I go fishing for a thousand monsters in the depths of my own self.
—Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
✏️ Obrigado
Can one person really change the world? In a small way, yes. If he is lucky, maybe at scale. But I don’t really know whether any change is truly of his doing. Or whether he was just the bearer of inevitable change.
I have been grappling with my own mind. I listen to myself speak and can’t believe it sometimes. To speak with such conviction, like I know anything about the world, is a joke. But one must navigate with some sort of compass. I guess one has to choose to use their own or one handed to them. It’s been a while since I gave myself permission to slow down. A aspiring mind is always caught between the celebration of gifts and the next best thing. Between that space is tension and relief. Drinking both feels like balance, but it’s not. I think one should drink one’s fill of one, then the other.
Sometimes I wonder whether people talk themselves out of happiness like I do. I remember, on more cloudy days, wishing for the gifts I enjoy today. But even with them there is no respite. It is not the clouds that bring shade, but the constant worry of their arrival. I know this and still persist in thinking the unthinkable. A sip of old remedy leaves me with a gnawing headache — the answer is not at the bottom of the glass.
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” I’ve always loved this quote. It encapsulates the emptiness of human intelligence. How you can never truly know anything. Demonstrable truth and truth are not the same thing. They tell you to have trust, but in the wrong things.
Just give thanks and trust that grace will come.
Veritas odium parit.
💡 Food for Thought
Humans are a lawyer for their own sins and a judge against the sins of others.
🧬 Paper of the Week — Association between alcohol intake, mild cognitive impairment and progression to dementia: a dose-response meta-analysis
Citation: Lao, Y., Hou, L., Li, J., Hui, X., Yan, P., & Yang, K. (2021). Association between alcohol intake, mild cognitive impairment and progression to dementia: a dose-response meta-analysis. Aging clinical and experimental research, 33(5), 1175–1185.
Background: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a cognitive state falling between normal aging and dementia. The relation between alcohol intake and risk of MCI as well as progression to dementia in people with MCI (PDM) remained unclear.
Objective: To synthesize available evidence and clarify the relation between alcohol intake and risk of MCI as well as PDM.
Method: We searched electronic databases consisting of PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and China Biology Medicine disc (CBM) from inception to October 1, 2019. Prospective studies reporting at least three levels of alcohol exposure were included. Categorical meta-analysis was used for quantitative synthesis of the relation between light, moderate and heavy alcohol intake with risk of MCI and PDM. Restricted cubic spline and fixed-effects dose-response models were used for dose-response analysis.
Result: Six cohort studies including 4244 individuals were finally included. We observed an unstable linear relation between alcohol intake (drinks/week) and risk of MCI (P linear = 0.0396). It suggested that a one-drink increment per week of alcohol intake was associated with an increased risk of 3.8% for MCI (RR, 1.038; 95% CI 1.002-1.075). Heavy alcohol intake (> 14 drinks/week) was associated with higher risk of PDM (RR = 1.76; 95% CI 1.10-2.82). And we found a nonlinear relation between alcohol intake and risk of PDM. Drinking more than 16 drinks/week (P nonlinear = 0.0038, HR = 1.42; 95% CI 1.00-2.02), or 27.5 g/day (P nonlinear = 0.0047, HR = 1.46; 95% CI 1.00-2.11) would elevate the risk of PDM.
Conclusion: There was a nonlinear dose-response relation between alcohol intake and risk of PDM. Excessive alcohol intake would elevate the risk of PDM.
To be alive at all is to have scars.
—John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
With peace,
AT