Centenarians
I wrote several questions on the board to help guide discussion; these critical thinking questions are related to areas of: content, self, world, and practice.
Content:
How does this information related or connect to other information that we've covered or you've read?
Self:
What impact does this information have on you?
World:
Who else needs to know this information? What are potential implications?
Practice:
What additional ideas does this information give you?
How can you use or apply this information?
Is there anything else you want to know?
For this next blog- elaborate on several of these questions. Feel free to repeat any comment that you discussed in class.
In addition, pose a question or a comment on at least 2 classmate's blogs.
>>> A lot of information was presented through viewing the clips on the Georgia Centenarian study. Thoughts that came to my mind while viewing it included: is this a special case/area/environment with an exceptional amount of cognitive, functioning centenarians or are there samples similar to this throughout the country? I hope this question may be answered in the near future with our delving into "The Blue Zones".
Additionally I found it interesting how a lot of the individuals seemed to share similar personality traits such as having a care free attitude and stress free approach to things. They almost seemed nonchalant or indifferent to some topics because "that's just the way things were" or "we didn't know any better", and all seemed to share a strong sense of faith in religion. The findings concerning their diets and nutritional habits were a little surprising as well, and as I stated in class, I found it interesting that there was not a decline in the prevalence of the gene correlated with Alzheimer's disease.
I think these types of studies are important to identify and evaluate similar and differentiating factors involved in human longevity, and it's too bad that there aren't studies or at least data available from different time periods such as pre-Industrial revolution. Prior to that, one could imagine that environmental factors may have been a little more safer, but at the same time technology and medicine hadn't advanced yet to prevent simple maladies from claiming lives. It's neat to speculate on how human advancement, or perhaps a rearranging of different factors - were it possible - would effect longevity.
The Georgia Centenarian study gives insight into the lives of still capable individuals, and gives hope, in a sense, that if we reach such ages, we may not be vegetables or totally dependent on the care of others. For me personally, I try to not stress out about little things, but sometimes it's hard not to, and stress has been proven to have adverse effects on people's health, but as we saw with the centenarians, a lack thereof may prove to be an ingredient to a long life.
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On a side note, I thought it was neat that one of the centenarians was writing a book about his family history. How many of you have an older family member who has kept these records? Sometimes stories of "the olden days" are passed orally through generations, but are not documented. It would be a neat idea to start a collection if your family doesn't have one :) Lots of cool templates and apps exist to help you get started!
I agree with your point about data prior to the industrial revolution! Today there seems to be so many concerns about specific toxins (e.g. BPA in water bottles causing illness) that would not have been either present or a concern back then due to the times. Good post!
ReplyDeleteI thought your comment on stress at the end was very interesting. The Centenarians had relatively a low amount of stress and lived that long so seemingly low stress leads to a longer life span. If that's the case, would your personality be able to factor into that as well? For example Type A vs. Type B personalities.
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