The Bell Curve -- Joseph N. Bell

While I’m reading the sports section over my coffee in the morning, my

wife is surfing the New York Times on her computer, which gives us a nice

intellectual balance. When she runs across something she deems of

interest to me, she prints it out. These items tend to run heavily to

health and diet, and typically suggest such dire punishment as an early

death for eating chicken-fried steak and gravy, both staples of my diet.

But last week she came up with the results of a study that intrigued

both our elderly dachshund, Coco, and me. It seems that two behavioral

neuroscientists -- one of them Dr. Carl Cotman of the Institute for Brain

Aging and Dementia at UC Irvine -- have been studying old dogs as models

of human aging. I tend to see myself as an old dog more frequently than

Coco, who is 98 going on 105 but resists such a vision of herself. So in

the hope that I might better learn from her, I took a longer look at this

study.

It was disquieting to find that the study’s heaviest emphasis is on

the care and feeding of our aging brains -- disquieting partly because

intellect has never been one of Coco’s strong points, but mostly because

the researchers want to feed our brains by severely restricting the

things they consider good for us to eat.

This is partly based on the discovery that a diet of blueberries,

strawberries and spinach smartened up some elderly rats, leading to the

conclusion that such an antioxidant-rich diet would perform the same

service for dogs. Even Coco. Even me, according to the researcher who was

quoted as saying: “We should all be doing this -- eating at least five

servings of fruits and vegetables a day to forestall or even improve the

effects of aging.”This information is being incorporated in the design of

some dog foods, which is probably OK with Coco, who will eat anything she

can get her mouth around. I like strawberries and blueberries -- I even

like spinach -- but I found it a little off-putting that there was no

mention in the study of the emotional or esthetic benefits of

chicken-fried steak.

The researchers also discovered that this draconian diet was most

effective for dogs when their owners combine it with such mental

stimulation as walking their pets, playing with them, talking to them and

petting them. Parallel auxiliary activities for aging humans were not

spelled out in the summary of the study I read, but they would certainly

be more attractive than eating blueberries all the time. Especially the

petting part.

A number of other parallels between elderly dogs and their human

counterparts were explored in the study. Declining hearing, for example.

Both Coco and I hear selectively. She shows no awareness of hearing

orders to go outside, especially when it’s cold, or to get off a

forbidden couch but seldom misses a summons to dinner. I am accused --

unfairly, of course -- of similar selectivity, especially in my inability

to pick up the voices of women.

Another example is the flagging interest displayed by elderly dogs and

humans in activities that were embraced in youthful and even middle years

with a kind of uncritical enthusiasm -- or at least tolerance -- and are

mostly looked at in advanced age with a jaundiced eye. For most of her

life, Coco delighted in hanging out with us, whatever we were doing. Now

she frequently rejects us without guilt by crawling under a bed. I have

similar urges to retreat but haven’t altogether kicked the guilt while

wallowing in my growing iconoclasm. Coco has to be dragged out from under

the bed; I still emerge on my own.

Although I have no scientific qualifications to do so, I would like to

respectfully offer the dog researchers one final area they seem to have

bypassed: the effect of the mind-set of dogs on the aging process.

Coco has convinced me that physical achievements at an old age depend

as much on the head as the body. I can’t jump a 12-inch hedge, although I

once held the Fort Wayne, Ind., record for the 110-yard-high hurdles.

But Coco, who doesn’t know she’s 98, still almost effortlessly jumps

onto chairs four times her height, challenges the Great Danes next door,

loudly berates any stranger who violates her space, and races about our

dining room table in a paroxysm of joy when we come home late at night

and let her in the house. The one thing in this area she has acquired

with age is some smarts. She’s equally capable of dragging herself

pitifully in response to any order or task of which she doesn’t approve.

So, although this study seems to send some mixed signals, it has

convinced me of one thing: From now on, I’m going to study Coco more

carefully for clues about how to age better. We’re in this together.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.