Authors: John Robbins
17. M. C. Morris et al., “Dietary fats and the risk of incident Alzheimer’s disease,”
Archives of Neurology
2003, 60(2):194–200; S. Kalmijn et al., “Polyunsatu-rated fatty acids, antioxidants, and cognitive function in older men,”
American Journal of Epidemiology
1997, 145(1):33–41; J. A. Luchsinger et al., “Caloric intake and the risk of Alzheimer’s disease,”
Archives of Neurology
2002, 59(8):1258–63. M. J. Engelhart et al., “Diet and risk of dementia: does fat matter? The Rotterdam Study,”
Neurology
2002, 59(12):1915–21.
18. E. Larson, “Exercise Associated with Reduced Risk of Dementia in Older Adults,”
Annals of Internal Medicine
2006, 144:73–81.
19. W. B. Grant, “Dietary links to Alzheimer’s disease: 1999 Update,”
Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease
1999; (1):197–201, and “Incidence of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in Nigeria and the United States,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
2001, 285:2448.
20. M. C. Morris et al., “Dietary niacin and the risk of incident Alzheimer’s disease and of cognitive decline,”
Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry
2004, 75(8):1093–99.
21. M. C. Morris et al., “Consumption of fish and omega-3 fatty acids and risk of incident of Alzheimer’s disease,”
Archives of Neurology
2003, 60:940–46.
1. Thomas T. Perls and Margery Hutter Silver,
Living to 100: Lessons in Living to Your Maximum Potential at Any Age
(Basic Books, 1999), pp. 36–46.
2. Ibid. pp. 45–46.
3. John W. Rowe and Robert L. Kahn,
Successful Aging
(Dell, 1998), pp. 132–34, 138–39, 166, 244–45.
4. Anne Lamott,
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
(Riverhead Books, 2005), pp. 171–76.
1. Y. F. Schnellow, “Is Hunzan Health a Myth?” in G. Rinehart, ed.,
Great Adventures in Medicine
(Healing Books, 1972), pp. 36–69.
2. Rachel Naomi Remen,
Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal
(Riverhead Books, 1996), p. 53.
3. Dean Ornish,
Love and Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy
(Harper Collins, 1998), p. 3.
4. Michael Lerner,
Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Approaches to Cancer
(MIT Press, 1994), pp. 154–58.
5. D. Spiegel et al., “Effect of psychosocial treatment on survival of patients with metastatic breast cancer,”
The Lancet
1989, ii:888–91. See also David Spiegel,
Living Beyond Limits: New Hope and Help for Facing Life-Threatening Illness
(Times Books, 1993).
6. Janny Scott, “Study Says Cancer Survival Rates Rise with Group Therapy,”
Los Angeles Times
May 11, 1998.
7. Ibid.
8. F. I. Fawzy et al., “Malignant melanoma: Effects of an early structured psychiatric intervention, coping, and affective state of recurrence and survival six years later,”
Archives of General Psychiatry
1993, 50:681–89.
9. Dan Millman,
Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior
(H. J. Kramer, 1991), p. 89.
10. Larry Scherwitz et al., “Type A Behavior, Self-Involvement, and Coronary Atherosclerosis,”
Psychosomatic Medicine
1983, (45):47–57.
11. J. H. Medalie and U. Goldbourt, “Angina pectoris among 10,000 men. II. Psychosocial and other risk factors as evidenced by a multivariate analysis of a five-year incidence study,”
American Journal of Medicine
1976, 60(6):910–21.
12. J. H. Medalie et al., “The importance of biopsychosocial factors in the development of duodenal ulcer in a cohort of middle-aged men,”
American Journal of Medicine
1992, 136(10):1280–87.
13. The Swedish Study: Annika Rosengren et al., “Stressful Life Events, Social Support, and Mortality in Men Born in 1933,”
British Medical Journal
Oct. 19, 1993.
14. This story by Elizabeth Songster appeared in Jack Canfield et al.,
Chicken Soup for the Couple’s Soul
(Health Communications, 1999), pp. 187–89.
1. A great number of studies have found that married people live longer and have lower mortality for almost every major cause of death than those who are single, divorced, separated, or widowed. Numerous studies have also found that married people have a lower incidence of disease, a better chance of survival after diagnosis, and a quicker recovery. The difference is particularly pronounced for men. See C. F. Ortmeyer, “Variations in mortality, morbidity, and health care by marital status,” in L. L. Erhardt and J. E. Beln, eds.,
Mortality and Morbidity in the United States
(Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 159–84. In their 2000 book,
The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier and Better Off Financially
(Doubleday), Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher cite studies showing that unmarried men are more likely to engage in unhealthful behaviors including excessive drinking, smoking, drug abuse, poor nutritional habits, and lack of exercise. In his classic 1979 book,
Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness
(Basic Books), James Lynch cites studies finding that single white males are seven times more likely to develop cirrhosis of the liver and ten times more likely to get tuberculosis than married men.
2. Harold Morowitz, “Hiding in the Hammond Report,”
Hospital Practice
August 1975, pp. 35–39.
3. L. F. Berkman and S. L. Syme, “Social networks, host resistance, and mortality: A nine-year follow-up study of Alameda County residents,”
American Journal of Epidemiology
1979, 109:186–204.
4. Kristina Orth-Gomer and J. V. Johnson, “Social network interaction and mortality: A six year follow-up study of a random sample of the Swedish population,”
Journal of Chronic Diseases
1987, 40(10):949–57.
5. J. S. House, K. R. Landis, and D. Umberson, “Social relationships and health,”
Science
1988, 241:540–45.
6. Larry Dossey, “The Healing Power of Pets: A Look at Animal-Assisted Therapy,”
Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine
July 1997, p. 816.
7. E. Friedmann et al., “Animal companions and one-year survival of patients discharged from a coronary care unit,”
Public Health Reports
1980, 95:307–12. See also A. H. Katcher et al., “Looking, talking and blood pressure: The physiological consequences of interaction with the living environment,” in
New Perspectives on Our Lives with Companion Animals
, edited by A. Katcher and A. Beck (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983).
8. E. Friedmann and S. A. Thomas, “Pet ownership, social support, and one-year survival after acute myocardial infarction in the Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial (CAST),”
American Journal of Cardiology
1995, 76:1213–17.
9. W. Ruberman et al., “Psychosocial influences on mortality after myocardial infarction,”
New England Journal of Medicine
1984, 311(9):552–59.
10. Rachel Naomi Remen,
Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal
(Riverhead Books, 1996), pp. 226–28.
11. Kristina Orth-Gomer et al., “Marital Stress Worsens Prognosis in Women with
Coronary Heart Disease,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
2000, 284:3008–14.
12. Kathleen Doheny, “Women Who Bite Their Tongues Risk Their Lives: Avoiding conflict with husbands boosts the likelihood of death, a new study finds,”
HealthDay
Feb. 17, 2005.
13. Andrew Weil,
Spontaneous Healing: How to Discover and Enhance Your Body’s Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), pp. 98–99.
14. James J. Lynch,
A Cry Unheard: New Insights into the Medical Consequences of Loneliness
(Bancroft Press, 2000).
15. L. G. Russek and G. E. Schwartz, “Narrative descriptions of parental love and caring predict health status in midlife: A 35-year follow-up of the Harvard Mastery of Stress study,”
Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine
1996, 2:55–62; L. G. Russek and G. E. Schwartz, “Perceptions of parental caring predict health status in midlife: A 35-year follow-up of the Harvard Mastery of Stress study,”
Psychosomatic Medicine
1997, 59(2):144–49; Daniel H. Funkenstein,
Mastery of Stress
(Harvard University Press, 1957).
16. C. B. Thomas and K. Duszynski, “Closeness to parents and the family constellation in a prospective study of five disease states: suicide, mental illness, malignant tumor, hypertension, and coronary heart disease,”
Johns Hopkins Medical Journal
1974, 134:251.
1. James W. Prescott, “Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Nov. 1975, pp. 10–20. See also James W. Prescott et al., “Early Somatosensory Deprivation as an Ontogenetic Process in Abnormal Development of the Brain and Behavior,” in eds., I. E. Goldsmith and J. Moor-Jankowski,
Medical Primatology
(Karger, 1971), pp. 357–75, and Howard Bloom,
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History
(Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995), p. 239. Bloom points out that a classic example of this principle is Margaret Mead’s contrast between the Arapesh and the Mundugamor of New Guinea. See Margaret Mead,
Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World
(Dell, 1968), pp. 76–77, 86–88, 117, 134–35.
2. Abbie Blair’s story about Freddie’s adoption is from the Dec. 1964
Reader’s Digest
and was reprinted in
Stories for the Heart
, compiled by Alice Gray (Portland: Multnomah Press, 1996 edition), pp. 188–92.
3. James J. Lynch,
A Cry Unheard: New Insights into the Medical Consequences of Loneliness
(Bancroft Press, 2000), p. 2.
4. “Townspeople too nice for company,”
Hannibal Courier-Post
March 13, 1999.
5. James J. Lynch, op. cit., p. 10.
6. Ibid., p. 11.
7. Elaine Sciolino, “France Battles a Problem that Grows and Grows: Fat,”
New York Times
Jan. 25, 2006.
8. James J. Lynch, op. cit., p. 10.
9. S. M. Jourard, “An exploratory study of body-accessibility,”
British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
1966, 84(1–4):205–17.
10. When last heard from, the twins, Kyrie and Brielle Jackson, were healthy
preschoolers. A photo of their healing embrace, taken by Chris Christo of the
Worcester Telegram and Gazette
, has become world famous. Widely circulated on the Internet, it has also been featured in
Life
magazine and
Reader’s Digest.
11. Sula Benet,
How to Live to Be 100: The Lifestyle of the People of the Caucasus
(New York: Dial Press, 1976), p. 161.
1. Derrick Jensen,
A Language Older Than Words
(Chelsea Green Publishing, 2000), pp. 211–13.
2. Ruth Benedict, “Patterns of the Good Culture,”
American Anthropologist
1970, Vol. 72.
3. Stephen Bezruchka, “Social hierarchy and the health Olympics,”
Canadian Medical Association Journal
June 12, 2001. See also Ichiro Kawachi and Bruce P. Kennedy,
Health of Nations: Why Inequality Is Harmful to Your Health
(New Press, 2002), and Population Health Forum, “Advocating for action toward a healthier society.”
4. Stephen Bezruchka, “Poverty is bad for the health of Americans,” keynote address, Statewide Poverty Action Network Action Summit, Dec. 6, 2003, Seattle, Washington. See also Stephen Bezruchka, “Sick of It All: Economic equality—good for what ails you,”
Real Change News
, Seattle, Oct. 15, 2000.
5. Many commentators have noted that the relative wealth equality in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s did not occur by accident. It was created by what has been called the “Great Compression” of incomes that took place during World War II, and then, as Paul Krugman wrote in
The New York Times
, “sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation.” Krugman notes, however, “Since the 1970s, all of these sustaining forces have lost their power. Since 1980, in particular, U.S. government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families—and under the current [George W. Bush] administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich to bankruptcy ‘reform’ that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron era.” Paul Krugman, “Losing Our Country,”
New York Times
June 10, 2005.
6. Jeff Gates,
Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street from Wall Street
(Perseus Publishing, 2000), pp. 21–22.
7. In 2004, Scott Lee, Jr., Wal-Mart’s chief executive, was paid $17.5 million. Every two weeks he was paid about as much as his average employee would earn in a lifetime. See Paul Krugman, “Always Low Wages, Always,”
New York Times
May 13, 2005.
8. Chuck Collins et al., ed.,
The Wealth Inequality Reader
(Dollars & Sense Economic Affairs Bureau, 2005), p. 6. The United States entered the new millennium with the most unequal distribution of wealth since the eve of the Great Depression. For every additional dollar earned by those in the the bottom 90 percent of the population between 1950 and 1970, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162. That gap has since skyrocketed: For every additional dollar earned by each taxpayer in the bottom 90 percent between 1990 and 2002, each taxpayer in the top bracket brought in an extra $18,000. Meanwhile, from 1980 to 2002, the share of total income earned by the top 0.1 percent
of earners more than doubled, while the share of the bottom 90 percent declined. David Cay Johnston, “Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind,”
New York Times
June 5, 2005. In an accompanying editorial,
The New York Times
wrote: “It is hard to imagine anyone supporting the notion of taking money from programs like Medicaid and college-tuition assistance, increasing the tax burden of the vast majority of working Americans, sending the country into crushing debt—and giving the proceeds to people who are so fantastically rich that they don’t know what to do with the money they already have. Yet that is just what is happening under the Bush administration. Forget the middle class and the upper-middle class. Even the merely wealthy are being left behind in the dust by the small slice of super-rich Americans.” “The Bush Economy,” editorial,
New York Times
June 7, 2005. See also Bob Herbert, “The Mobility Myth,”
New York Times
June 6, 2005.