Health for life

There may be a way for older people to prevent natural aging of their minds, and it could be as simple as playing a video game.

Thats according to a study from the University of Iowa, which found that elderly people who played just ten hours of a game priming their mental processing speed and skills delayed declines by as many as seven years in a range of cognitive skills.

"We know that we can stop this decline and actually restore cognitive processing speed to people," says Fredric Wolinsky, professor in the UI College of Public Health and lead author on the paper published May 1 in the journal PLOS One. "So, if we know that, shouldnt we be helping people? Its fairly easy, and older folks can go get the training game and play it."

The study comes amidst a burst of research examining why, as we age, our minds gradually lose "executive function," generally considered mission control for critical mental activities, such as memory, attention, perception and problem solving. Studies show loss of executive function occurs as people reach middle age; other studies say our cognitive decline begins as soon as 28 years of age. Either way, our mental capacities do diminish, and medical and public health experts are keen to understand why in an effort to stem the inexorable tide as much as possible.

Wolinsky and colleagues separated 681 generally healthy medical patients in Iowa into four groups—each further separated into those 50 to 64 years of age and those over age 65. One group was given computerized crossword puzzles, while three other groups were exposed to a video game called "Road Tour." Briefly, the game revolves around identifying a type of vehicle (displayed fleetingly on a license plate) and then reidentifying the vehicle type and matching it with a road sign displayed from a circular array of possibilities, all but one of them false icons. The player must succeed at least three out of every four tries to advance to the next level, which speeds up the vehicle identification and adds more distractions, up to 47 in all.

The goal, naturally, is to increase the users mental speed and agility at identifying the vehicle symbol and picking out the road sign from the constellation of distractors (which are rabbits, by the way).

"The game starts off with an assessment to determine your current speed of processing. Whatever it is, the training can help you get about 70 percent faster," says Wolinsky, who has no financial stake in the game.

The groups that played the game at least 10 hours, either at home or in a lab at the university, gained at least three years of cognitive improvement when tested after one year, according to a formula developed by the researchers. A group that got four additional hours of training with the game did even better, improving their cognitive abilities by four years, according to the study.

"We not only prevented the decline; we actually sped them up," Wolinsky says.

Improving peoples processing speed is considered important for a host of reasons. One widely accepted benefit is widening a persons field of view. "As we get older, our visual field collapses on us," Wolinsky explains. "We get tunnel vision. Its a normal functioning of aging. This helps to explain why most accidents happen at intersections because older folks are looking straight ahead and are less aware of peripherals."

Recognizing this, the National Institutes of Health in the late 1990s commissioned the largest cognitive training study of its kind, called ACTIVE. The national, multi-site trial, in which Wolinsky was involved, showed the elderlys memory, reasoning and visual processing speed could be improved with interventions, thus slowing the aging of their minds. But the ACTIVE study had its limitations: Among them, the control group didnt get any training and the primary goal was to assess the effects on seniors field-of-view vision.

Wolinskys team added an active control group—those doing the crossword puzzles. The researchers found those who played the "Road Tour" game also scored far better than the crossword puzzle group on tests involving executive function beyond field-of-view vision, such as concentration, nimbleness with shifting from one mental task to another and the speed at which new information is processed. The improvement ranged from 1.5 years to nearly seven years in cognitive improvement, the study found.

"Its the use it or lose it phenomenon," Wolinsky says. "Age-related cognitive decline is real, its happening, and it starts earlier and then continues steadily. The good news is we can do something about it. The question is will we?"

Tuesday evening’s rolled around, and it’s time for some spur-of-the-moment food shopping. You saunter through the sticky sliding glass doors of your local grocery store, pondering what to purchase with the $15.09 you’ve budgeted until Friday. Then you spot it, lying prostrate and unused in a misshapen stack by the shopping carts: the Supermarket Circular.

Cackling like a maniac, you scuttle over to snatch the half-soaked, seven-page spreadsheet. You’re hunched and focused, madly scanning the deli section when it hits you: you have no blessed clue how to read this thing. Sure, there are pretty pictures, and yes, the numbers look tantalizingly low, but do you have to buy seven freakin’ jars of jelly to get the 7-for-$7 discount?

The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind.

Just kidding. The answer is actually “no.” More often than not, that jelly is priced individually. Since this isn’t intuitive knowledge, like breathing or using a pit bull from a man with missing fingers, here are a few decoding tips for the Supermarket Circular, the mightiest of cash-saving weapons.

AT THE STORE:

If you don’t need it, don’t buy it. Lots of circulars advertise sales like “Tuna: 5 cans, 3 bucks” or “10 boxes of Ronzoni pasta for $10.” The majority of the time, each item is individually priced, meaning you don’t have to dogpile ten cartons of penne to get the deal. Buy three and it’ll be $3. Buy six and it’ll be $6. Buy one, it’ll be $1, and you won’t have 144 extra ounces of pasta hanging around your cupboards.

Read the small print. Oftentimes, stores will list purchasing requirements in Lilliputian typeface at the bottom of an ad. You don’t see it until it’s too late, and then you’re stuck paying regular price at the register. Criminals here include caveats like: “With minimum purchase of $25,” “With club card only,” and “Limit one per customer.”

Look out for loss leaders. Normally depicted in giant photos on the front or back covers, loss leaders are priced at rock bottom to lure in shoppers. Frequently they’re perishables, daily menu foods, or other stuff you buy with some regularity - meat, fruit, vegetables, etc. Hands down the best values in the market, according to Womans Day, “if you make those two pages … the base of what you’re going to eat all week, you’ll save about 30 percent.”

Keep in mind not everything in the circular is on sale. As Consumer Reports informs us, “A mere mention of a product in a circular can boost sales by as much as 500 percent, even without a price reduction.” In fact, SmartMoney.com says, “Some stores raise prices on advertised specials.” If those on sale hot dogs still seem pretty expensive to you, they probably are. Keep moving.

Do the math. On smarter blogs, this is called “comparing unit prices,” but either way, it goes for all shopping everywhere. Just because a product is sold in bulk doesn’t mean it’s a better deal, even if it appears in the circular. In other words, if a 32-oz. olive oil is listed in the weekly at $10, and the 16-oz. version of that same item regularly sells for $4, the 32-oz. bottle is a rip-off. They’re tricking you into buying more product for more money. Tricksters.

Use your judgment. When you finally arrive at that bin of $0.01/lb chicken breast, take a good, long look at the quality of the meat. Is it gray? Does it stink? Is it housing a maggot colony? There’s a reason it’s on sale. Chalk it up in the loss column and move on. (Same goes for fruits and veggies.) However, if it’s pinkish, and still a day or two away from going bad? Stellar. Take it home and freeze what you don’t use immediately.

Bring the circular with you as you shop. Last week, I saw a 2-for-$1 deal on Goya beans in the circular at my local Key Food. When I got to the shelf, there was no indication anywhere they were on sale. Still, I picked up six cans, brought ‘em to Checkout, and sure enough, got the discount. I don’t know if a lot of supermarkets purposely obscure sales, but man, what a villainous ploy if they do.

Bring the circular with you to Checkout. Whether the machines register a wrong promotion code, or simple humans make simple errors, you will inevitably pay extra for an item on sale. If you’re using a circular to shop and suspect you’ve been overcharged, show the cashier. Are you correct? Sweet! You can bask in the glorious victory of the righteous. (Are you wrong? Boo! Apologize, smile sheepishly, and back away slowly.)

If you’ve got a coupon for an item in a circular, go ahead and try it. Waffles are on sale for ½ off. You have an additional $0.50 coupon. It’s worth a shot, right?

Try a raincheck. Not all supermarkets do this, but if a circular item’s sold out, you can try obtaining a raincheck for later. Those $0.88/lb green bell peppers will come in handy in September, you know.

OH - AND NEXT TIME, BEFORE YOU GO:

Look online. Circulars are increasingly accessible via la web, and chains are including all sorts of extras to entice you. Instant shopping lists, recipe suggestions, back massagers – whatever. The internet availability makes it much, much easier to compare prices between grocery stores, too.

Check to see if your market will match competitors’ circular prices. Rumor has it that some stores have a lowest-price guarantee, as long as you can prove it using another market’s circular. Print it up and bring it with you on your next shopping trip.

Start a pricebook. Are there products you buy with some regularity? Do they go on sale often? Using the online circular and your last receipt, start keeping track of sale prices. This way, you’ll know when something’s just a nickel off, or 75%. Snazzy!

Plan meals around what’s on sale. See: Loss leaders; Look out for. That $0.79/lb pork shoulder could feed you and/or the Marine Corps for a whole week.

Prepare to shop at the start of a new sales cycle. Lots of circulars go into effect on Fridays, and end the following Thursdays. Generally, the better-quality stuff will be made available at the beginning. Don’t wait.

And that’s our ballgame, folks. I specifically didn’t go into coupons or the Sunday newspaper supplement, since they’ll provide plenty of fodder for a future column. If you’re interested in examining either, I highly suggest CouponMom.com. Stephanie knows the score.

Sources:

• Green, Geoffrey M. and John L Park. “New Insights Into Supermarket Promotions via Scanner Data Analysis: The Case of Milk.” Journal of Food Distribution Research. Volume 29, Number 3. November 1998.
• Kadet, Anne. “10 Things Your Supermarket Won’t Tell You.” SmartMoney.com. August 2001.
• Moran, Gwen. “Hide and Seek Savings.” Womans Day. p. 98. April 2005.
• Nelson, Stephanie. “Grocery Store Savings Secrets.” Couponmom.com. 2006.
• Nelson, Stephanie. “Savings Programs Keep Money in Pocket.” The Augusta Chronicle. P. D02. January 2006.
• “Winning at the Grocery Game: How to Shop Smarter, Cheaper, Faster.” Consumer Reports. October 2006.