CONTENTS
🟢 On friendship - with a little help from Aristotle
🟢 Wealth, wellness and longevity - “inconvenient truths”
🟢 Sustainability - yes we can! (Video)
🟢 “Zombie trials” - fake medical research
🟢 Second helpings - some good reading from the web
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LEAD ARTICLE
The need for friendship probably arose in our hunter-gatherer days, when friends increased the survival potential of the group as a whole. Times have changed since then, but the need and role of friendship remain a vital part of a good life.
Attrition is inevitable. Friendship is not similar to family ties; even parents will not be able to give the same level of emotional and mental support that friends can. Yet, sustaining friendships often poses more hurdles to intimacy than other relationships. As we age and move towards midlife and beyond, friends tend to wither by the wayside.
Fun facts about friendship.
“Lifetime track” is a term zoologists use to describe the entire sum of an animal’s movements from birth to death. Research shows that people move around 6 times on average over a span of 20 years. One writer found that his great-grandfather’s entire life took place “in a square of only 40 kilometers." His grandfather’s lifetime track was about 400 square kilometers; his father’s was about 4000 square kilometers, and his own extended all over the world for a 40,000-kilometer square.“ Thus, in four generations, the range of linear travel has increased by a factor of 1000. When people move, their families may come with them, but they leave their friends behind.
Even though extended, remote social networks are more accessible than ever for anyone with an internet connection, proximity still makes a difference. Friends who live within a mile of each other report greater contentment with life.
How many friends can you have? Thus spoke Dunbar. First postulated in 1992, "Dunbar's number" is the hard limit of the number of solid social ties a person may sustain. Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, was the originator of this number, which is rounded from 148 to 150. Hunter-gatherer groups usually numbered 150. This limit has held true throughout history in a broad range of situations. The number has become widely accepted in both professional and popular culture. It's also been vehemently contested.
He also showed that this number breaks down into a fairly consistent rule of thirds. The first third—50—is the number of close friends most of us have—people you might invite for a large dinner or party. A third of that—15—are the ones you can count on for sympathy and whom you can confide in for most things. Finally, the last third—5—are the ones you need when it gets really down and dirty. Expanding outwards: 500 is the limit for acquaintances, and 1500 is the absolute top for those whom you can put a name to a face. While the constituents of each fraction may vary—people falling in and out with each other—the number remains constant.
The average number of friends each person has on Facebook is … yes, 150.
Leave me out. Research published in the British Journal of Psychology by evolutionary psychologists Satoshi Kanazawa and Norman Li of Singapore Management University digs into the subject of what makes a life well-lived. The more social interactions with close friends a person has, the greater their self-reported happiness. But there was one big exception. For more intelligent people, these correlations were diminished or even reversed—"more intelligent individuals were actually less satisfied with life if they socialised with their friends more frequently." When smart people spend more time with their friends, it makes them less happy. Someone once said that the ideal number for an enjoyable evening was two: "me and a damned good wine waiter."
MORE HERE
▶️ Three lessons from Aristotle on friendship. Full article
🔽 “Quick bite” - click on the excerpt below to view my notes from this post
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💬 “Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .” ― C.S. Lewis, who also said:
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
BITTER PILLS
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." This aphorism, though hackneyed and well-worn, continues to be true. Despite the wonders that modern medicine has given us, there is strong evidence in support of preventive strategies being more cost-effective than interventions and treatments.
"Unhonoured, unmourned and unsung." Preventive medicine doesn't have the glamour and media worthiness of interventions. Reports of heart and brain surgery are front-page news, but simple strategies for preventing future disease are relegated to some unseen corner. Prevention, essentially a chronicle of what didn't occur, has no glamour or appeal. Young medical graduates very rarely seek careers in public health and preventive medicine.
More bang for the buck. Much of the achievements of modern healthcare come from simple, low-cost interventions. Vaccines are one great example. Iodized salt is another. Exercise, avoiding sitting, giving up alcohol, banning tobacco usage in public places - the list is long but seldom "click-worthy".
Patient plodders prevail. Regardless, effective prevention comes from painstaking, detailed analysis of a host of factors underlying diseases and disorders. Associations are teased out and converted into strategies that can be applied in day-to-day practice.
Spotting them early. The cost of treatment for chronic conditions is large and unaffordable in many societies. Identification of markers at an early stage can hopefully allow the use of interventions that can stop or mitigate these conditions early along the natural history.
Surprise, surprise! Many of these findings are unanticipated; some even run counter to common sense and intuition. Here's a large study that showed clearly that wealth is a strong factor in longevity: rich people can buy good health.
MORE HERE
▶️ How blood markers and wealth predict future health problems. Full article
Original article http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100929
🔽 “Quick bite” - click on the excerpt below to view my notes from this post
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💬 “So long as there are nobles and commoners, the wealthy and the poor, those with power will be heard, and those without ignored. That's the world.” ― Tamora Pierce
💬 “In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. ... So that wealthy people in much of the world are insulated from the consequences of their actions."― Jared Diamond
CLIMATE CHANGE
For a change, here’s a bright, positive take on the urgent need for stopping climate change and promoting sustainability.
Click here to view the video on TED.
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💬 “The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.” ― David W. Orr
FAKE NEWS
We trust doctors; we take it as an article of faith that they will do what is best for us. It’s a fiduciary responsibility that comes with the Hippocratic oath. "Evidence-Based Medicine” is the compass with which they should navigate the seas of medical practice.
Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). Simply put, by no less an authority than Dr. David Sackett, the acknowledged father of EBM, it “… is the integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values.”
Best research evidence. Evidence is gathered from journals and research publications. Good journals have well-established procedures for making sure that the quality of published research is of a high standard. Articles are put through a “peer review"—evaluation by professionals who have knowledge and expertise in the domain of the study. Over time, a short list of journals has evolved that are known for their high quality. These are the "go-to" resources for best value.
Clinical expertise. Good doctors constantly monitor publications that are in their sphere of interest. Studies fall into one of three broad groups: completely new information, extensions or modifications of known information, and refutation of existing information. Articles are examined for utility and applicability in daily practice, weighed against previous experience, and if it passes muster, added to their practice.
Patient values: Every patient is unique in terms of values, culture, religion, and other personal beliefs. These have to be respected while making recommendations, regardless of the strength of the evidence.
Dodgy data & zombie trials. There is one critical element that goes unverified: the honesty and integrity of the researchers carrying out studies and trials. It’s taken as given. Apparently, this trust may be misplaced more often than we like to think. John Carlisle, an experienced medical professional who is also a journal editor, referred to these studies as "zombie" trials. They gave the appearance of genuine research; however, further investigation discovered that they were essentially empty shells that were masquerading as trustworthy material.
MORE HERE
▶️ Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed? Full article
🔽 “Quick bite” - click on the excerpt below to view my notes from this post
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💬 “I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
SECOND HELPINGS
Good reading from all over
'The truth still matters': An interview with Michael Shermer
Handkerchief or tissue? Which one's better for our health and the planet?