If Your Hair is White, You Are Probably Nuts

I suspect that most of us who have retained some modicum of sanity in this crazy world have wondered from time to time if we are really sane. You know, like the time just a while back when you dropped something, it was headed to the floor, that something hitting the floor would cause no great tragedy, yet you stuck your foot out to stop it and broke a toe. The falling, let's say, bowl costs five bucks to replace and five minutes to clean up. The broken toe costs three hundred dollars for the emergency ward and a half day's time waiting to be seen. Crazy right?

Well, according to Reuters (via Yahoo News), yep! If you're "older" you are probably sick in the brain. What this very illuminating article by Megan Rauscher fails to state is just what the hell do they mean by "older?" Here's a direct quote from the story:

"As part of the long-term Rush Memory and Aging Project, researchers evaluated the spectrum of abnormalities found in the brains of 141 older adults, with and without clinically evident dementia. At the time of death, only 20 persons (14.2 percent) were free of brain disease, Dr. Julie A. Schneider, from Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, and colleagues found."

Wow! This is certainly convincing! They looked at 141 brains and made a blanket statement about the entire "older" population. The scope of the study bothers me, but not quite as much as the ambiguity this article leaves with regard to how old those brains were.

If they took apart 141 brains from people 95 years old, that's one thing. If those brains were just older than the researchers-like OH MY GOSH!-almost sixty, it's another thing entirely.

Why does this bother me?

How about let's take a very limited study, fail to fully identify the study's subjects, and drive another stake through the heart of respect for older people and their accumulated wisdom. And, since the term "older" is left to the subjective definition of the reader, all of those temporary sociopaths we call "teenagers" can use this information to confirm their suspicion that Mom and Dad say no to a lot of activities because they are "older" and sick in the brain. (Something the kids have just been waiting for confirmation of, but suspected all along).

Fortunately, for Moms and Dads there is another brain study reported by CNN that informs us that teenagers are clearly swacked, so those two even each other out, but still leave those of us with white hair swinging in the breeze from the brain health perspective.

There is one benefit though. I can chuckle out loud at the antics of the "younger" people around me, and they think "significant brain pathology" not "he's laughing at us."