![\"New](\"https:\/\/images.newscientist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/21094715\/SEI_192445791.jpg?width=1200\")
<\/div>Sweet or not, the end<\/h2>\n
Almost everyone who gets old dies.<\/p>\n
In a gross way, that brief sentence could sum up a Dutch\/Danish\/British study called \u201cUse of sugar in coffee and tea and long-term risk of mortality in older adult Danish men: 32 years of follow-up from a prospective cohort study<\/a>\u201c.<\/p>\n The study says: \u201cIn total, 2923 men (mean age at inclusion: 63\u00b15 years) were included, of which 1007 (34.5%) added sugar. In 32 years of follow-up, 2581 participants (88.3%) died, 1677 in the non-sugar group (87.5%) versus 904 in the sugar group (89.9%).\u201d<\/p>\n Feedback\u2019s nifty, thrifty summary recalls a speech at an Ig Nobel prize ceremony by Yoshiro Nakamatsu. (Nakamatsu, also known as Dr NakaMats, received the 2005 Ig Nobel nutrition prize for photographing and retrospectively analysing every meal he had consumed over 34 years, an activity he continues in 2024.) Nakamatsu said: \u201cLife should be long. Speeches should be short.\u201d<\/p>\n The practice of mindfulness helps us focus on some particular thing \u2013 not just fleetingly, but at length. Feedback cannot stop focusing on a 10-year-old study called \u201cRole of mindfulness-based psychological support during a course of ECT\u201d.<\/p>\n ECT is an acronym for electroconvulsive therapy. This study was one of the most successful attempts \u2013 perhaps the only attempt \u2013 to intentionally combine mindfulness with this therapy.<\/p>\n The researchers report that after being electroshocked, their patients \u201cwere cognitively intact to engage in simple mindfulness-based psychotherapy, with no evidence of difficulty with recollection of new information\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n They (the researchers), who were then at MidCentral District Health Board in Palmerston North, New Zealand, reached a conclusion that is multisyllabic.<\/p>\n They wrote: \u201cThis study confirms the cognitive adverse effect-sparing benefits of ultrabrief pulse ECT\u2026 but goes on to prove that psychological interventions and physical modalities of treatment are not mutually exclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n Just a year later, researchers in the US published a study called \u201cWashing dishes to wash the dishes: Brief instruction in an informal mindfulness practice<\/a>\u201c. They had a goal in mind. \u201cWe hypothesized,\u201d they wrote, \u201cthat, relative to a control condition, participants receiving mindful dishwashing instruction would evidence greater state mindfulness, attentional awareness, and positive affect.\u201d<\/p>\n They tested their hypothesis on 51 college students, and report that the test was successful. Their study finishes with an appreciation of the big picture, saying: \u201cImplications for these findings are diverse.\u201d<\/p>\n One can also be mindful about mindfulness. Three researchers (two at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, one at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) looked mindfully at the heaps of published studies about mindfulness, then published a study about what they think they saw. Their study, called \u201cExploring the past, present, and future of the mindfulness field: A multitechnique bibliometric review<\/a>\u201c, more or less complains that not many people paid attention to those studies.<\/p>\n The team offers an excuse for why so few people have been mindful of mindfulness research: \u201clow citation rates could also simply indicate that a document pertains to a narrow field of study. Thus, they should not be misinterpreted as evidence of poor quality.\u201d<\/p>\n David Gordon adds his non-prescriptive perspective to Feedback\u2019s collection of professional opinions about whether \u201cthe art of medicine amounts to entertaining the patient while nature effects the cure\u201d.<\/p>\n He says: \u201cAll interventions have potential side-effects, so avoidance of unnecessary ones is a no-brainer. As a retired family doctor, I drastically reduced my prescribing of antibiotics by managing the fears\u2026 invoked by the symptoms, and explaining the natural history of self-limiting and predominantly viral acute respiratory tract infections; especially for mothers of small children.<\/p>\n \u201cThese principles can be applied, judiciously, to other medical scenarios. Unfortunately, this is not good for business, both for the practitioner and the pharmaceutical companies for which one unavoidably acts as an agent. There are fewer \u2018return visits\u2019 to deal with drug side-effects and unalloyed anxieties. More importantly, in the long term, patients are disavowed of the belief that every illness necessitates a prescription.\u201d<\/p>\n Superpowers \u2013 even the trivial ones readers add to Feedback\u2019s compendium \u2013 aren\u2019t all permanent. Grainne Collins confides: \u201cI had a superpower: I could look at any list or table of numbers and know there was a mistake instantly. It might take 10 minutes to work out what, but I was always right. Unfortunately, as my dyslexia has receded (I can now see the difference between \u2018form\u2019 and \u2018from\u2019 without study), so has my superpower!\u201d<\/p>\n Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and\u00a0co-founded\u00a0the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is\u00a0<\/em>improbable.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Got a story for Feedback?<\/b><\/p>\n You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com<\/a>. Please include your home address. This week\u2019s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nShocking news<\/h2>\n
Mind the dishes<\/h2>\n
Mindful of mindfulness<\/h2>\n
Resisting antibiotics<\/h2>\n
Losing power<\/h2>\n