Even after controlling for other factors, such as cognitive and physical activity, neuropathology is not the sole driver of clinical dementia. The risk of Alzheimer’s is twice as high in the loneliest persons as compared with those who have the most social support. Social isolation may accelerate cognitive decline. We knew that our father was more than just his damaged brain, we knew it, but we struggled to believe it. There was little to deter us, even as we regretted it, again and again, after the fact. “He is helpless.” “He won’t remember.” “He is like a child now.” We would say those things in front of him, sometimes even to him. The Etch-a-Sketch that was his Alzheimer’s mind trapped him in a perpetual present, and his children in perpetual frustration. I wish I could say that we were more patient than the world outside, but we weren’t. This happened to my father in his own family, too.

So, when my father’s cognition degenerated, he became largely invisible to the outside world. If you can’t follow or add to the endless conversation, you are rendered invisible. If you do not possess these virtues, you are marginalized. In this world, swirling with information, we prioritize intellect and reason as predominant virtues. My father became cognitively impaired in what has been called a hypercognitive world. Listen to the audio version-read by Sandeep himself-in the Next Big Idea App. His essays have been published in The Wall Street Journal, Time, and Slate.īelow, Sandeep shares five key insights from his new book, My Father’s Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer’s. He writes regularly for the New York Times and has appeared on National Public Radio and MSNBC. This article appears in the December 2018 print edition with the headline “The Beat Goes On.Sandeep Jauhar is a New York Times bestselling author and a practicing cardiologist.

Adapted from Heart: A History, by Sandeep Jauhar, published by FSG The amount of blood that passes through an average adult heart in a week could fill a backyard swimming pool.

Each heartbeat generates enough force to circulate blood through approximately 100,000 miles of vessels. The amount of work it performs is mind-boggling. From birth until death, it beats nearly 3 billion times. If the heart is the last major organ to stop working, it is also the first to develop-starting to beat, in humans, approximately three weeks into fetal life, even before there is blood to pump. The French Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel showed that a chick’s heart tissue, cultured on a medium of blood plasma and water, will pulsate for months and can remain alive for more than 20 years, much longer than the normal life span of its host. The heart can continue to beat for days, even weeks or more, after an animal has died.

Heart a history by sandeep jauhar