Sunday, December 4, 2011

Your friends and their friends may influence your health

I recently came across an excellent TED (Technology, Education and Design) Lecture given by Harvard Social Epidemiologist Nicholas Christakis. His work over the past 15 years has shown very interesting relationships between who we know and the state of our health. His work is not about understanding how influenza or other contagious diseases get transmitted, but rather how social connections in general seem to influence the state of our health. For example, Christakis has found that if your friend's friend is obese (even someone you have never met), it increases your risk of also being obese by a rather surprising percentage. That percentage decreases as the social connections become more distant, but the findings are rather surprising and worthy of significant additional scrutiny. Christakis continues to unravel the explanations behind his interesting findings, but suggests that one clear implication is that we can all benefit each other by recognizing that attending to our own health and well-being can have an impact well beyond our lives and the lives of those closest to us. Be intrigued, see Christakis' lecture here.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Tips for Living a Full and Healthy Life

Wow. I like the recommendations in this link to highexistence.com. There is great advice about taking control of your life and beign focused on achieving the sense of self worth, self efficacy and purpose you need to create a life full of beneficial meaning. Sometimes, this requires the centering procedures of a life detox. Some great suggestions for detox are here:
Many of these suggestions fall neatly within the model of life balance that Kathleen Matuska and I published, and which was recently supported in a study titled: Occupational Patterns of Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Revisiting Matuska and Christiansen’s Model of Lifestyle Balance authored by Stein, Foran & Cermak and published in the Journal of Occupational Science, Vol 18 2011. My colleague Sandra Rodgers of Pacific University and I will be presentng some preliminary findings of our study of activity patterns and resiliency at the fall, 2011 meeting of the Society for the Study of Occupation: USA. We hope to see you there.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Care for the Caregivers

Alrighty then. Time to roll up the sleeves and get crackin'. It has been far too long since the last post, but I have not disappeared nor intentionally abandoned my duties. As so often happens, by attention has been devoted to some other things —a book, some speaking engagements and a new marriage for starters.

In my last, sad post, I commented that my next one might be about my reactions to what I have been reading in Krista Tippet's book: Einstein's God. (I've added that to my favorites list). That book was inspired by interviews she gave on her syndicated PBS radio talk show, Speaking of Faith. I find it interesting that the name of the show has now been changed to "On being." Anyway, more posts will follow on that journey, but for the moment, I have other fish to fry.

Lately, I've been thinking about a couple of things that come together at interesting touchpoints. My wife's mother has been diagnosed with dementia, and the threads of memory that serve to bind together experiences into sensible wholes are coming undone. It is terrifying to know one is losing one's abilities, but literally losing the ability to make sense of the world and engage it actively is beyond comprehension, yet it happens every day.

The task of caring compassionately for caregivers is something that often fails to appear on our lists of concerns. But their work is unbelievably important for so many reasons, not the least of which is helping to preserve the coherence in the world for their loved ones; while retaining some semblance of a life of their own. I'm looking for that just right project that will provide some assistance for this effort. If you have an idea, please share it with us here.

On Meaning and Well Being

I'm back. For the past three years (has it been that long?) I have been distracted by my long distance commuting job, writing book chapt...