Archive for August, 2007
Saturday, August 25th, 2007
This autumn
Why am I aging so?
Flying towards the clouds, a bird.
Matsuo Basho, haiku poet
1644-1694
The world’s top longevity and health experts are flocking to Okinawa to interview 90-year olds who climb ladders to prune their fruit trees, follow 100-year olds who cycle kilometres to their vegetable gardens for long, laborious days that culminate in hauling heavy loads of produce to market, and to detail every aspect of life in this Shangri-la no longer hidden from the world.
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Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007
“Oh Sir! You are old;
Nature in you stands on the very verge
Of her confine.”
William Shakespeare (King Lear)
Dietary supplements: Age-slowing essentials or quackery?
Humanity has always looked to substances outside everyday foods for the enhancement of health and as bulwarks against the physical ravages of time.
Ancient Greek athletes reportedly consumed bull’s testicles in order to acquire the vigour of that powerful, spirited animal. Rome’s charioteers downed doses of boar dung in water to guard them against injury or death in the frequent spills that occurred in the circus maximus. Gladiators, brawny superstars of the arena, were given the ashes of burnt scorpions to pep them up.
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Saturday, August 18th, 2007
“Oh roses for the flush of youth,
And laurel for the perfect prime;
But pluck an ivy branch for me -
Grown old before my time”
Christina Georgina Rosetti
1830-1894
Is Chocolate the Elixir of Life?
The Aztecs thought so.
They elevated it to mystical importance in their society, and used every part its source - the cocoa plant - for a specific purpose. The bark and flowers formed a cornerstone of traditional medicine and the dried beans served as currency, but it was the drink made from fermented and roasted beans that held paramount place in their regard. Only the royal elite and their coterie were considered worthy enough to consume this libation of the gods.
The first European to try it was not impressed.
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Tuesday, August 14th, 2007
“Every man desires to live long;
But no man would be old”
Jonathon Swift 1667-1745
Ageing is more than the latest grey hairs and wrinkles that confront us in the mirror in the morning. Each of us has a unique pattern of change that the accumulating years show on our faces and bodies.
Ironically for Jonathon Swift, the brilliant satirist and author of Gulliver’s Travels, his decay was mental. The sharpest wit of his age suffered from Meniere’s disease, characterised by vertigo and deafness, and predicted his own descent into dementia when observing, with poet Edward Young, a tree that was dying back from its crown.
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Saturday, August 11th, 2007
“Grow old along with me,
The best is yet to be.”
Elizabeth Barret Browning
“Just relax.”
I could feel my tension rising as the doctor pumped up the blood pressure cuff and it tightened on my arm. I am a personal trainer and a bad reading could be embarrassing.
This was very bad timing - my first visit to the doctor in over ten years - and it had to follow a traditional Portuguese barbeque the night before. I could see the fat glistening on those chunks of grilled chorizo as I pulled them off the skewer. And washed them down with three or four, or was it five? beers.
“Very good. One twenty over sixty five.”
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