Longevity | Silver Magazine

Longevity

Your partner can’t be your everything

It’s impossible for one person to meet all of your needs and you shouldn’t expect them to. “If someone loves you completely and unconditionally, you don’t need anyone else’s love and support.” This is a lie. There are many different kinds of love—parental and familial love, romantic love, platonic love, self-love, and more—and it’s impossible for one person to love you in all these ways you need to be loved. And you can’t love one person in all of these ways either. Some of our emotional needs can be met within ourselves, some only by an intimate partner, and some needs only friends or family can meet. You’re probably more likely to want a cuddle from your partner than from anyone else, and you’d probably prefer shopping or baking with someone who won’t complain the whole time. Maybe you have a friend specifically for gardening and sharing books, and another

Yasmin Missaghian June 28, 2023

Longevity

‘Not bad for an old shape’: Carla Furlong is ahead by a century

Now that she’s 101, Carla Furlong goes to bed early in her house in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where she lives with her stepson. This, for her, is around 11:00 PM. Until recently, she stayed up late doing crossword puzzles, playing solitaire, and reading historical novels. She never needed much sleep. If you ask Carla what she did on her latest birthday, in March of 2023, she replies that the phone rang off the hook. “I don’t think people think I’m going to last much longer,” she says with a laugh. Carla carved her own way as a musician and music teacher in an era when it was hard for a woman to sustain an independent career in any field, much less a creative one like music. Both parents encouraged her ambitions, but she knew it would not be an easy path. The evidence is everywhere: her living room contains a

David Holt March 27, 2023

Health

Better bone health for the long haul

The secret to longevity lies in your bones, literally. Your skeleton is your core. How you move, the quality of food and supplements you ingest, and your sleep cycle all matter to bone health — immensely. It’s like a “trifecta” for building a better framework: diet, exercise, and sleep. But it’s also not quite that simple. To better understand how to build healthy bones, let’s first look inside to understand your physical infrastructure. As part of the skeletal system, the bones and cartilage perform three basic, but essential functions: to support the body, protect the organs, and allow for movement that works in tandem with the tendons and muscles. Marrow is found at the center of the bones and this is where the magic happens. The bone marrow assists in the formation of blood cells — both red and white — along with storing a vast amount of fats and

Mary Savage March 20, 2023

Fitness

Why is Grip Strength Important?

While grip strength is typically associated with having a strong handshake (which we don’t seem to need following the introduction of the elbow bump during 2020), science has shown grip strength to be what’s called a biomarker.1 By definition, a biomarker is a broad term which indicates an “objective indication of (a) medical state, observed outside of the patient.”2 Basically, it’s an indicator of some health condition or state of one’s health that isn’t necessarily something the patient is aware of. For example, when one goes to the doctor, they typically explain their symptoms. The symptoms are what a patient is feeling and aware of. When the doctor does lab work, the doctor may discover some biomarkers, in the form of a high white blood cell count, for example, which indicates a certain illness. The biomarker is the indicator that something is going on or expected to occur. According to

Dr. Katie Landier January 25, 2023

Featured

Baby, it’s cold outside – and inside too!

I’m kayaking on the Bay of Fundy in late October. The air is cool. The water is cold — about 12 degrees C at this time of year. The massive tides mean that even in summer the bay is cold. After pulling the boat up on shore, I walk out into the salt water up to my knees, go back to shore, then walk back into the water and start swimming. A practiced, even clinical approach. Still, it’s a shock. I’ve been doing this for a few weeks since the nights cooled off, so I am starting to adapt. Lately, I’ve learned, by trial and error, that if you keep your head out of the water at least for the first few strokes it’s less of a shock. But it’s still friggin’ cold. Back on shore, I soak up the sun. That wasn’t so bad, says one part of my

David Holt October 31, 2022

Featured

Core strength: Embrace the wobble

At one time, a strong core was associated with six-pack abs but an updated view is that there is much more to them. Having defined abdominals is an aesthetic consideration, while a strong core relates to functionality. Anatomically, the core is the body’s midsection, a three-dimensional space that includes the muscles of the front, sides, and back. One can further distinguish between the inner and outer core. The outer core consists of the more superficial muscles that surround the midsection of the torso, while the inner core comprises the deep internal muscles creating an inner cylinder framed by the pelvic floor, diaphragm, obliques and spinal muscles. Pick up any fitness or running magazine and you will likely come across an article about the core and how to strengthen it. A strong core is essential for all types of athletes. It is key to generate force as in a golf swing

Christine Felstead September 9, 2022

Featured

Go Fish

My father told me if I wanted to catch fish I had to think like a fish except he said it with an r like frish and an extra s and h like frisshh and maybe a third h if you can stand it. We were floating in a barely curved boat. I sat on a six pack and he sat on a bigger box of beer which eventually collapsed. I noticed, among other things, that his bladder had the same capacity as a bottle of beer, and I imagined it was also the approximate shape. I was surprised how clear his pee was, nearly invisible like the fishing line, the tint likely stuck somewhere in the vicinity of his liver. He smoked cigarettes, one after the other, and spewed nonsense the rest of the time, kept offering me beer when he knew I was only eleven. When he pressed

Sherry Cassells July 4, 2022

Featured

Learning from each other

“The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise. … Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households. They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room; they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs. They tyrannised over the paidagogoi and schoolmasters.” –Kenneth John Freeman summarizing the thoughts of elders in ancient Greece towards the youth. (Schools of Hellas, 1907). It seems that each generation hears the same thing from the ones before them. For as long as humans have documented, we have failed to live up to the expectations of the generations before us. We’re often defined by our generations, and the farther apart we are from one generation,

Kayley Addis June 27, 2022

Featured

Three A.M.

When I wake up at three in the morning it’s all I can do to not phone Harry. Hello, he’d say as if he were trying to fog up the screen. I wouldn’t say, it’s me or guess who right away like before. I’d say, it’s Sherry – a glitch between the Rs then silence like I’d put the phone in my mouth – then I’d say, it’s me as if I’d swallowed it. At three in the morning I think he would prefer to go back to sleep. Harry used to tell me his dreams and I know listening to people’s dreams can be like listening to a tap drip but not Harry’s. He’d go slow and start with something you’d latch onto almost involuntarily and he’d place a picture in your head like a paint-by-number, all white and portioned out. Then he’d say something like a tiger was in my

Sherry Cassells June 22, 2022