So What, Who Cares (vol 2, issue 33) How to maintain your mental acuity well into old age
Hello! It's Aud-u-bon, dagnabit. I apologize for transposing those vowels in last night's opener, but really? Owls, o's, it's understandable, yes? Also, in terms of birds: I have a vote for the blue jay and/or cardinal, and I have been told to eagerly anticipate Two Bossy Dames' forthcoming tribute to the corvidae. So shall we all!
Do you dream of raising a raven army to bring you gifts? Share your animal-related fondest wishes via email or Twitter.
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If you'd like to maintain your faculties well into your old age, there are a few sensible measures you can take now: eat a diet low in dairy and meat products and high in fish, fruits, and vegetables, don't drink alcohol to excess and actively mind your mental health. So says a study recently published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, where researchers looked at factors that predicted an elderly patient's progression from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to dementia, and found that a link between prediabetes/diabetes and the progression of dementia, a link between heavy alcohol use and the progression from MCI, and a link between depressive states and the progression from MCI.
So what? The factors the researchers looked at were ones they thought could be modified or controlled by everyday people. In other words, habits we can all form now. (See also: vol 2, issue 31)
Who cares? The goal of the study was to see if there was any clinical interventions practitioners could give patients that are already suffering from age-related MCI. (Answer: Yes.) So clinicians care. But on a wider level, it's a wake-up call reminding us of the definite link between mind and body, and that you can't treat one without the other. The study's reference to mental health and outlook is also important to note. (A small, earlier study showed that cynics are more prone to dementia, but it honestly needs more examination before anyone can run the headline CYNICS: DOOMED.)
Related: 65.7 million Americans currently provide 80% of long-term care to elderly people, i.e. they're caregivers to relatives or friends, at the tune of $5000 a year in direct costs. As for the indirect costs, as Jody Gastfried reports:
On average, caregivers miss 6.6 work days a year. The lost productivity adds up to a big cost to companies — to the tune of $17 to $33 billion annually. And since getting rid of children or parents is not an option, exiting the workplace is often an overwhelmed caregiver’s last resort. While the FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) allows employed caregivers to take up to three-month leave from their jobs, most people don’t get paid during that time. And for those who walk off the job entirely due to caregiving responsibilities, total lost wages are estimated to be around $324,000 for women (including any Social Security they would have earned) and only slightly less for men.
In the U.S., family care is a critical component of the elderly health-care system, caregiving for adults on the autism spectrum, and for caring for adult children who came back from war wounded. Organizations like the AARP and the Caregiver Action Network are warning that we're heading toward a "caregiver cliff," where the demand for family-based caregiving will increase while U.S. employers remain comparatively inflexible. The AARP is currently lobbying to introduce state and federal legislation that protects caregivers at every stage of the journey. Because it is a journey and, as Carol Mithers writes so eloquently, "Suddenly, they're all gone."
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Magazines are introducing the idea of "super-subscribers," who pay a few hundred dollars a year, and in return, get a few annual gift boxes in the mail filled with offerings "curated" by the editors. Among the magazines offering a branded material experience in addition to the glossy publications: People magazine ($205 buys you 3 annual gift boxes plus a special subscriber section of the website) and O, The Oprah Magazine ($99 buys you coupons plus a box of beauty products picked by the magazine's editor). Up next? InStyle, Southern Living and Real Simple.
So what? These programs are successful in a few ways: They deliver targeted/interest customers to pertinent advertisers, and they reward loyalty among people who really love the brand.
Who cares? Aside from me, who has spent the last ten minutes crowing, "I called it!" to an indifferent spouse? And I did -- see vol 1, issue 34, where I wrote:
Subscription boxes may also be a way for publications to maintain or expand their presence in the modern media landscape. One advantage print magazines have over their digital brethren is a tactile quality: Why not reinforce that with an audience that's already primed for regular packages in the mail?
Anyway: People likely to care are people in the circulation or audience development departments for media entities. Training subscribers to associate consumer goods with magazine brands is win-win-win for everyone.
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Today in pop culture bracketology: You'll want to download the Morning News' brackets for their 2015 Tournament of Books, especially if you are attuned to recent fiction. The tournament starts Monday.
I'm also keen on watching the YA March Madness tourneys going on around the Internet, including one from the Naperville Public Library (it has its own downloadable PDF!), one from the Daniel Boone Regional Library in Missouri, one from the Park Ridge Public Library and one from the Franklin Park Public Library.
If you're inspired to set up your own March madness book tourney for young readers, you can find everything you need at March Book Madness.
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Did you miss an issue of So What, Who Cares? The archive is here. Are there typos? I apologize in advance.
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