Monday, April 3, 2023

Screen Arts: Still Alice

 

Benson Sculpture Garden, Colorado. May 2016. Credit: Mzuriana.
Benson Sculpture Garden, Colorado. May 2016. Credit: Mzuriana.


Jeez Louise. I watched the movie, Still Alice, over the weekend. A new kind of horror film. About a middle-aged woman, Alice, victimized by early-onset Alzheimer's. 

Shit. 

My takeaways: 

  1. I didn't know there were certain kinds of hereditary Alzheimer's, where, if you've got the gene marker, you're gonna get Alzheimer's. 
  2. A number of people pass the routine dementia screening tests because they have a high level of cognitive "reserves" in their brain "accounts," such as a high level of academic study or applied knowledge/skills. Such folks have often deployed effective work-arounds that delay the more obvious symptoms of dementia. Consequently, health screeners might discount the concerns about the patient's perception of their cognitive changes, throwing the patient's concerns into easy-button go-to's such as "stress" or "anxiety." And a consequence of that is a delay in any treatment that might mitigate or slow the progress of the cognitive changes. 
  3. Although the title of the movie was "Still Alice," this was a lie. Alice didn't live there anymore. Alice was gone, eventually, although her heart continued to beat and she could still talk and walk. 
  4. There was no light at the end of this tunnel. No sunny bromides. No "love will conquer all." It just fucking sucked. 

A most stunning act of bravery in the movie occurred when Alice, while she was still Alice, created a video for her future self. Although the movie is almost a decade old, for anyone who hasn't yet seen it, I won't share what happened afterward. 

My #2 takeaway is something I will reflect on in the coming days. It is potentially actionable information. 


Thursday, March 30, 2023

Detective Work: Coffee

 

Coffee poster. Arizona. February 2020.
Coffee poster. Arizona. February 2020.

My original draft for this post began December 2021. In re-reading the draft this week, at the end of March 2023, I bored even myself by reading the minutiae of my experiments, so I edited a bunch of that out. 

And spoiler alert: Notwithstanding all that good work back on the cusp of 2021/2022, I drifted back to drinking two pots of fully-loaded coffee each morning. .... Now having revisited this draft, I'll resume my mixture of caffed and decaffed ingredients. That was a good practice. 

So, on to the 2021/2022 experiment:

As part of troubleshooting some concerning health symptoms, I decided on December 7 this past year [2021] to run an experiment. Quit coffee for awhile. See what happens. 

My coffee origin story

I never drank a drop of coffee until I was in my early 40s. Loved the smell; despised the taste. 

I was a Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi girl. Drank it in the morning, all day, and at night. Loved that biting carbonation and the flavor. Maybe the caramel coloring added something ephemeral to the pleasure, as white sodas did little for me. 

But one day, everything changed in a moment

It was at a day-long, offsite, work-related meeting at a hotel. 

Breakfasty break things set out by the hotel. Long, white-clothed tables. A big, shiny silverish coffee urn. Chubby ecru coffee mugs stacked on a tray.  

A switch turned on: I had a desire for a cup of coffee. I poured myself one. I drank of it. I loved it immediately. 

From then on, I was a coffee drinker. 

Black, no sweetener.

I thought I'd experienced caffeine in my diet sodas, but that was nothing in comparison to the wallop of coffee caffeine. 

For awhile I was a coffee snob, but that was just a phase. Thank goodness. 

In the beginning of my coffee-drinking career, I ordered espresso on occasion when in a coffeehouse, but I found the quality so unreliable, notwithstanding the baristas' pride in their skills, that I defaulted to the brewed coffee on tap. Besides, due to my financially-prudent Swiss heritage, I valued the higher number-of-swallows bang for my buck with a cup of brew than a demitasse of espresso.

My long-time coffee drinks of choice:

  • Brewed coffee
  • Americano
  • French press


Caffeinism caught up with me? 

Fast forward (backward?) to December 7 this past year [2021]. I quit coffee. 

Prior to the day I quit, my usual consumption was 50 ounces per morning: two pots of my five-cup coffee maker. My "recipe":

  • #1 pot: Five coffee scoops (roughly equivalent to rounded teaspoons)
  • #2 pot: Atop the once-soaked grounds of #1 pot, two new coffee scoops. 

My withdrawal experience:  

  • December 7: A mild headache developed in the afternoon and into the evening. 
  • December 8: A dull headache all day and into the evening. 
  • December 9: No headache. But oh, so sleepy. 
  • Day 10 and following: Unremarkable. 

I thought I would miss the ritual of a cup of coffee. I did, a little, but not much.

A possible coincidence: Several mornings before my coffee stoppage, I had been experiencing severe anxiety each morning, which for me, centers in my belly. The first three mornings following my coffee abstention, I continued to have this distressing anxiety. Then it was gone. 

On December 22 [2021], I began to drink coffee again, but ... 

Between December 22 and December 30, I tried various recipes that mixed caffed and decaffed coffee. 

My overall objectives were to: 

  1. Enjoy the pleasure of drinking coffee in the morning
  2. Derive the putative health benefits of caffeinated coffee
  3. Avoid the negative effects of too much coffee, such as shakiness/jitteriness and feelings of anxiety

The winning recipe: 

  1. First pot: Three scoops of caffeinated coffee + two scoops of decaf
  2. Second pot: Dump the grounds from the first pot. Replace with four scoops of decaf + one scoop of caff. 

Morning coffee in the sunshine

NOTE: A scant two months after my coffee experiment, in following up on those concerning symptoms that had prompted the experiment to begin with, I learned that the frequent getting-up-at-night (and other things) were a function of undiagnosed sleep apnea, now being treated.  



Monday, March 27, 2023

Literature: Successful Aging, Part 1

 

Successful Aging by Daniel Levitin. Image source: Goodreads
Successful Aging by Daniel Levitin. Image source: Goodreads


A friend recommended Successful Aging, by Daniel J. Levitin, to me. Dr. Levitin is a neuroscientist. A neuropsychologist recommended the book to my friend, and she found the content illuminating. 

I've now finished the book, and here's my overall take: 

  1. Some useful information, both for general science education and also for some actionable behaviors one can practice to promote successful aging
  2. Dr. Levitin really drives home the difference between our life spans and our health spans. Embracing the term "health span" sharpens my focus for actions and decision-making into the future. 
  3. Too many of the "facts" that Dr. Levitin presents are anecdotal; they are stories of individuals who are in their 90s or older who are doing this or that magnificent thing. Stories of individuals are engaging, but I want data supported by empirical research
  4. There are specific strategies from the book that I intend to employ, which I'll get into as I process the book in future posts. 
  5. I wish there'd been more editing to reduce the information bloat; more specifically, my interest centered on how our bodies/brains age, but I had to wade through (and, eventually, skip over) so much background information on what our bodies/brains are like as infants, young children, and young adults. In other words, the introduction to every Important Idea was like an inverted pyramid, and the payoff for all that background context didn't feel like a good ROI of my finite resources of time and intellectual interest.  

If I had to score the book on a scale of 0 to 5, with 5 being exemplary, I'd give it a 3.75.  [Edit:... I'd give it a 4.5 ..... I upped my preliminary assessment after I revisited all of the highlighted text I'd marked while reading the book the first time. Also, the author has documented his intel to a faretheewell in his Notes section at the back of the book.


Monday, February 6, 2023

Vanity of Age: The Small Indignities: Hair

 

Woman with yellow and black hair. "Salad Oil Style" by Jan Toorop, 1894. Source: Public Domain Review.
"Salad Oil Style" by Jan Toorop, 1894. Source: Public Domain Review. 


Hair: Supply shortage

Although some of us womenfolk are blessed with luxuriously thick hair on unto death, others of us struggle with thinning hair that looks like a clearing in a forest of skinny aspens. 

What to do? 

  1. Always wear a hat, cap, or beret? 
  2. Pretend that because we can't see the scarcity at the back of our heads, then no one else can, either? 
  3. Resign ourselves to a daily dose of a Rogaine or Rogaine-like ointment? 
  4. Wash our hair less? 
  5. Cut our hair super short like a fresh-shorn lamb - so it looks kind of jauntily OK? 
  6. Let our hair grow long enough we can put it in a high ponytail? 
  7. Wear a wig? A hairpiece?

At the moment, my hair is just long enough for option #6. I'm leaning hard toward a shearing. A pixie. Or go all Sinead O'Connor? 


Woman with cloth cap. Source: British Library public domain images
Woman with cloth cap. Source: British Library public domain images.

Woman with wig. Source: British Library public domain images
Woman with wig. Source: British Library public domain images


Hair: Illegal border crossings

To paraphrase something Samantha once said about an unwanted hair: "You pluck it out and five more come to its funeral.

I'm referring to facial hair, whereas Samantha referred to a different corporeal neighborhood. 




Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Vanity of Age: The Lines

 I visited New York City last week. 

I saw this giant image of Lauren Hutton.

She's 78. 

Go figure. 

I was immediately taken with the unabashed lineage of her face

Oh sure, I'm confident there's been some post-production touching up here and there, but there are lines aplenty. And, yes, she's got a good infrastructure to support the lay of her skin. 

But still. 

I bet nobody dares call her young lady

A good role model for me. 

Lauren Hutton at 78 on a banner in New York City. September 2022.
Lauren Hutton at 78, on a banner in New York City. September 2022. 


Monday, August 29, 2022

Lessons From My Elders: Bring in the Light, Clean the Counters, and Put on Lipstick

 

Light through the window. Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico. November 2010. Credit: Mzuriana.
Light through the window. Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico. November 2010. Credit: Mzuriana.

Every morning, I open my window blinds and receive the light into my space.

Every morning, in the physicality of that action, I remember my mother. 

Every morning, my mother also opened her blinds, or shutters, or curtains, or drapes - whatever the window treatment was in the house she occupied at the time. 

She also told me how important it was to clean off the kitchen counters. Even if there are dishes in the sink, she said, a clean counter makes the whole kitchen look pretty OK, and it makes her feel good, too, she said. 

She also told me how important it was to apply lipstick in the morning (and in her years of youngish matronhood, how important it was to refresh that lipstick before my father returned home from work).

So what do these prosaic actions have to do with aging? 

  • There are small actions we can take to create our own environment of ease, beauty, and dignity. 
  • We have control over these small acts; they are expressions of our self-determination. 
  • They send a message to those who enter our spaces: You are dealing with an elder Who Keeps Up. 

To each her own on whether or not to apply cosmetics when one is traveling in the Land of Age, but here are some thoughts about its power, gleaned from the Women's Health article, Why Putting On Lipstick Makes You Feel So Awesome

"... lipstick provides a reliable tonic in trying times. ...  it often serves as a symbol (however small) of health and vibrancy. 'Lipstick helps restore a normal sense of self that a patient can lose during incredibly difficult cancer treatments and help them feel like themselves,' says Bobbie Rimel, M.D., a gynecologist and oncologist...."

"[Poppy King] recalls ...  'Lipstick immediately made me feel different on the inside ... like I was capable of more with it on than I was without it.'" 

"As Audrey Hepburn so succinctly put it, 'On a bad day, there's always lipstick.'"


Thursday, August 25, 2022

Digital Journals: The Other Side of Sixty

Roasting coffee beans. Washington, D.C. May 2007. Credit: Mzuriana.
Roasting coffee beans. Washington, D.C. May 2007. Credit: Mzuriana.
 

The Other Side of Sixty, by "Wisewebwoman."

The author lives in Newfoundland, Canada. I'll call her WBW (wise web woman). 

Age 79 (as of today's writing).

WBW is very open about how she moves through the sea of age. Some days are clear sailing, a goodly breeze. Some are stormy, treacherous. Some days the sail is still and flaccid, her vessel stalled over the deep unknowable.

WBW's blog is an espresso. Black, no sugar. Flavorful.

She has visited some corners of aging that I've touched on, as well, and I find sustenance in reading similar experiences.