DEMENTIA MORE COMMON IN CYNICS

While perusing the October, 2014 issue of Reader's Digest, I found an interesting mention in its World of Medicine section (pp. 60-61). A new study from Finland suggests that trusting people, generally, is a way to stave off dementia. The study of 600 older people found that those who had the highest levels of "cynical distrust" of their fellow man were three times as likely to develop dementia than less jaded study participants.

Those who agreed with statements like "most people would lie to get ahead" and "it's safer to trust no one" are the group who was found to descend into dementia at three times the norm.

The link between a cynical lack of trust in others and dementia held true even when the study controlled for other risk factors, like age and health.

I pondered the meaning of this study for a while. I wondered if levels of distrust, a precursor to dementia, could be "contracted," or caught, by repeated exposure to some media or people...like the motley crew on Fox News, for instance. Then I thought about an America in which a significant number of people could be allowing themselves to be exposed to a dementia-causing agent on a regular basis, and what that might mean for the rest of us.

Wow. Just wow. Picture a future in the U.S. where higher than average numbers of elderly people suffer dementia. Picture the mess when dementia-addled seniors scream about birth certificates and socialism and black presidents being the devil. Who will take care of these hate-filled monsters? An even better question is just how much would caretakers need to be paid, just to stay on the job?

We really must begin weaning our older folks off Fox News now. We need to begin programs that encourage contact with puppies and kittens and babies immediately. Exposure to happy children of all colors playing together, and sweet television shows, like The Golden Girls, Happy Days, Matlock or Lassie are critical to keeping our seniors sane and pleasant to be around.

If we fail to act now, we may be doomed to putting up with mad gangs of muttering, fist-shaking, crotchety old people wandering the streets and making us all miserable.