Reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s
Here’s a headline on The Washington Post website that ought to get everybody’s attention: “Doing these five things could decrease your risk of Alzheimer’s by 60 percent, new study says.”
Everyone knows they’re going to die one day, and many people worry about how it will happen. Perhaps the greatest fear is being reduced to slowly fading away with no memories, which is the fate of those with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
Any habit or activity that could reduce the chance of Alzheimer’s certainly deserves attention. The five recommendations are:
• A high-quality diet of vegetables, poultry, seafood, nuts and berries, while avoiding red meat, fried foods, butter, cheese, pastries and sweets. Hmmm ... that may not be so easy. But it’s only one of five factors.
• Exercise at least 150 minutes a week. This includes biking, walking, swimming, gardening or yard work.
• Don’t smoke. Alzheimer’s is just one more reason to avoid this very unhealthy habit.
• Go easy on the alcohol. Limit yourself to one glass of wine a day.
• Keep your brain active. The story mentioned “mentally stimulating activities” like reading a newspaper (a wonderful idea!), visiting the library or playing challenging games like chess or checkers.
The results, presented Sunday at an Alzheimer’s conference, included information compiled by a Chicago medical center on 2,765 older adults who were part of two federally funded studies.
A co-author of the report said researchers expected to find that a healthier lifestyle would decrease the chance of dementia. But they were shocked by how much the activities reduced the likelihood of such diseases.
Researchers gave one point for each of the lifestyle factors that a participant followed. People with a score of 4 or 5 were 60 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease compared to those with a score of 0 or 1.
The average age of participants in one study was 73, and 81 in the other. Researchers said the results did not vary by race or gender, and the studies included men, women, blacks and non-Hispanic whites.
Here are the depressing statistics on Alzheim-er’s and other forms of dementia: 50 million people worldwide are afflicted with one of the conditions today, and that number is expected to triple by 2050.
If this study is accurate, the good news is that everyone can do something to prevent it. Exercising your body and your brain is no guarantee of avoiding Alzheimer’s, but it’s like wearing a seat belt when you’re in a car: You have a better chance of coming out all right.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
Corporate subsidy bidding wars
Although the bidding wars for the Amazon headquarters attracted great attention due to its sheer size, hundreds of smaller, secret subsidy auctions take place throughout the country every year. Incentives for such deals are embedded in the tax code in every state. Together, these sums have been estimated to cost state and local governments $45 billion to $70 billion annually. The costliest “megadeals”—mostly billion-dollar subsidy packages—cost an average of $658,000 per job. Mississippi has been among the top states in the nation measured by sweetheart subsidies per capita.
This is in sharp contrast to the European Union’s rules which comprehensively limit bidding wars. First, the EU’s rules on all forms of state subsidies require advance notice to the European Commission. The commission then determines if the program or project distorts EU trade too much to be allowed to take effect. The commission has so much autonomous power that, if a deal is not disclosed in advance, a company can be forced to repay the aid, and the government can be fined if it repeatedly fails to follow the commission’s decision. This improves transparency prior to a deal being formally approved, whereas in most U.S. states and cities, advance disclosure is poor to nonexistent.
Here in the United States, Missouri and Kansas have entered a truce in industrial recruitment bidding wars. The two state have agreed to stop using tax breaks to lure investment and jobs from one another. The majority of company moves from 2011 to 2019 were between 5 and 7 miles from the state line. In other words, corporations were just taking the two states for a ride to get the best deal.
This strikes at the heart of interstate commerce and is a legitimate area of Congressional concern and action. Taxes should be levied in a uniform manner. Special tax breaks for certain corporations in not only unfair, but can pave the way for government corruption and deplete local and state governements of revenue. t’s high time that Congress take action to limit these unproductive bidding wars between states to lure business.
Wyatt Emmerich, Northside Sun
More Editorial Roundup
Solar panels
The Sierra Club’s Louie Miller is praising the Mississippi Public Service Commission (PSC) for extending for three years an additional 2.5 cents “adder’ for lower income utility customers who install solar panels. The adder will allow customers to sell electricity back to the grid for a total of 4.5 cents a kilowatt when the solar panels produce excess electricity.
Only within the last couple of years, has the PSC embraced pro-solar panel policies. Mississippi Power and other utility companies have taken a dim view of solar. But after the Kemper disaster, Mississippi Power agreed to quit fighting solar panels as part of its Kemper lawsuit settlement with the Sierra Club.
Despite ample sunshine, Mississippi has a long way to go. California leads the nation with 17 percent of its electricity coming from solar. The amount of solar produced in Mississippi is half a percent. According to the Solar Industries Association, neighboring Louisiana has 14,795 solar installations and a solar workforce of 2,950. In comparison, Mississippi has 300 solar installations and a workforce of 770. Even so, Mississippi moved up from 43rd to 27th last year in the pro-solar rankings based on an improving attitude at the PSC. In addition to rooftop solar, two big utility-scale solar project are underway in the Delta near Greenwood.
Experts have long dismissed solar as too small to be of significance, but this is no longer the case. Last year 29 percent of the new electricity production in the nation came from solar. A new study by the investment firm Lazard, shows wind and utility-scale solar to now be the least expensive way to produce electricity. Rooftop solar is more expensive, but the solar panel efficiency keeps rising and the cost keeps dropping. More importantly, rooftop solar can serve as a grassroots check on regulated monopoly electricity pricing. The PSC should continue to support policies that encourage more adoption of rooftop solar in Mississippi.
Wyatt Emmerich, Northside Sun
