Dan Fields, freelance health writer and former editor in chief of Dr. Andrew Weil’s Self-Healing newsletter, recently sent me a link to his piece for a cool new online publication called “The Good Men Project Magazine.” I was especially intrigued by his exploration of midlife suicide and why the rate is highest among any age group. You can get to his fascinating piece by following this link. I have excerpted a few paragraphs below:

In 2007 (the latest year for which statistics are available), people aged forty-five to fifty-four had the highest suicide rate of any age group: 17.7 per 100,000. (The national average was 11.5 per 100,000.) And the rate for fifty-five to sixty-four-year-olds showed the greatest increase from the previous year.

Researchers don’t yet know why midlifers are becoming more vulnerable to suicide, especially since studies have found that middle age is generally the happiest time of life for most Americans. As a forty-five-year-old white guy, I was curious to know what makes my demographic group so self-destructive. After talking with experts, here’s what I learned…

“I donated my brain, so when the time comes, they can make a study of it. The fact that I have not had any of this Alzheimer’s disease, or even an inclination so far is something they would naturally want to study.”
– Sister M. Celine Koktan, 97 years old in March 2009

“We’ve received over 500 brains.”
– Dr. Karen Santa Cruz, neuropathologist.

Can you imagine being asked to be part of a study where the researcher asks if you not only would be willing to take part, but would mind terribly donating your brain to be dissected after you’re gone?

That is exactly what was asked of the nuns participating. Of the 678 sisters in the original study about four dozen are still living. But researchers already have begun analyzing the more than 500 brains saved to dissect and study.

The nun study is one of the most dynamic and powerful studies on the impact of positive emotions and thoughts in the history of positive psychology. Researchers Danner, Snowdon, and Friesen (2001) from the University of Kentucky sampled the nuns, perfect subjects for a study because of the profound similarities around their physical health. They have similar, regularized diets, live together in similar surroundings, do not have children, and do not smoke or drink to excess. In other words, their physical backgrounds and conditions are about as controlled for as any group of human beings might be.

Improving your memory is easier than it sounds. Most of think of our memory as something static and unchanging. But it’s not — you can improve your memory just as you can improve your math or foreign language skills, simply by practicing a few tried and true memory building exercises.

There are two kinds of memory — short-term and long-term. Short-term memory is the kind of memory our brain uses to store small pieces of information needed right away, like someone’s name when you meet for the first time. Research has demonstrated that short-term memory’s capacity is about seven pieces of information. After that, something has to go.

Long-term memory is for things you don’t need to remember this instant. When you study for a test or exam, that’s long-term memory at work. A memorably moment in your life, events with family or friends, and other similar kinds of situations also get stored in long-term memory.

So how do you go about improving your memory? Read on to find out.

Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Jody Smith, creator of the website www.ncubator.ca, who spent 15 years losing the battle against Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Three years ago, she found treatment that worked for her and is making a comeback. In the process, she’s helping a lot of people. (You can check out her blog, “ncubator” by clicking here.)

You tried many treatments and finally you got there. What worked?

Jody: My naturopath believed that my liver needed relief from its toxic load, and my immune system needed building up.

She put me on a tincture with natural antivirals and adaptogens and vitamins in it, and put me on omega3 oil.

I’d gone low carb some years before which had made quite a difference.

I did dry skin brushing with a loofah, to help lymph move better (removing toxins) and sinus lavage (water up the nose to cleanse sinuses) and juicing (for nutrients to absorb better in a weakened gastrointestinal tract).

Vitamin D helped with orthostatic intolerance and vertigo in noticeable ways. Most of us are deficient of Vitamin D.

Awhile back my friend Michelle said to the congregation at her husband’s funeral service: “He never spoke an unkind word to me.”

Another girlfriend and I looked at each other, jaws dropped. And then she whispered, “They didn’t have kids.” We nodded and felt better about ourselves.

But a growing body of research confirms our suspicions. Says Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times: “One of the more uncomfortable findings of the scientific study of marriage is the negative effect children can have on previously happy relationships. Despite the popular notion that children bring couples closer, several studies have shown that marital satisfaction and happiness typically plummet with the arrival of the first baby.”

Why the shift?

It’s not been a good news week for SSRIs, a popular and common class of antidepressants that are widely prescribed by family physicians, interns and psychiatrists alike.

A study released in the journal Ophthalmology showed that in seniors, SSRIs can increase the risk of developing cataracts in your eye by 15 percent in general. But researchers found it was even worse for some specific kinds of antidepressants — Fluvoxamine (Luvox) increases the risk by 39 percent, venlafaxine (Effexor) increases the risk by 33 percent and paroxetine (Paxil) increases the risk by 23 percent.

A separate study also published this week found that taking SSRI antidepressant medications (and the SNRI Effexor) significantly increased — by 68 percent — the risk of miscarriage.

Read on for the details…

Mark Twain once wrote, “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

I like that. But get real. In a culture preoccupied with youth and beauty, why has there been a 114 percent increase in the number of cosmetic surgeries performed since 1997?

How do women escape the judgment conferred on them every time they open a magazine, get online, or turns on the tube? How does she silence the menacing messages she sends herself when a new gray hair is found, or her crow’s feet grow an inch longer?

Very deliberately and carefully say Vivian Diller, Ph.D and Jill Muir-Sukenick, Ph.D, both professional models turned psychologists, in their new book, “Face It: What Women Really Feel as Their Looks Change.” The authors propose a six-step process to deal with this kind of anxiety that is prevalent but not often discussed among middle-aged women.

You probably already know that men and women deal and react to stress differently. What you may not have realized is just how different we are when it comes to dealing with stress. And one of the keys appears to be how defensive we are:

Defensiveness is a trait characterized by avoidance, denial or repression of information perceived as threatening.

In women, a strong defensive reaction to judgment from others or a threat to self-esteem will result in high blood pressure and heart rate.

But in older men, the researchers found those with low defensive reactions have higher cardiovascular rates.

Usually when one thinks of New England, one thinks of the seat of the War of Independence and home of states that value personal freedom and independence above virtually all else. After all, New Hampshire’s state motto is “Live Free or Die.” This was where the very idea of peaceful civil disobedience was born in the U.S.

So when a police officer in Barre, Vermont (population: 9,291) decided that a woman with mental illness wasn’t moving to comply with his requests, he decided to arrest her. And when the woman still wasn’t moving to allow herself to be arrested, Cpl. Henry Duhaime of the Barre (Vt) Police Department apparently decided to pull out his Taser, instead of his radio to call for backup.

Was the woman a coked up drug addict trying to fight off the police officer? Nope, the woman was a 58-year-old senior citizen who happened to be homeless and have a mental illness. She could be someone’s mother or grandmother. Her crime? Keeping her arms folded in front of herself, refusing to move, and then refusing to be arrested.

You can’t stop it — the natural aging process that ages not only our bodies, but our brains, too. Normal aging doesn’t significantly impact our thinking, however. Most people do not suffer from significant memory problems, deficits in problem-solving, or issues with thinking through activities that require analysis and reasoning.

Still, things that may have come to us quickly when we were younger may take a little bit more time as we get older. And these slow-downs come not only in memory, but in something that psychologists call executive function, too.

If you do, congratulations! You’re likely better at …

Several mom friends of mine have lately come down with a bad case of “empty-nest depression” …