Women and Tears

Have you ever wondered why you feel like crying during a well-executed AT&T advertisement, even when you know you're being emotionally manipulated? Do you think you cry more often because you were socialized growing up to feel that emotions mattered and women are more naturally care-givers? Sure, society certainly plays a role in how we develop, but perhaps more importantly, women are, biologically wired to cry more. We have higher levels of the hormone, prolactin, which controls, among other things, the development of tear glands. That means that we are 4 times more likely to cry than men. And our tear glands are even constructed differently from men. According to Dr. William Frey, who studies tears, when men cry 73 percent of the time tears do not fall down their cheeks  they get misty-eyed. Tears, on the other hand, almost always flow down women's cheeks.

Are there times at work when you've cried and you wish you had not?

It's Body Over Mind

Do you want the good news or the bad news first? OK - the bad news. Every eight years you become twice as likely to die. Yup, you heard me. I came across this cheery little fact (derived from insurance companies' actuarial tables) buried in an article describing how solidly middle-aged people are now being marketed products for "middle youth."

But no matter what euphemism marketers use, the very hard truth is that in the remaining 28 years of life that I'll be lucky to live if I live to an American woman's average life expectancy of 79.5 I can also expect that the odds of my dying will increase dramatically the older I get.

Whoa. Did I just use a specific number of years to define how much longer I might have to be on the planet? And a number less than the 30 years my husband and I have already spent together?  What a seriously sobering thought.

Even though I usually find it helpful to think clearly about statistical probabilities, this one is a doozy. But instead of curling up in a ball and freaking out, or ignoring the reality of it, I decided that naming that hard number was, in fact, and somewhat counterintuitively, deeply clarifying. It drove home for me how important it is to take as good care of myself as possible, so I can savor all that I can of the remainder of my time here (and maybe beat the odds by a few bonus years).

Ready for the good news now?

The last few decades don't have to be bummer. There really are things that can improve the quality of those years, and they are neither expensive nor daunting.

The Alliance for Aging Research recommends lots of physical movement. Their data indicate that activity represents the greatest promise for reducing the risks of chronic disease. They project that 160 million Americans - half the country and more than half the adults - will suffer from some kind of chronic illness by 2040. So it looks like most of us need to get out there and move.  Right now.

In the context of my recent statistical wake-up call, I thought it might be helpful to review a few of the known and obvious things that exercise will do for you:

• Improve your circulation, which will help your blood pressure and help prevent further heart disease. For a healthy heart, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends at least 15 minutes of aerobic exercise at least three days per week, during which you should reach a heart rate of at least 60 percent of your maximal rate (which is 220 minus your current age). And walking 30 minutes each day is a great start.
• Build your bones and help prevent osteoporosis. In a recent study of women aged 50 to 70, the women who strength-trained gained 1 percent more bone density in the hip and spine, while the group that did not lift weights lost 2.5 percent bone density. Those who trained had strength increases between 35 percent and 76 percent above the control group, and improvements in physical balance averaging 14 percent.
• Help keep your weight under control, which will help prevent or control Type II diabetes.

And the benefits of exercise are not purely physical. Scientific American Mind reported in their June/July issue that according to Scott Small, a neurologist at Columbia University, "physical exercise might be a very effective way to ameliorate age-related memory decline."

Need more encouragement? A fifth of the runners who finished the Boston Marathon this year were 50 or older, and the 50-and-up entrants are growing by 10 percent a year. I've never run farther than five miles at any one time, but I'm thinking about setting a goal to run the New York City Marathon in 2008. Why not? Time's short.

Can Your iPod Help You Lose Weight, Reduce Your Blood Pressure, and Alleviate Pain?

The last thing Steve Jobs needs is more hype, but there still may be a market that he hasn't fully tapped. All of us are intuitively aware that music can alter behavioral patterns -- who hasn't experienced that wonderful moment when a soothing lullaby stops a baby's cries or the rousing feeling we get when listening to John Williams' Star Wars score?

I recently discovered that there was an organized field of health care called music therapy. According to the American Music Therapy Association, programs designed by trained professionals and specifically tailored to medical issues (pain or stress management, for instance) can improve the quality of a person's physical, emotional, or cognitive health. And since 1994 Medicare has covered many of these treatments.

But what I find really exciting is that a slew of new studies are providing hard scientific validation of our anecdotal insights.

1.    Music and Weight Loss

Christopher Capuano, the director of the school of psychology at Farleigh Dickinson University, reported that "exercising can be difficult for someone who is obese. Walking to music seemed to really motivate women in our study to get out there and stick with the commitment they made." As part of an overall weight reduction program for women who were overweight to moderately obese (BMIs ranged from 26.1 to 41.7) that included dieting, aerobic exercise, and participation in group meetings, his team also gave a portable CD player to half the women to use when they walked. The other half did not walk to music. The women who played music lost significantly more weight and fewer of them dropped out of the program.

2.    Music and Pain

Dr. Mark Liponis, the medical director of the Canyon Ranch spa, reports in his upcoming book, Ultra-Longevity, on a Korean study that found that music therapy actually reduced the pain of fractures in people with broken legs. He also cites a study in the journal Clinical Research in Cardiology of heart patients who listened to music while undergoing uncomfortable catheterization -- their anxiety levels were significantly reduced if music was played during the procedure.

3.    Music and Blood Pressure

Mark Jude Tramo, a musician and neuroscientist at the Harvard Medical School, is exploring how the biology of music has benefits far beyond entertainment. According to Tramo, "one study showed that the heart muscle of people exercising on treadmills didn't work as hard when people listened to music as it did when they exercised in silence." Other studies have shown that patients in intensive cardiac care units where music is played need lower doses of blood pressure-lowering drugs than patients in units where no music is played.

I personally use a device called Resperate that coordinates my breathing with musical sequences as an aide in controlling my blood pressure.

4.    Music and Alzheimer's

One of the most active areas of research is in using music as a tool to help soothe Alzheimer's patients. A month-long music therapy study at the University of Miami School of Medicine discovered that blood levels of melatonin, epinephrine, and norepinephrine -- all natural mood-enhancing substances -- rose significantly in all patients during the study. The participants in the study slept better and became more cooperative and active.

5.  Music and Cancer

According to the Ayurvedic practitioner Pratima Raichur, "preliminary studies at Ohio State University have found evidence that the primordial sounds of the Veda [spoken Hindu scriptures] decreased growth of cancer cells in rats."

A study of adults -- humans, that is! -- undergoing highly toxic high-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation, conducted at Memorial Sloan-Kettering's Integrative Medicine Service demonstrated that trained musical therapists could significantly reduce patient anxiety.

When my father was dying of multiple myeloma, a form of bone-marrow cancer, I made sure to supply him with recordings of his favorite music. Had I known then about the benefits of professionally administered music therapy, I surely would have made use of their skills as well. I can tell you one thing -- I'm going to start listening to my iPod in the gym with a new set of ears.