More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I want to draw out explicitly what happens in the brain when we feel rejected or underappreciated. Our bodies react to insults, both psychological and physical, by releasing cortisol, the stress hormone. Cortisol is very useful if you need to invoke the fight-or-flight response—say, when you’re confronted by an attacking tiger—but it is not so useful when you’re dealing with longer-term psychological challenges such as loss of respect. The cortisol-induced stress reaction reduces immune-system function, libido, and digestion.
Fending off Alzheimer’s, he says, involves five key components: a diet rich in vegetables and good fats, oxygenating the blood through moderate exercise, brain training exercises, good sleep hygiene, and a regimen of supplements individually tailored to each person’s own needs, based on blood and genetic testing.
“The single most important factor determining the quality of mother-offspring interactions is the mental and physical health of the mother. This is equally true for rats, monkeys and humans.”
Throughout this book, I’ll be reinforcing the lifestyle concept that we can change our personalities and our responses to the environment, while continually adapting to the random and unpredictable things life throws at us. This concept has five parts: Curiosity, Openness, Associations, Conscientiousness, and Healthy practices, what I call the COACH principle.
The more important an individual difference is in human transactions, the more languages will have a term for it.
For now the best bet for increasing longevity and the event horizon for the detrimental effects of aging appears to be just eating less, and there are many ways to do this, although we don’t yet know which is going to be the most effective: reduced calories throughout the day; one fast day a week; two fast days a week; fasting every other day; fasting two weeks a year; no dinners; one month of juice fast every year; and so on. At first it can feel awful, but many people find they can build up to it and get used to it. Many
