The recent ScienceDaily.com article (June 18, 2009; 1) entitled “Life Force Linked to Body’s Ability to Withstand Stress” caught my attention. Always interested in ways to live a longer, healthier, lower-stress life, I thought this research might provide a path to nonagenarian status.
The second sentence began “Especially in aging women …” . Right, I aspire to someday make “aging woman” status. It continued “ …low levels of the personality trait extraversion may signal that blood levels of a key inflammatory molecule have crossed over a threshold linked to a doubling of risk of death within five years.” In simpler terms, the results showed that persons with low extroverted tendencies (introverts) had higher levels of a marker for inflammation, and thus a greater risk of death.
Hold the phone! Could my dream of living beyond my grandparents’ lifespan (or at least to make my final house payment) be dashed simply because I’m an introvert? Continue reading “Introverts Aging, Gracefully”
Scientists are as likely to feel the smart of rejection as any other kind of writer. You slave over experiments trying to make sure that they have the proper controls to account for every possible artifact. You finally head to the computer keyboard and transcribe months, sometimes years, worth of labor into a few pages of text with some figures: your opus, which you send off on a wave of electrons to some distant editorial figure. And then you wait. 