Happy Healthy Long Life

Sunday's New York Times "All in Our Minds" Issue. Can You Make Yourself Smarter & Happier with Exercise & Learning Something New? Plus the Ethics of Eating Meat - You Be the Judge

 

  

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You won't want to miss the April 22, 2012 special New York Times issue, "All in Our Minds".

All of my favorite subjects are covered:

• The Brain Benefits of Exercise
• The Brain Benefits of Learning
• How Exercise Might Make Us Happier
• The Ethics of Eating Meat

 

Can You Make Yourself Smarter?

Photo Credit: Clang

Can Exercise Make You Smarter?

Photo Credit: Clang

 

It's chock full of news you can use, now! 

• How Exercise Can Lead to a Better Brain, by Gretchen Reynolds.  Best way to build new brain cells?  Exercise.  

"You won't want to miss this Sunday NYT's article! [T]here is [an] easy-to-achieve, scientifically proven way to make yourself smarter.

Go for a walk or a swim. For more than a decade, neuroscientists and physiologists have been gathering evidence of the beneficial relationship between exercise and brainpower. But the newest findings make it clear that this isn’t just a relationship; it is the relationship.

[S]cientists in just the past few months have discovered that exercise appears to build a brain that resists physical shrinkage and enhance cognitive flexibility. Exercise, the latest neuroscience suggests, does more to bolster thinking than thinking does."

• Can You Make Yourself Smarter?  by Dan Hurley.  This is the "big story" in the Times.  Haven't read it yet, but it looks like something I won't want to miss.  Includes a chart that explains what YOUR IQ means (always interesting)--plus a free on-link link to "N-Back" (Learning) Games that just might help you increase your intelligence.

• Can Running Make Us Happier? by Ilena Silverman.  Could running, by helping create new nerve cells, not only make our brains sharper but also make our moods happier?  IMHO, yes!

• Is It Ethical to Eat Meat?    by Ariel Kaminer.  Vote for one of just six essays (click here) submitted by thousands of NYT's readers.  These six were chosen as the "top dogs"  by a panel of experts:
  
  Mark Bittman, Jonathan Safran Foer, Andrew Light, Michael Pollan, & Peter Singer.  The judges narrowed the pool down to just these six finalists. Vote below by midnight on April 24 on the essay you think makes the strongest case. You can only vote for one.

I'll leave you with one thought. 

Just imagine what we do for our brains when we combine exericse, with challenging novel learning & a plant-based no-added-oil diet! 

Think of it: improved blood flow, elimination of blood vessel inflammation, building new brain cells & connections, preventing brain shrinkage, while getting mega-doses of nitric oxide from greens, oats & exercise.   Mayo Clinic researchers say increased nitric oxide is one of the keys to preventing dementia.

So....What do you think?

 

Happy Weekend!!

Back to Blogging on May 4th

Intelligence: How to Make "Our" Children Smarter - How to Make "Ourselves" Smarter

 

"If intelligence were deeply encoded in our genes, that would lead to the depressing conclusion that neither schooling nor antipoverty programs can accomplish much. Yet while this view of I.Q. as overwhelmingly inherited has been widely held, the evidence is growing that it is, at a practical level, profoundly wrong. Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, has just demolished this view in a superb new book, “Intelligence and How to Get It,” which also offers terrific advice for addressing poverty and inequality in America."

Nicholas Kristof, "Raising Our IQ"  April 15, 2009

Sometimes I wonder where I have been.  Until this morning I had never heard of Richard Nisbett--and now I'm obsessed with reading all about him.  His latest book, "Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count"  just came out in February and I'm heading to the library ASAP for a copy. His earlier book was: "The Geography of Thought: How Asians & Westerners Think Differently...and Why: 

Here's the Book in a Nutshell

"Who is smarter, Asians or Westerners? Are there genetic explanations for group differences in test scores? How can parents work to improve their child's intelligence? Can schools eliminate the social class and racial gaps in academic achievement? The book argues that intellect is not primarily genetically determined but is principally influenced by societal factors. There is a need to revamp our entire approach to education, because malleable, controllable factors like schools and social environment, and not hard-wired genetic codes, hold the keys to the future of intellectual advancement."   Check out Dr. Nisbett's own web site at The University of Michigan


Why He's a Nominee for Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People

According to Malcolm Gladwell, the brilliant & best-selling author of Outliers, Blink and The Tipping Point:

"Richard Nisbett's Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count is a devastating and persuasive refutation of all those who believe intellectual ability is fixed at birth. Few Americans have done as much to deepen our understanding of what it means to be human."

What We Can Do To Make Our Kids & Ourselves Smarter

Carey Goldberg, of the Boston Globe, interviewed Nisbett and asked him for advice on how to make our kids and ourselves more intelligent.  For the entire interview, "Get Smart", click here.

1.  Talk to your kids a lot!!

"The child of professional parents hears 30 million words by age 3. For the child of working-class parents, it's 20 million, and the child of a welfare parent, it's 10 million. And the richness of vocabulary is utterly different: The 3-year-old child of professional parents uses a more advanced vocabulary talking to parents than a welfare mother does in talking to her child. In addition to talking to kids, there's reading to kids. Also, surprisingly, some things that happen before birth turn out to be important: Mothers who exercise have bigger babies with bigger brains. And it looks like breastfeeding can account for as much as 6 points in IQ."

2.  If adults want to get smarter they need to EXERCISE & NOT RETIRE!

"Exercise. Don't retire. Hang around with smart people. Stay in school. You can start vigorous exercise in your 60s and reduce the likelihood of Alzheimer's by 50 percent. In countries with low retirement ages, the IQs of people drop more from age 50 to age 65 than they do in countries with high retirement ages."  Read Happy Healthy Long Life regularly!  Just kidding.

3.  Self-Control

"The best evidence we have indicates that children with above-average self-control have higher intelligence."  There's no question that self-control is a behavior that parents can teach their children.

4.  Check out Chapter 10 - Raising your child's intelligence & your own.  Look below for the excerpt!

Who Is Geoffrey Canada & How Does His Work Relate to Nisbett's?

I don't know if Nisbett mentions Canada in his book--but he should.  I first heard about him on an Ira Glass This American Life radio broadcast.  I was awestruck by his Harlem program, called "The Harlem Children's Zone".  Here's the link to the episode, which aired 9/26/08.  It's called, "Going Big", and it's Act One, "Harlem Renaissance".  Thirty minutes long--but worthy of a listen.

Click on the "Full Episode" link on the left and listen to it in real time for free.  If you want to download it to your Ipod, it will cost you 95 cents.  I've listened to it twice.  It's wonderful!

Excerpt from Terry Gross' Fresh Air episode interviewing Geoffrey Canada and Paul Tough.

The Harlem Children's Zone, writes New York Times reporter Paul Tough, is "the first and so far the only organization in the country that pulls together ... integrated social and educational services for thousands of children" — all under one umbrella, all in one place, all at one time.

It's the brainchild of education and social-services reformer Geoffrey Canada, and it's nothing less than an audacious poverty-eradication effort that, as Publishers Weekly explains, is "predicated upon changing everything" in the New York City neighborhoods it targets, "creating an interlocking web of services targeted at the poorest and least likely-to-succeed children."

As students progress through an all-day prekindergarten and then through a charter school, they have continuous access to community supports like family counseling, after-school tutoring and a health clinic

All of that institutional structure, Tough explains, is "designed to mimic the often-invisible cocoon of support and nurturance that follows middle-class and upper-middle-class kids through their childhoods."

How about a look at the Table of Contents & a free preview of this book?

Link to the Google excerpt of the book.

Table of Contents

1 Varieties of Intelligence 1

2 Heritability and Mutability 21

3 Getting Smarter 39

4 Improving the Schools 57

5 Social Class and Cognitive Culture 78

6 IQ in Black and White 93

7 Mind the Gap 119

8 Advantage Asia? 153

9 People of the Book 171

10 Raising Your Child's Intelligence ... and Your Own 182

Epilogue: What We Now Know about Intelligence and Academic Achievement 193