Positive Thinking the Key to a Longer Life?

Convent Archives Provide Striking Link Between Outlook and Life Expectancy

By NED POTTER

Oct. 25, 2005 — - A growing mountain of evidence suggests that an upbeat, positive attitude could be the key to a long life. Some of the best scientific proof comes from the world of religion.

At the Franciscan Handmaids of Mary in New York, there can be an 80-year divide between the sisters who teach and the children in their classes. The age difference hardly matters. Many of the nuns are aging remarkably well, and doctors wonder if it's a matter of personality.

"I realize it is not how long you live but how intensely you live, in terms of appreciating your life and living life to the fullest," said Sr. Loretta Theresa Richards.

Richards is 76, and doctors say her sense of purpose may be helping to keep her healthy. Studies show people who are busy, optimistic, and have networks of friends tend to live longer. Involvement is good, not tiring.

"It does not wear you out," said Dr. David Bennett, director of the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging in Chicago. "It seems to keep everything working."

Mind Body Connection

But why? How does the mind affect the body? Several studies have focused on nuns and monks because they have consistent lifestyles -- and are happy to help scientists in the cause of knowledge.

"I wake up in the morning and there is one prayer I say every day, and it carries me for the day," said Sr. Anthony Marie Granger, age 83.

Psychologists say there is an obvious need for negative emotions, such as fear, which tell us to run from danger.

But over the years, the stress hormones that result are bad for the heart and immune system. So it may be that positive emotions -- like optimism and serenity -- help your body recover from that stress.

Research has shown that people who meditate -- whether in prayer or under a doctor's guidance -- can lower their blood pressure.

"You can bring about biochemical, molecular, physiological changes in the body that are effective in treating stress conditions," said Dr. Herbert Benson, founding president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute and an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. Benson is the author of several bestselling books on what he calls "the relaxation response," a technique he says people can use daily to control stress.

Additional studies suggest that upbeat, stress-reducing traits appear at an early age. Some of the most striking findings have come, not from examining nuns in their later years, but from essays they wrote when they entered the convent in their 20s.

Those who were optimistic and had active minds back then, were the ones who aged best. On average, they lived 10 years longer than others.

The essays offer tantalizing clues, but researchers caution that, until recently, few people reached age 65. They died from infections, heart attacks and other causes, long before they had a chance to reach old age.

"You realize that this is really the first generation in the history of the world to get old," said Dr. Bennett. "We are really at the beginning of understanding aging."

U.N. appeals for quake refugees

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) -- The United Nations warned that 800,000 people remain without shelter more than two weeks after South Asia's colossal quake, and repeated its urgent appeal for more aid. As powerful aftershocks continued to rattle the region, a top U.S. commander said the United States would step up its relief efforts.

In an unusual convergence of appeals, al Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged Muslims to send as much aid as they could to quake victims in Pakistan, despite President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's alliance with the United States in its war on terrorism.

Meanwhile, Pakistan and India inched closer to a deal in which they would put aside their long-standing dispute over the Kashmir region for the sake of helping the quake victims, allowing them to cross the disputed border.

The need to speed up relief efforts took on greater resonance Sunday as a powerful aftershock -- one of hundreds since the October 8 temblor -- rocked Pakistani-held Kashmir, the region hardest hit by the initial quake. No one was killed in that aftershock, but an earlier tremor Sunday killed five people in Afghanistan's eastern Zabul province near the Pakistan border.

U.S. Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, after a tour of the quake zone Sunday said he "saw devastation everywhere" and that 11 more Chinook helicopters would join the existing 17 U.S. helicopters and the Army's only Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH, in relief efforts.

"I think the most important thing we can do is, by our own example, show the rest of the world that there's a lot more work that needs to be done," he told reporters at the Pakistani air base in Rawalpindi, outside Islamabad.

"It's not something that can just be forgotten, it can't be the five-second sound bite that we're all so used to, it has to be a long-term effort to help a lot of people."

Abizaid was joined by an unusual bedfellow in calling for more aid.

"You should send as much aid as you can to the victims, regardless of Musharraf's relations with the Americans," Osama bin Laden's deputy, al-Zawahri, said in a recorded message broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV.

The 7.6-magnitude October 8 quake is believed to have killed at least 79,000 people, mostly in Pakistani Kashmir, and left more than 3 million homeless.

Rashid Kalikov, U.N. coordinator for humanitarian assistance in Muzaffarabad, said 800,000 of those people still had no shelter whatsoever, with winter looming.

"The lives of thousands are at risk and they urgently need our help," Kalikov said. "The scale of this calamity is beyond the capacity of any country."

India has provided tons of relief goods to its neighbor and traditional rival, but has been moving ahead cautiously with proposals from Pakistan that Kashmiris be allowed to cross between the two nation's zones in Kashmir -- a region claimed in its entirety by both.

Opening the border is particularly sensitive for New Delhi, which has fenced and fortified the so-called Line of Control to prevent infiltration by Islamic militants who fight Indian security forces, seeking Kashmir's independence or merger with Pakistan.

Instead, India has proposed opening three aid camps for Pakistani quake victims on its side but signaled Sunday that it could work with Islamabad's suggestions.

"It appears to us that the proposals made by Pakistan can be reconciled with those that we ourselves had already made," Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said in a statement in New Delhi.

Pakistan's top relief official, Maj. Gen. Farooq Ahmed Khan, said Sunday the official quake toll is now more than 53,000 dead and 75,000 injured, though central figures have lagged behind regional ones. Figures from officials in the North West Frontier Province and Pakistan's part of Kashmir add up to about 78,000. India reported 1,360 deaths in its part of Kashmir.

Orphans in Pakistan

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) -- The United Nations warned that 800,000 people remain without shelter more than two weeks after South Asia's colossal quake, and repeated its urgent appeal for more aid. As powerful aftershocks continued to rattle the region, a top U.S. commander said the United States would step up its relief efforts.

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lets pray that the US really keep and generously excede its commitment to relief efforts... I realize that there are disasters happening here internally as well, still dealing with Katrina, Rita and now WIlma. But how can you see this photo album and not be moved? truth is, God sees his children, even if the rest of the world overlooks them.

Young Children Shot in China Schoolyard

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese man shot and injured 16 young schoolchildren as they were doing their morning exercises, Xinhua news agency said on Thursday, the latest in a wave of school attacks to shock the country in recent years.

The middle-aged man opened fire with several home-made guns at the children at the Niutoushan Primary School in impoverished eastern Anhui province on Wednesday morning, Xinhua said.

Seven of the 16 wounded were in serious condition in hospital in the neighboring province of Zhejiang.

One man working near the school tried to stop the shooting but was knocked down by the gunman as he made his escape, Xinhua said.

There have been a series of attacks on schools and schoolchildren around China, some by people who have lost their jobs or felt left out of the recent economic boom.

A carpenter broke into a school in southern China in April and cut off part of a boy's ear with a kitchen knife and half a girl's middle finger.

Two children and a teacher were killed last year in the Chinese capital Beijing in two separate kindergarten attacks.

A Chinese bus driver stabbed and wounded 25 primary school children in the eastern province of Shandong in September 2004. The same month, a man wielding a knife and homemade bombs injured 28 children in the eastern city of Suzhou.

Aid flows to Kashmir quake zone, but scene chaotic

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - A steady flow of relief supplies rumbled into Pakistan's earthquake zone on Thursday but the scene remained chaotic as survivors and rescuers struggled to distribute the material.

President Pervez Musharraf called on the country on Wednesday night to unite in the face of tragedy and appealed to the estimated 3.3 million people affected by the quake to be patient, saying relief efforts were gathering pace.

But the message could not even reach most survivors in the northern mountains of the country, now in their sixth day without electricity or reliable supplies of food, water and shelter.

A five-person medical team wandering around Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir and the city worst hit by Saturday's 7.6 magnitude quake, said they had come from an unaffected part of the northern Pakistan territory to offer their services.

"We want to help but we don't know where to start. Where is the organization? Where should we go?" said Rehmat Ullah Wazir, a medical officer in his hospital's department of surgery.

He said he had met at least five other teams in a similar position, sent up to Kashmir with equipment and medicines but with no idea of where to go.

Businessman Achmed Rafiqi returned to Muzaffarabad from the commercial capital of Karachi on Wednesday night to find a pile of rubble where his home and electronics business had been.

"I fear that my whole family is under there," he said. "But how can I find them? How can I bury them? There is no one to help me, not even God."

REAL DEATH TOLL NOT KNOWN

The official death toll in northern Pakistan stood unchanged at 23,000 on Thursday, but that was expected to rise as relief workers slowly reach remote villages deep in mountainous valleys in the foothills of the Himalayas. Another 1,200 people are confirmed dead across the border in Indian Kashmir.

Some local officials and politicians in Pakistan say deaths could exceed 40,000 and local authorities and aid groups were very concerned about the areas not yet visited.