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Measuring GNH (“Gross National Happiness”)

This evening, when I fin­ished clean­ing up the kitchen after our fam­ily din­ner, I glanced at the cur­rent issue of the Econ­o­mist. The cover fea­tures this head­line: the Joy of Grow­ing Old (or why life begins at 46). It’s a light read, as this so-influential mag­a­zine goes, but nice to con­tem­plate if you’re, say, 50 years old and won­der­ing about the future.

The article’s the­sis is this: Although as peo­ple move towards old age they lose things they treasure — vitality, men­tal sharp­ness and looks — they also gain what peo­ple spend their lives pur­su­ing: Happiness.

Fig. 1 (above): “A snap­shot of the age dis­tri­b­u­tion of psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being in the United States,” Stone, et al: PNAS, May 2010 (y-axis: “WB” stands for well-being.)

Young adults are gen­er­ally cheer­ful, accord­ing to the Econ­o­mist’s mys­te­ri­ous author or authors. Things go down­hill until midlife, and then they pick up again. There’s a long dis­cus­sion in the arti­cle on pos­si­ble rea­sons for the U-shaped curve of self-reported well-being. Most plau­si­ble among the expla­na­tions offered, which might be kind of sad except that in real­ity (as opposed to ideals) I think it’s gen­er­ally a good thing, is the “death of ambi­tion, birth of accep­tance.” The con­cept is explained: “Maybe peo­ple come to accept their strengths and weak­nesses, give up hop­ing to become chief exec­u­tive or have a pic­ture shown in the royal Acad­emy…” And this yields contentedness. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*

American Obesity And Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

We are a nation stricken with an epidemic of obesity, which contributes to the incidence of diabetes and heart disease. Each of these has been linked to consumption of sugar intake, and in particular, sugar-sweetened beverages.

There’s nothing evil about sugar — it’s just that too much of it in certain forms is bad for you. For the purpose of definition, sugar-sweetened beverages contain added, naturally-derived caloric sweeteners such as sucrose (table sugar), high-fructose corn syrup, or fruit juice concentrates. Read more »

This post, American Obesity And Sugar-Sweetened Beverages, was originally published on Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..

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