho is the sister who spins your thread of life from cosmic causes. Lachesis measures your thread of life and processes your destiny. Finally, Atropos, the lady with the large shears, cuts the thread of life. Makes sense to me.

Scholars offer four myths to choose your true destiny: determinism, retribution, reciprocity and chance. The secular world prefers chance except in emergencies. Any port in a storm, right?

Dr. Baker’s team followed 3,260 in Chicagoland for more than 5 years. They were tested for health and literacy. Sixty percent were labeled literate and the rest not. Sure, they died of heart disease, cancer and stroke like the rest of us, but the learners lasted significantly longer. Differences approached 9 years.

How Come

More education produces statistically higher lifetime earnings; colleges graduates potentially earn twice the income of high schoolers. Graduate school (law, medicine etc) graduates can expect 2x the earnings of college folks.

Money provides better health care, safer surroundings, and better nutrition. You already know that, right?

Fluent readers exercise their brain synapses and neuronal circuitry compared to five-hour daily TV viewers. Reading uses different brain structures than watch TV, listening to music, and playing video games.

Cognitive Exercise

Longevity requires daily exercise of your brain in these four areas:

a) drawing on their long-term memories for coding and decoding.

b) experiencing logic and reason (critical thinking) through cause and effect.

c) sequencing short-term memories for information processing

d) combining creative mental imagery and association.

According to the Association of American Publishers, the average college graduate reads one (1) book annually. Does surfing the Internet and daily emails exercise your neurons enough to prolong your longevity? We suggest the road less traveled.

Dr. Baker’s researchers conclude a more powerful variable than education for examining the link between socioeconomic status and longevity, is reading fluency.

Step one: choose to devote ten additional weekly hours to reading and learning. Second, discover cognitive strategies to implement your present 3rd grade learning skills. What have you changed since Mrs. Harrison’s class?

Cognitive Reserve

Do you have the bounce-back factor for your brain? Humans require a brain resilient to the ordinary damages from pollution, trauma and stress during their lifetime. The goal is for your 3-pound coconut to maintain functioning in spite of damage from aging and low level Alzheimer’s.

Research indicates that those of us with a high cognitive-reserve (fluent readers and learners) appear to build a firewall around the brain to reduce the effects of normal aging and specific attacks.

A well-researched project in a Canadian leadplant showed low cognitive-reserve employees were affected by lead exposure 2.5 times more than those with more than 12th grade reading level.

High-cognitive reserve people (more education and learning) survived and thrived in the face of lead exposure.

Google: Dr. Margrit L. Bleecker, published in the American Academy of Neurology medical journal. 7.31.07

Endwords

Advanced reading and learning skills produce structural and functional brain modifications. It offers a permanent umbrella effect for extended longevity and a potentially reduced risk of Alzheimer.

Read an in-depth interview with Dr. Yaacov Stern, Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons on Cognitive Reserve. http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog2007/07/23/ build-your-cognitive–reserve-yaakov-stern/

Consider the benefits of reading and remembering three (3) books, articles and reports in the time others can hardly finish one. Ask us how.

See ya,
copyright 2007 H. Bernard Wechsler www.speedlearning.org hbw@speedlearning.org

Author of Speed Learning for Professionals, published by Barron's; partner of Evelyn Wood, creator of speed reading, graduating two million, including the White House staffs of four U.S. Presidents.

Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and fortune Magazine for major articles.

http://www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org

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