Aging with Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives - Softcover

Snowdon, David

 
9780553380927: Aging with Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553380923 ISBN 13: 9780553380927
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

In 1986 Dr. David Snowdon, one of the world’s leading experts on Alzheimer’s disease, embarked on a revolutionary scientific study that would forever change the way we view aging—and ultimately living. Dubbed the “Nun Study” because it involves a unique population of 678 Catholic sisters, this remarkable long-term research project has made headlines worldwide with its provocative discoveries.
Yet Aging with Grace is more than a groundbreaking health and science book. It is the inspiring human story of these remarkable women—ranging in age from 74 to 106—whose dedication to serving others may help all of us live longer and healthier lives.

Totally accessible, with fascinating portraits of the nuns and the scientists who study them, Aging with Grace also offers a wealth of practical findings:

• Why building linguistic ability in childhood may protect against Alzheimer’s
• Which ordinary foods promote longevity and healthy brain function
• Why preventing strokes and depression is key to avoiding Alzheimer’s
• What role heredity plays, and why it’s never too late to start an exercise program
• How attitude, faith, and community can add years to our lives

A prescription for hope, Aging with Grace shows that old age doesn’t have to mean an inevitable slide into illness and disability; rather it can be a time of promise and productivity, intellectual and spiritual vigor—a time of true grace.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. David Snowdon received his Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of Minnesota and began the Nun Study there in 1986. In 1990 he moved the Nun Study to the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky Medical Center, where he is also Professor of Neurology. One of the world's leading experts on Alzheimer's disease, he has presented his findings at scientific conferences throughout North America and Europe and has been published in such major medical journals as The Journal of the American Medical Association and The Journal of Gerontology.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

In 1986 Dr. David Snowdon, one of the world's leading experts on Alzheimer's disease, embarked on a revolutionary scientific study that would forever change the way we view aging--and ultimately living. Dubbed the "Nun Study" because it involves a unique population of 678 Catholic sisters, this remarkable long-term research project has made headlines worldwide with its provocative discoveries.
Yet Aging with Grace is more than a groundbreaking health and science book. It is the inspiring human story of these remarkable women--ranging in age from 74 to 106--whose dedication to serving others may help all of us live longer and healthier lives.
Totally accessible, with fascinating portraits of the nuns and the scientists who study them, Aging with Grace also offers a wealth of practical findings:
- Why building linguistic ability in childhood may protect against Alzheimer's
- Which ordinary foods promote longevity and healthy brain function
- Why preventing strokes and depression is key to avoiding Alzheimer's
- What role heredity plays, and why it's never too late to start an exercise program
- How attitude, faith, and community can add years to our lives
A prescription for hope, Aging with Grace shows that old age doesn't have to mean an inevitable slide into illness and disability; rather it can be a time of promise and productivity, intellectual and spiritual vigor--a time of true grace.

Aus dem Klappentext

David Snowdon, one of the world s leading experts on Alzheimer s disease, embarked on a revolutionary scientific study that would forever change the way we view aging and ultimately living. Dubbed the Nun Study because it involves a unique population of 678 Catholic sisters, this remarkable long-term research project has made headlines worldwide with its provocative discoveries.
Yet Aging with Grace is more than a groundbreaking health and science book. It is the inspiring human story of these remarkable women ranging in age from 74 to 106 whose dedication to serving others may help all of us live longer and healthier lives.

Totally accessible, with fascinating portraits of the nuns and the scientists who study them, Aging with Grace also offers a wealth of practical findings:

Why building linguistic ability in childhood may protect against Alzheimer s
Which ordinary foods

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The Road to Good Counsel Hill

They will open up to you, but only if you give of yourself first.
--Sister Carmen Burg

On a spring morning in 1986, when the midwestern snowpack finally had begun to melt and the change of seasons encouraged new ideas to sprout, I sat nervously in the reception room of a convent in St. Paul, Minnesota, with a new idea of my own. I had come here to meet Sister Carmen Burg, who would either help my idea take root or wish me luck and send me on my way. I feared that she had bad news for me.

As an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota, I was struggling mightily to find my niche. In the competitive world of scientific research, especially at a large institution, I knew I had little time to establish my value to the department. All too frequently I remembered my chairman's words: "It's nice to be independent, but you must be funded."

Sister Carmen was an elected leader of one of Minnesota's largest groups of Catholic nuns, the School Sisters of Notre Dame. Nearly two hundred sisters lived at the Good Counsel Hill convent in Mankato, ninety miles southwest of St. Paul. I had contacted Sister Carmen to propose a research project involving the nuns. Now I worried that she had offered to meet me here--before I ever got to Mankato--so that it would be less awkward to turn me down. Underscoring my anxiety were images that had been seared into my memory at Sacred Heart elementary school. Most of the sisters had been serious, take-no-prisoners disciplinarians.

I had learned what I knew about the School Sisters of Notre Dame from Nora Keenan, a graduate student in our department. Nora had an unusual background for an epidemiologist: She had previously been one of the Notre Dames and had lived at the Mankato convent. She explained to me that her former congregation had originated in Bavaria in 1833, at a time of great political and social upheaval.

The founder was a teacher at a parochial school, Caroline Gerhardinger, who later took the religious name Mary Teresa of Jesus. Mother Teresa, as she was known, believed that society could be transformed through the family, and that her call was to provide education and spiritual formation for girls--particularly poor girls in rural areas. Shortly after the congregation was established, millions of Germans--driven by crop failure and revolution--began to emigrate to the United States, and the American bishops asked Mother Teresa to consider a new frontier for her mission.

Together with four other sisters, she arrived at a forest settlement in Pennsylvania in 1847. From there, the congregation had moved west and south with the immigrants, founding schools and convents throughout North America. By 1986, the congregation (now based in Rome) had more than seven thousand sisters in nearly thirty countries. The Mankato convent--one of seven provincial motherhouses in this country--had been established in 1912.

Nora's account immediately sparked my interest. As I told her one day over lunch, I had built my career so far around studying unique populations of religious groups. For my Ph.D. thesis at Minnesota, I had joined an ongoing study of the Lutheran Brotherhood and investigated whether cancer and heart disease had any links to alcohol use. I then worked at California's Loma Linda Medical College, investigating the impact of diet on the health of Seventh-day Adventists. Now that I was back at Minnesota, I wanted to study aging and health, and I suspected that nuns or priests--I did not really have a preference--would offer unique clues. It was then that Nora had offered an introduction to Sister Carmen.

My nervous wait ended when a short, smiling woman came into the reception room and held out her hand. Sister Carmen was dressed in a simple white blouse, camel-colored cardigan, and long plaid skirt. Only a small pin over her heart signaled her membership in the School Sisters of Notre Dame. I had forgotten that since my days at Sacred Heart school, the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (or Vatican II) had made the black-and-white habit an option. Now in her early sixties, Sister Carmen wore large glasses, and behind them I could see the intelligent, patient eyes of a woman who had taught thousands of children. After we had chatted for a few minutes, she got right to the point.

"You know, Dr. Snowdon," she said in her distinct midwestern accent, "I love being a nun. Sisters are as human as the next person. But my question is, why on earth do you want to study nuns?"

She listened attentively as I described my past work with Lutherans and Adventists. I explained to Sister Carmen that these religious groups kept extensive membership lists and historical records that made them ideal subjects for epidemiological studies. And the members often had similar lifestyles, which enabled researchers to make powerful comparisons of factors connected to illness or health. Nuns had even more similar histories. They do not smoke. They are celibate. They have similar jobs and income, and they receive similar health care for most of their lives. All of these factors reduce the confounding variables--such as poverty and lack of health care--that can cloud the meaning of data. Outside a laboratory, it would be hard to find as pure an environment for research.

In fact, I went on, nuns had already played a crucial role in expanding our understanding of two devastating diseases that afflict women: breast cancer and cervical cancer. In the 1950s scientists observed that nuns had an unusually high risk for breast cancer. This led researchers to examine overall breast cancer rates more closely, comparing single to married women. It emerged that single women, like nuns, also had a high risk of breast cancer. The variable turned out to be pregnancy and the hormonal changes it causes. Much of today's understanding of how hormones affect breast health had its origin in this research.

Several famous studies, on the other hand, have reported cervical cancer to be rare in nuns and common in prostitutes, I offered, immediately realizing how odd this must have sounded to Sister Carmen. In this case, it was a sexually transmitted virus that ultimately emerged as the link to cancer. "Again, it isn't difficult to make the connection," I added.

"No, it isn't," she agreed.

I gladly changed the subject to aging and the purpose of my visit. "I'm hoping the study of the School Sisters of Notre Dame will lead to some major clues about aging and disease," I said. "Ultimately, I want to increase our knowledge and help people live longer, better lives."

Sister Carmen brightened when she heard this. If she was bothered by the vagueness--or vastness--of what I was proposing, she didn't let on. She sat quietly for a minute.

"Let me tell you, Dr. Snowdon," she began. "We have always believed in the power of knowledge and ideas. A large part of our mission has always been teaching. Over ninety percent of our sisters have been teachers at one time. Some of our older sisters taught in towns that had no schools before they arrived.

"Our sisters have spent their entire adult lives trying to help other people in the community. Even in their retirement, they have a deep passion and drive to help others. I think they would see your study as a way to continue their lifelong mission of helping others, of educating others."

"Yes, I hope so," I said.

Sister Carmen paused again and then let out a big, contented sigh. "Okay," she said, as only a Minnesotan can.

"Okay?" I was confused. "You mean--"

"Wait." She raised her open hand and stopped me in midsentence. "I'll move forward with your request, but you...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553380923
ISBN 13 
9780553380927
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchbär
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