Word: nuns
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Like some 4 million Americans, Sister Ada (not her real name) is suffering from Alzheimer's disease; as the years go by, she'll gradually lose her memory, her personality and finally all cognitive function. But advanced age does not automatically lead to senility. Ada's fellow nun, Sister Rosella, 89, continues to be mentally sharp and totally alert, eagerly anticipating the celebration of her 70th anniversary as a sister without the slightest sign of dementia. In a very real sense, this pair of retired schoolteachers haven't finished their teaching careers. Along with hundreds of other nuns in their...
Much of this knowledge comes from a single, powerful piece of ongoing research: the aptly named Nun Study, of which Sisters Ada and Rosella are part. Since 1986, University of Kentucky scientist David Snowdon has been studying 678 School Sisters--painstakingly researching their personal and medical histories, testing them for cognitive function and even dissecting their brains after death. Over the years, as he explains in Aging with Grace (Bantam; $24.95), a moving, intensely personal account of his research that arrives in bookstores this week, Snowdon and his colleagues have teased out a series of intriguing--and quite revealing--links...
Perhaps the most surprising result of the Nun Study, though, is the discovery that the way we express ourselves in language, even at an early age, can foretell how long we'll live and how vulnerable we'll be to Alzheimer's decades down the line. Indeed, Snowdon's latest finding, scheduled to be announced this week, reinforces that notion. After analyzing short autobiographies of almost 200 nuns, written when they first took holy orders, he found that the sisters who had expressed the most positive emotions in their writing as girls ended up living longest, and that those...
...driver for speeding through railroad crossings. She tacked posters of Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr. to her bedroom walls and affixed pictures of the Columbine victims to the bulletin board over her desk. Her parents say she wanted to be a human-rights activist--or a nun...
...partner had started a travel company in 1977, when she was 25. AmericanTours International, which operates U.S. tours for foreigners, now employs 300 and does $150 million a year in business. "[Mother Teresa] said each of us has to find our own Calcutta," says Irwin Hentschel, who promised the nun she'd use her business savvy to help the world's neediest people, especially women and children, help themselves. Her foundation supports humanitarian causes in several countries, but rather than sit behind a desk writing checks, Irwin Hentschel likes wading...