Wrinkles away

The New York Times reports:

A recent review in The Archives of Dermatology concludes that three anti-aging treatments are proven clinically effective: the topical application of retinol; carbon dioxide laser resurfacing; and injection of hyaluronic acid, a moisture-retaining acid that occurs naturally in the skin. Each depends on the same mechanism, the interaction of skin cells called fibroblasts with the collagen they produce.

Now you know.

Looking to illustrate this post, I came across this photo of "Ga-Be-Nah-Gewn-Wonce, also known as John Smith, a Chippewa Indian reputed to be 137 years old." Smith's Indian name means "wrinkled meat." His life story reminds us that after a certain age, wrinkles will not matter to you, and are no measure of a person's strength and vitality. At the age of 130 Smith was run over by a train and "suffered no ill effects" after a three week hospital stay. Check out the John Smith website.

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The secret is to overwrite, not change bad habits

. . . . don't bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they're there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.

NYTimes

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To fight addiction, emphasize looks not health

That's what the state of Oregon found, reports The Economist:

The history of drug education programmes in America is largely dismal. Prodded by the federal government, teachers stress the dangers of marijuana, which are occasionally (and implausibly) compared to those of cocaine and heroin. Teenagers are told that crack cocaine is highly addictive, which sounds to some like a challenge. When it comes to methamphetamine, though, out come pictures of "meth mouth"—the rotten teeth caused by heavy use. This message gets teenagers. When Safe Streets, a community group, asked pupils to design their own anti-drug posters, many emphasised cosmetic hazards over chemical ones.

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Willpower management

A recent NY Times article suggests we need to manage our willpower:

The brain's store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task.

In the short term, you should spend your limited willpower budget wisely. For example, if you do not want to drink too much at a party, then on the way to the festivities, you should not deplete your willpower by window shopping for items you cannot afford. Taking an alternative route to avoid passing the store would be a better strategy.

That's an observation about the short term. But long-term, exercising will power in anything causes it to strengthen in regards to anything:

Whatever the explanation, consistently doing any activity that requires self-control seems to increase willpower — and the ability to resist impulses and delay gratification is highly associated with success in life.

Another willpower resource: How to boost your willpower, NY Times

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Quote of the day

Do not disturb thyself by thinking of the whole of thy life. Let not thy thoughts at once embrace all the various troubles which thou mayest expect to befall thee: but on every occasion ask thyself, What is there in this which is intolerable and past bearing? For thou wilt be ashamed to confess. In the next place remember that neither the future nor the past pains thee, but only the present. But this is reduced to a very little, if thou only circumscribest it, and chidest thy mind, if it is unable to hold out against even this.

- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VIII

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Powers of the subconscious mind

This NY Times article describes how recent research into the power of the subconscious mind suggests that our behavior can be strongly influenced by the most seemly innocuous of cues:

In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee.

The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand with the cup.

That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.

Findings like this one, as improbable as they seem, have poured forth in psychological research over the last few years. New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.

Psychologists say that “priming” people in this way is not some form of hypnotism, or even subliminal seduction; rather, it’s a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells and sounds can selectively activate goals or motives that people already have.

These are important findings. The story doesn't drive home this point, but I think it illustrates just how vulnerable the public is to manipulation by those who would harness subtle cues to make people behave in a certain way. Those best positioned -- equipped with the budgets and incentives -- to make the most of this kind of research, of course, are marketers and advertisers and the scientists they employee. But these people do not have our best interests at heart. In fact, they would use this knowledge to further exploit our inherent vulnerabilities. Sadly, the best psychology research being conducted today amounts to putting yet more knowledge and power into the hands of those most interested in manipulating our behavior: corporations and political consultants.

Yet it's the citizens, through their tax dollars which support the universities, who foot the bill for the research. Something is very wrong with this picture.

How about we turn the equation around? Isn't it time we fought back? How about using knowedge now being used to enslave us, to set us free? That's the idea behind Makzan philosophy, presented in my book (upcoming).

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