AS WE GROW OLDER, our memories tend to fade, ever slightly at first. Exercise can help reduce memory loss since people who include a little yoga in their day may be more likely to remember where they put their keys. Walking can also be a good option for exercise.

Researchers found that even very light workouts can increase the connectivity between parts of the brain responsible for memory formation and storage. In a study of 36 healthy young adults, the researchers discovered that a single 10-minute period of mild exertion can yield considerable cognitive benefits. Using high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging, the team examined the subjects’ brains shortly after exercise sessions and saw better connectivity between the hippocampal dentate gyrus and cortical areas linked to detailed memory processing.

The hippocampus is critical for the creation of new memories. It is one of the first regions of the brain to deteriorate as we get older – and much more severely in Alzheimer’s disease. Improving the function of the hippocampus holds much promise for improving memory in everyday settings.

Past research focused on the way exercise promotes the generation of new brain cells in memory regions. This new study demonstrates a more strengthened communication between memory-focused parts of the brain.

We don’t discount the possibility that new cells are being born, but that’s a process that takes a bit longer to unfold. What the researchers observed is that these 10-minute periods of exercise showed results immediately afterward.

A little bit of physical activity can go a long way. It’s encouraging to see my more mature friends keeping track of their exercise habits – by monitoring the number of steps they’re taking, for example. Even short walking breaks throughout the day may have considerable effects on improving memory and cognition.

Researchers are extending this area of research by testing older adults who are at greater risk of age-related mental impairment and by conducting long-term interventions to see if regular, brief, light exercise done daily for several weeks or months can have a positive impact on the brain’s structure and function in these subjects.

There is tremendous value to understanding the exercise prescription that best works in the elderly so that recommendations can be made for reducing cognitive decline.

I did not go to the gym until I had more free time, that is, not until our youngest son went off to college. But before that, I had been active in gardening and walking – certainly a good combination. And so I hope to avoid the pitfalls of memory loss in my sunset years…. knock on wood. By Manny Palomar, PhD (EV Mail May 29-June 4, 2023 issue)

THIS IS THE lesson we can learn from that episode of Mary visiting her cousin, Elizabeth. (cfr. Lk 1,39-56) Imagine our Lady, already knowing that she was going to be the mother of the Son of God, the highest honor and privilege a creature can have, offering her services to her cousin who was also conceiving a son who would turn out to be only the precursor of the one in Mary’s womb!

This is what the intimate and mutual relation between humility and greatness looks like. When one is truly humble, it can only show the greatness of his heart. And when one is great in stature and dignity, he knows he is there to serve more than anything else. True greatness is never shown in pride and vanity. It is proven and verified in humility.

Mary perfectly mirrors the humility and greatness of Christ himself who, as St. Paul said, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Phil 2,6-8)

This mutual relation between humility and greatness is expressed when we manage to value others, whoever and however they are, above ourselves and when we look after their interest instead of our own. (cfr. Phil 2,3-4)

This is what we clearly see in the life of Christ. Let’s call to mind that stunning example of his when he shocked his apostles when he started and insisted to wash their feet at the Last Supper.

For us to have this humility and greatness in our life, we need to be always with Christ and Mary. We need to be in constant conversation with Christ and Mary, referring everything to them, asking them for the answers to our questions, clarifications to the many issues we have to grapple with in life, strength for our weaknesses and temptations, contrition and conversion after our falls, etc.

We should do everything to keep this state of humility alive in us all the time. We know very well how easy it is for us to take this virtue for granted. We have to realize more vividly how vulnerable we are to the ways of pride, arrogance, self-centeredness, desire for power and domination, etc. Humility keeps us guarded against these dangers.

And when we happen to receive praises and honors from others because of our good works, let’s keep our feet firmly stuck to the ground, not allowing ourselves to be intoxicated. We should not allow these praises and honors to go to our head and cast some evil spell over us.

Instead, we have to thank God profusely. All praises and honors belong to him. What we should realize also is that those praises and honors given to us are actually a sign that we have to give ourselves more to God and to others. Our sense of duty and responsibility should become sharper. Those praises and honors that we receive are actually some kind of a test to see if we would still remain with God or we would now choose ourselves as our own god. We have to know how to pass that test, and so we need to really grow and deepen our humility. That is how we can be truly great! By Fr. Roy Cimagala (EV Mail May 29-June 4, 2023 issue)

AS THE SUMMER months keep getting extended and temperatures rising at an alarming rate, people are not the only ones affected. Based on 50 years of weather and rice-yield data from farms in the Philippines, it would appear that warming temperatures negatively affect rice yields.

Recent varieties of rice, bred for environmental stresses like heat, gave better yields than both traditional rice varieties and modern varieties of rice that were not specifically bred to withstand warmer temperatures. But the study found that warming adversely affected crop yields even for those varieties best suited to the heat. Overall, the advantage of varieties bred to withstand increased heat was too small to be statistically significant.

The study utilizing farm-level data of rice yields and area weather conditions in four-to-five-year increments over the 50-year period allowed the researchers to examine the relationship between rice yield and temperature in actual farm environments.

The rich data set allowed the scientists to see what was actually happening at the farm level, rather than only observing behavior at higher levels of aggregation like in provinces or districts. The study examined three general rice varieties planted during those 50 years – traditional rice varieties; “early modern varieties” planted after the onset of the Green Revolution, which were bred for higher yields; and recent modern varieties bred for particular characteristics, like heat or pest resistance, for example.

As expected, the study showed that in the presence of warming, recent modern varieties had the best yields when compared with the early modern and traditional varieties, and that early modern varieties outperformed traditional varieties. Interestingly, some of the early modern varieties may have also mitigated heat challenges given their smaller “semi-dwarf” plant architecture, even though they were not bred to specifically resist heat.

Taken all together, there are two main implications here. The first is that, at the farm level, there appears to be a “yield gap” between how rice performs in breeding trials and on farms, with farm performance of recent varieties bred to be more tolerant to environmental stresses not being statistically different relative to the older varieties.

The second is that rice breeding efforts may not have reached their full potential such that it may be possible to produce new varieties that will statistically perform better than older varieties in a farm setting.

This study has implications for other rice-breeding countries in Asia because the timing of the release of various rice varieties is somewhat similar to that of the Philippines. Plant-breeding institutions can learn from this type of analysis, too. It provides guidance as to where research funding may be allocated by policymakers to further improve the high temperature tolerance of rice varieties available to farmers. Further studies are needed on other agricultural practices and innovations that affect crop yields, including an examination of cover crops, or plants grown on cropland in the off-season that aim to keep soils healthy, to gauge whether they can mitigate the adverse impacts of a changing climate. By Manny Palomar, PhD (EV Mail May 22-28, 2023 issue)

CHRIST ALREADY warned us about how our life here on earth is going to be. But he also assured us that everything would just be ok. We should just stick with him through thick and thin. “In the world, you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world,” he said. (Jn 16,33)

We should put these words into our mind and heart and make them the principle to follow whenever we find ourselves in some difficult situations. For this, we should just learn how to suffer, since suffering is inevitable in our earthly sojourn. We need to develop a certain kind of spiritual toughness that is based on our faith and vital identification with Christ.

With Christ, we can learn how to be tough when we are made to suffer. Our faith, the ultimate source of truth about ourselves, tells us that suffering is due to sin, to the misuse of our freedom, to our disobedience to the will of God who created us to be his image and likeness, to be children of his, sharing in his very own life.

Yet, in spite of that, God our Father, who is all goodness and the very fount of love, did not and does not cease to care for us. And while allowing us to suffer the consequences of our sin and disobedience, he also showed and continues to show us up to now how to tackle suffering in our earthly life.

Toward this end, God did nothing less than to send his son to us. The son became man and took on all our sinfulness, culminating this mission with his death on the cross. In so doing and in resurrecting, Christ converts our suffering due to sin into a way of our redemption.

Thus, if we have to be truly Christian, we need to be tough, really tough. Christ himself was tough, but with the toughness of love that goes all the way of assuming all the sins of men by offering his life on the cross. To be Christ-like we need to be tough. At the same time, to be tough we need to be with Christ. Otherwise, whatever toughness we may show would not be the real toughness expected of us.

This toughness of Christ was described by St. Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians: “For our sake, God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (5,21)

St. Peter made the same assertion: “Christ bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” (1 Pt 2,24) In other words, Christ was not afraid of sin if only to save the sinner out of his love for all of us who are all sinners. He was and continues to be willing to assume our sins, as if they were his own, if only to save us.

He was not squeamish, prudish or puritanical in his attitude toward our sin. In fact, he was kind of pro-active about it, unafraid to get dirty as long as what really matters about us is accomplished and not compromised. That is why he was fraternizing more with the sinners than with the self-righteous.

As he himself said: “I came not to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance.” (Mk 2,17) And, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (Jn 3,17) By Fr. Roy Cimagala (EV Mail May 22-28, 2023 issue)