Is Travel Addictive?

For me, travel is addictive. I really like getting out of my comfort zone when I'm traveling and in a different culture, language, and place. I just got back from a month in Vietnam and Cambodia and I'm ready to take off again in a totally different direction. I think it is a good addiction. My father was a Navy guy who had traveled all over the world and loved learning about the cultures and geography of the rest of the world. I treasured the slides from Turkey, the linens from Ireland, the stories from Russia, the glassware from Italy (and the stories), and the silk slippers from North Africa. I was convinced my father had been everywhere. And indeed, he had been to most places in the world except for the Pacific. Although when I moved to the Bay Area in California, he told me about his trip around South America from New York to the Port of Oakland! So maybe I came by this urge to travel naturally. My younger siblings are not so interested, I've noticed. I can't get enough.

So starting from much earlier than my Peace Corps days in North Africa, I've enjoyed learning about other cultures,their history, art, commerce, food, language,writers, and religion. I've been fascinated about the nuance of other ways of looking at the world. Point of view can be influenced by so many things and it's so interesting to parse through those "things."

Here's my theory: travel (the way I do it) is both physical and intellectual. I'm not a "tour" person because I really like to have some idea about how real people live so I stay in very low-cost hotels, travel by bus and train when I can so I can see more and interact more with real people, and eat street food or choose small, local restaurants whenever possible. I like to talk to folks in other countries to find out what they're thinking about and how they see the world. I walk everywhere, miles and miles a day when I'm traveling.

I think the combination of intense learning and intense physical activity is additive. It just feels good. Our brains and bodies know it's good for us. That makes us want more! I'd love to see some research on this topic! This is the best way I know to create new neuronal pathways and synapses as a brain fitness prevention tactic! I forgot to add: it's fun! (And maybe that's the most important thing about travel.)

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Even though I had read Michael Pollan's lead-up article to this book in the New Yorker and his other books, I found this one a page turner--fun to read and truly informative.

Already oft-quoted, the first words of the book summarize his extensive research and beliefs about food: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." In other words, don't eat anything that has not traditionally been called food (recognizable by our grandmothers as food), which cuts out most processed concoctions in fast-food chains and much on grocery store shelves.

Eat plants because we need the complex interactions of the nutrients they contain. Pollan points out that there's no way to figure out which traces of what affect the whole nutritional value of what we need to eat. Singling out one vitamin, for example, and taking supplements of it is far, far inferior and may be quite deleterious to our health because we miss out on all the other interactions among minterals and vitamins in our food that we need to be healthy. Bottom-line: we just don't know enough yet so don't mess with the foods that have kept people healthy for centuries. I recognize this argument as one put forth by the scientists involved in the Washington Heights-Inwood-Columbia Aging project. After analyzing the diets of the participants, they concluded that those who had consumed a "Mediterranean Diet" (another way of saying "eat plants") had a dramatically lower risk of Alzheimer's. They hypothesized that one reason was because of the complex interactions of the many, many trace nutrients in plants

We've all been through the butter-margarine as engineered butter debate from the 50s on. And we finally now know that margarine is terrible for us, butter not so much (if we use it with a very light hand). There are many other examples of this kind of food engineering that moves beyond not making sense into really bad stuff.

I never really understood the arguments against genetically modified food until I read this book. I now realize that going for the most calories per acre cuts out the zillion varieties of fruits and vegetables that we have enjoyed--and all the complex mixture of nutients in that vast array. I now shop frequently at my local Farmers' Market and I have enjoyed the aesthetics and the taste of more variety. For example, have you seen those red and green cauliflowers sitting beside the omnipresent white ones? The green ones look like space helmets or part of an animation project. I'm discovering new tastes and new recipes and enjoying myself immensely in the process.

The "not too much" food is especially relevant to Americans who have a huge love of quantity. It's high time we copied the French on this one: quality trumps quantity every time.

I hope this book stays on the bestseller list forever. We all need to be aware of what we've done to our food supply and take steps to make meaningful and lasting changes.

Online Brain Exercises

On Tuesday, the Washington Post published an article, "Pumping Neurons," about online brain gyms. We were happy to see that Happy Neuron was one of the sites reviewed and glad to supply all of the pictures of games used in the article. Stacey Weiner, the author, actually went to three different sites and tried them out. She called the broad spectrum of Happy Neuron games a "high-brow Funland" and noted that its workouts were developed by neuroscientists and physicians, who are experts in the field of aging and the prevention of Alzheimer's and dementia. She also noted that the HappyNeuron.com site explains the cognitive skills involved in each game and the real-world applications and connections.

Our team is still working hard on the Happy Neuron site. We want to match the huge amount of scientific research on Alzheimer's prevention with games and exercises that people will actually enjoy playing. We believe that marrying science, achievement, challenge, and fun is the only way that most folks will be motivated to return again and again and again to meet new challenges, be constantly aware of what is involved in keeping our brains and bodies fit, and expand those challenges to everyday activities.

Thanks to Mind Hacks for writing about the article. I commented there on the large number of studies (with many peer-reviewed scientific articles published on them) that contribute to our knowledge about specific activities that can help us keep our brains healthy and fit. Games are high on the list although many other activities can be helpful, too (such as dancing, for example).