Archive for the ‘Greg's articles’ Category
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
“’Tis too much prov’d - that with devotion’s visage
And pious action, we do sugar o’er
The devil himself.“
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
I went shopping the other day, reading labels as I went, and hit a wall of frustration in the cereal section of the supermarket.
I couldn’t find any brand of muesli that did not have added sugar. Even the brand I had stuck to for years had been overtaken by a giant food conglomerate and had succumbed to the sugar avalanche that engulfs our lives.
I have since found a single brand that has no sugar but it’s too late for my allegiance. I have fallen off the commercial muesli wagon and now make my own. (See my recipe at the end.)
Why get one’s knickers in a twist about sugar? Isn’t most of what we eat broken down into sugar eventually?
Yes, it’s true that glucose fuels our cells after digestion and metabolism have converted much of our food into this ready supply of energy. However sugar is meant to be fed to our cells at the end of this process, not at the beginning. Especially not in the quantities a typical industrialised diet provides.
Next time you shop, go on the sugar alert. Read the labels of every processed food you buy and identify sugar in the ingredients list. It may be called fructose, glucose, dextrose, sucrose, or maltose. You’ll be surprised to find that every thing from peanut butter to the bread you spread it on has sugar added. The food industry is as hooked on it as we are.
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Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
“For what utterance can be more pitiful than that of Milo of Crotona?
After he was already an old man and was watching the athletes training in the race-course, it is related that, as he looked upon his shrunken muscles, he wept and said:
“Yes, but they are now dead.”
Cicero (4BC-65AD), De Senectute 9.27
Poor Milo. If only he had continued his training regime, he might have enjoyed a more robust old age.Milo, called by ancient Greek geographer Strabo “the most illustrious of athletes” was a pretty amazing character who transcended both fact and fiction.
He first competed as a wrestler at the Olympic Games in 540BC where he won the boy’s division. He returned eight years later and commenced a winning streak that did not cease until his sixth Olympiad in 512BC. That’s five titles in a row, a feat unmatched by any modern Olympian. The Games were held, as now, at four year intervals so Milo must have been over 40 when he triumphed at the 67th Olympiad. That’s an astonishing achievement by today’s standards and almost unbelievable considering athletes of the ancient world had short careers and were rarely competitive past their prime.
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Monday, October 15th, 2007
“Alas! The bride had died in horrible agony, for no sooner had she put on Medea’s gifts than a devouring poison consumed her limbs as with fire…“
The messenger in Medea, a Greek tragedy by Euripides 431BC
In Greek mythology Medea was a sorceress infuriated at being replaced in her husband Jason’s affections. Yes, he of Golden Fleece fame. She gave his new bride a robe with special powers. That special power was instant death to the person who put it on.
Our modern world is awash with dangerous chemicals that, while not administering instant death, can accumulate in body tissues over time and cause premature ageing and eventual disease and death.
Prior to World War 2, insecticides were inorganic: based on naturally occurring mineral and plant sources like arsenic, copper, lead and pyrethrum derived from the chrysanthemum flower. Nicotine sulphate was derived from relatives of tobacco and rotenone from an Asian legume.
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Monday, September 24th, 2007
“Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack”
Henry Miller 1891-1980
All of us realize the importance of exercise to the maintenance of our bodies and to the prevention of ageing.
For what is ageing but the slowing of our body’s machinery as it loses efficiency and begins to seize up?
It’s relatively easy to ignore this process given the effortless ease with which our lives are lived. But every now and then we get a painful reminder that our bodies need regular exercise and without it we cannot perform required or desired tasks with pleasure and competence.
Maybe for you it is when you run around with your kids or grandchildren and find yourself breathless and exhausted very quickly. Perhaps it is when you are confronted with a flight of stairs and dread the task of climbing them.
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Monday, September 10th, 2007
“Keep true to the dreams of thy youth”
Herman Melville 1819-1891
A tiny clipping of the above quote was found glued to the inside of the desk on which the Moby Dick author wrote his final work. The unfinished draft of Billy Budd, Sailor sat atop it, and was dutifully packed away by his widow, to be rediscovered and published in 1924.
This discovery helped ensure Melville’s literary immortality; the adage he treasured helps us kindle the spark of our own youthful passions and in turn keeps us young.
How many of you know some amazing elderly person who defies ageing as they indulge in ballroom dancing, bushwalking or even marathon running, like the oldest finisher ever in the notoriously tough Hawaiian Iron Man?
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Saturday, September 1st, 2007
“Among the islands on the north side of Hispaniola…in which there is a continual spring of running water, of such marvellous virtue that the water thereof being drunk, perhaps with some diet, maketh old men young again.”
Pietro Martire d’Anghiera
1472-1528
Italian geographer and historian
(In a letter to Pope Leo X in 1513)
When Sylvester Stallone came to Australia recently to promote his movie “Rocky Balboa“, about an ageing ex-champ miraculously turning back the clock in the ring, he was detained by Customs due to the presence in his luggage of a large number of mysterious vials. He told the press it was a storm in a teacup and that the substance in the vials was harmless and something he had been taking for years to improve his health and appearance.
He certainly looked great for a man approaching 60.
When his lawyers were obliged to fly to Australia later to attend court, it was revealed that the mysterious elixir was human growth hormone, something his fellow aspirants to youth and good looks have been injecting for years, generating billions of dollars for the doctors who skate around US laws and attract the ire of the FDA as they prescribe it in staggering amounts.
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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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