Stephan: Dementia is a growing problem in the United States; I have two friends who have become lost in dementia. I suggest you take this article seriously.
People between the ages of 40 and 79 who took 9,826 steps per day were 50% less likely to develop dementia within seven years, the study found. Furthermore, people who walked with “purpose” – at a pace over 40 steps a minute – were able to cut their risk of dementia by 57% with just 6,315 steps a day.
“It is a brisk walking activity, like a power walk,” said study coauthor Borja del Pozo Cruz, an adjunct associate professor at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark, and senior researcher in health sciences for the University of Cadiz in Spain.
Even people who walked approximately 3,800 steps a day at any speed cut their risk of dementia by 25%, the study found.
“That would be enough, at first, for sedentary individuals,” said del Pozo Cruz in an email.
“In fact, it is a message that doctors could use to motivate very sedentary older adults – 4k steps is very doable by many, even those that are less fit or do not feel very motivated,” he added. “Perhaps, more […]
Stephan: As I write this I am watching a PBS special, The U.S. and the Holocaust, and I am both horrified by the failure of the U.S., and the rampant anti-semitism, and struck by how closely the MAGAt Republicans are following the Nazis playbook. I don't think most of us fully comprehend just how evil this party has become, and what they are trying to do to our country.
Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election failed, partly because of the refusal of many Republican officials to participate. Credit: Saul Martinez/NYT
The United States has experienced deep political turmoil several times before over the past century. The Great Depression caused Americans to doubt the country’s economic system. World War II and the Cold War presented threats from global totalitarian movements. The 1960s and ’70s were marred by assassinations, riots, a losing war and a disgraced president.
These earlier periods were each more alarming in some ways than anything that has happened in the United States recently. Yet during each of those previous times of tumult, the basic dynamics of American democracy held firm. Candidates who won the most votes were able to take power and attempt to address the country’s problems.
The current period is different. As a result, the United States today finds itself in a situation with little historical precedent. American democracy is facing two distinct threats, which together represent the most serious challenge to the country’s governing ideals in decades.
Stephan: The amygdala is an almond-shaped portion of the brain located in the anterior portion of the temporal lobe. It makes up just 0.3% of the volume of the human brain. Yet, it has been implicated in a wide range of neuropsychiatric disorders. About 27% of Americans have overactive right amygdala's, which controls fear or flight and when stimulated impedes rational thought, and correlates strongly with conservative politics and religiosity. This is the defining neurophysiology of MAGAts, and why they are so easily manipulated by people like criminal Trump, and so easily believe conspiracy fantasies that speak to and provoke their fears.
Conspiracy theorists like QAnon believers can become so detached from reality that they can come to view their own family members as participants in the plot. Credit: Getty
For decades, people have thought of conspiracy theories as harmless amusements. But the past six years have demonstrated their extraordinary toxicity: They are incredibly dangerous to democracy, primarily because they destroy the shared reality necessary for it to function. By untethering people from reality, conspiracy theories poison relationships on every level, from national to local to the family itself.
As a recent incident in Michigan demonstrates, their ability to tear families apart is especially devastating. In the town of Walled Lake, a 53-year-old man named Igor Lanis became so wrapped up in QAnon and other Trumpist conspiracy theories—particularly the former president’s claims to have won the 2020 election—that he finally erupted at his family because they failed to fall down the rabbit holes with him, went on a rampage with a handgun and a shotgun, and gunned them down before being shot by police on his front lawn.
Stephan: One of the things that has to change as our culture awakens are the unintended consequences of our technologies. This is an example of what I mean.
Credit: De Visu / stock.adobe.com
ROME, ITALY — Smartphones and tablets are causing early puberty in children, according to new research. Researchers say the devices emit blue light which reduces melatonin, a hormone that slows sexual maturity.
The scientists add that kids should not use digital devices before bed. Humans secrete the chemical at night, in response to darkness.
“Although not conclusive, we would advise that the use of blue light emitting devices should be minimized in pre-pubertal children, especially in the evening when exposure may have the most hormone-altering effects,” says lead author Dr. Aylin Kilinç Uğurlu from Ankara City Hospital in a media release.
The study reports that blue light-emitting devices also fuel reproductive hormones and trigger physical changes in ovaries. Worryingly, they may even trigger infertility. “In the last 10 years, blue light (BL) sources such as tablets and phones has increased in every age group,” the researchers write in their study. “Especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, screen exposure has also increased in childhood.”
Stephan: For reasons I still do not fully understand Virginians elected a MAGAt for governor, and this is the result. The MAGAt sexual obsessions are distorting our entire culture, making LGBTQ folk's lives miserable. The whole thing is so very similar to the Nazis' sexual obsessions; it is as if the leaders of MAGAt world have read the Nazis' literature, and we know leaders like criminal Trump have.
The administration of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is working to adopt new restrictions for transgender students in the Virginia public school system. Credit: Steve Helber / AP
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration has proposed new policies for the state’s schools regarding how they treat transgender students, including restricting which bathrooms they can use and which pronouns they may go by.
The Virginia Department of Education released its 2022 Model Policies online Friday, effectively rolling back the work of Youngkin’s predecessor, Democrat Ralph Northam. The new rules will effected the more than 1 million children enrolled in the state’s public school system.
The revamped rules explicitly state that students must only use bathrooms and locker rooms associated with the sex assigned to them at birth. If a student wants to participate in a sport or other extracurricular activities, they must, again, only participate in teams that align with the sex assigned at birth.
Further, the legal name and sex of a student can’t be changed “even upon written instruction of a parent or eligible student” without an official legal document […]
