According to Cleveland.com, Dr. Michael Roizen speculates that “presidents get two years older for every year they’re in office” [reference]
This is probably due to stress of the job rather than living at the white house. It is well known that stress shortens the cell’s telomeres which is an indication of cellular aging.
An example of the Ebbinghaus illusion is where the perception of the orange circles below appears to be smaller in the left diagram than in the right diagram, when in fact the two orange circles are exactly the same size.
Even after you measured the size of the circles and have confirm and know cognitively that they are indeed the same size, your mind’s automatic perception system still cannot help but see the left circle as being smaller. The best that you can do is to be aware that in certain situations your perceptions can be fooled. This way, the next time you and encounter such a similar situation, your conscious mind can alert you to not trust your perception due to the fact that what you are seeing may be flawed.
There are many other visual and cognitive illusions in which our minds can be fooled. By being aware of the types of illusions will help us be aware of situations in which our minds can be fooled. The book
The Ebbinghaus illusion was named after the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus who discovered it. The illusion is also called the Titchener circles.
Did you know that your pupils will dilate when you are doing complex mental computation? Yes, this is according to Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Examples of mental computation would be if you had to increment each of the digits of a 4-digit number by 1. Or if one is trying to hold number in one’s head.
Some psychology experiments would measure a subjects pupil dilation as an indication of the amount of thinking the subject is undergoing.
You are supposed to breathe in while descending and breathe out while raising. This is according to 7 Weeks to 100 Push-Ups: Strengthen and Sculpt Your Arms, Abs, Chest, Back and Glutes by Training to do 100 Consecutive Push-Ups. Do not hold your breath.
If doing pushups is stressing your wrist, you can hold your hands into fists with knuckles to the floor. But make sure you are on a soft mat or have the hands over soft towels.
On page 39 of the book, the book gives you a table of how many push ups a male or female is supposed to be able to do on average for a given age group. As an example, an average middle-aged male between 40-49 years should be able to do 13 to 21 pushups on average. For females, it would be 7 to 14.
A male over the age of 60 who is able to do more than 28 pushups is considered excellent. 16 or more pushup for females over the age of 60 would be most excellent as well.
Here is a YouTube video where you can watch a debate between science journalist Gary Taubes and Dr. Dean Ornish and also American Heart Association’s Dr. Barbara Howard. It is moderated by Dr. Oz.
Taubes is saying that perhaps fat is not making us fat and the the real problem may be carbohydrates. And he is okay with fats and proteins. Dr. Ornish is a proponent of low-fat and low-protein diet and is against the Atkins diet. And Dr. Howard tells everyone to eat in moderation.
But there are things they all agree on. That is (1) trans fats are bad for us, and (2) omega-3 fats are good for us, and (3) simple carbohydrates are not good.
If you want to see Gary Taubes and Dr. Dean Ornish present their independent presentation on their views, see Dr. Dean Ornish on Transform 2010 and Taubes on AtGoogleTalks. Dr. Mark Hyman has good things to say out Dr. Dean Ornish here.
Or read each of their books …
Steven Fowkes has a PowerPoint/YouTube presentation broken into 9 parts that explains the initiating cause of Alzheimer Disease. This is a very detailed an in-depth presentation. Some details are targeted for doctors. However, anyone can benefit from watching to learn the general concepts.
The presentation says that mercury toxicity is a risk factor. Gluthathione is the cell’s main antioxidant and detoxifier of mercury. When gluthathione is abundant enough to be dominate over mercury, then we are in good shape. But when mercury overwhelms gluthathione’s ability to do its job, then that is when Alzheimer’s disease may initiate. Fowkes says that “Alzheimer’s is caused by loss of glutathione cycling.” Glutathione’s antioxidative ability can be recycled, but that requires cellular energy such as ATP.
This energy comes from foods we eat. The presentation talks about how the body can burn glucose as well as fats for fuel. It talks about the glucose pathway and insulin resistance. You may have heard that insulin resistance is a risk factor of Alzheimer’s. It also talks about ketosis and how the body can burn fat as fuel.
The presentation goes into talk about mitochondria, antioxidant system, inflammation as a risk factor, cortisol as neuro-toxin.
The term “Alzheimer Reversal” may be debatable. Certainly, the initiating processes of Alzheimer such as inflammation and mercury toxicity can reduced or reversed. But this is typically at the stage prior to clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. Once late-stage Alzheimer where neurons death has set in, then it is much more difficult.
You can find the rest of the nine parts at his YouTube page.
If you like his presentation, you may also want to see his talk at GoogleTechTalks about “Nutrients for Better Mental Performance“.
On YouTube is a series of videos of Dr. Richard Bernstein who had Type I diabetes and what he did to control his blood sugar and reversed the harmful effects of diabetes. This was a talk that he gave tat the Nutrition and Metabolism Society in May 8, 2010 in New York City. Dr. Richard Bernstein had diabetes for over 60 years. He was an engineer and so he got a device to measure his blood sugar through the day and performed experiments to see what affected his blood sugar. At age 45, he went to medical school and became a doctor in this field.
He found that he was able to control his blood sugar by primarily using low-carb diet, weight training, and aerobic exercise.
YouTube Videos: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.
The PBS program Nova aired a documentary called “Fabric of the Cosmos” which you can watch on pbs.org in the link provided.
The program stars physicist Brian Greene and is based on his book of the same name. The first part talks about what empty space really is and what it is made of.
It turns out that space is not as empty as we thought. The weight of empty space is 70% of the weight of the universe. This ingredient of empty space is called dark energy and it is causing our universe to be expanding and the expansion is accelerating.
We learned that mass can wrap and twist space like a fabric. We learned that space is bubbling at the quantum level as evidenced by the Casimir effect. Scientist are now looking for the Higgs particle.
PBS did had an one hour documentary on Apple’s Steve Jobs called “Steve Jobs: One Last Thing” — the video of which you can watch online in the link. This was in reference to the fact that when Jobs did product presentation, he tended to say “and one more thing” as part of his showsmanship in product presentation.
Steve Jobs had died on October 5th, 2011 of pancreatic cancer. Walter Isaacson released the biography of Steve Jobs 19 days later. It was Steve Jobs idea. Steve Jobs called Walter Isaacson and asked if Isaacson would write a biography of him. This was when Jobs found out about his cancer, but Isaacson was not aware of it yet.
Jobs picked the right guy for the job (no pun intended). Because Isaacson had written about Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Kissinger. Isaacson is CEO of the Aspen Institute and has also been Chairman and CEO of CNN and the managing editor of TIME. In part, Jobs asked Isaacson
Jobs cooperated with the book, but left the control of the book in Isaacson’s hand — it is Isaacson’s book. Isaacson interviewed over 100 people for the book including Jobs family members, friends, colleagues, and even adversaries. Isaacson also did over 40 interviews with Jobs himself.
After the book came out, Isaacson was in the media talking about Steve Jobs. Some of which you can see on PBS, 60 Minutes, and NPR.
Terry Gross of Fresh Air on NPR talked with Isaacson about the biography. Isaacson said that Jobs is able to connect art with technology and was able to take a concept into reality.
In the media, you can learn some of the difference between Apple’s Steve Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Both Jobs and Gates were born in 1955 and both dropped out of college. But they are different. Jobs was into Zen Buddhism and knows what appeals to people. But he did not know how to program. Gates did.
Although Jobs knew the concepts of Zen, he did not have the calm of Zen as evidenced by the fact that sometimes he would become very angry.
Microsoft and Apple are rivals, but there were collaboration as well. In the PBS documentary, you can see footage of both Jobs and Gates on stage — and you can see that they both had respect for each other.
A study noted in telegraph.co.uk in 2009 says that …
“men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.”
In case you are wondering, the reverse is not true. In other words, women’s cognitive function does not decrease in the presence of an attractive man.
One hypothesis is that men’s mental resource may have been “used up” trying to impress women.