A healthy break

Last week’s column was about the relationship between sleeping and learning. I mentioned a radio-show interview with an expert on how sleep affects the brain; I had only caught part of the show and I promised to provide more information when I found it.

Well, I did find it. Here it is: The show aired on Oct. 16 as the “Fresh Air” segment of National Public Radio. NPR’s Terry Gross interviewed Matthew Walker, Ph.D. A synopsis of the interview is available at NPR.org.

Walker is the director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He’s also the author of the newly-released book, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. The 368-page book is published by Scribner and lists for $27.

Now that we’ve tied up that loose end, we might as well take a cigarette break and stick with the health theme today. At least it will pass the time until we can start happy hour. That’s not something you want to miss; I’m serving Halloween candy as today’s pupu platter.

Oh, the candy. Yes, the candy. No, the candy.

I’ve been fairly good at sidestepping the sugar trap in recent years. There’s no real reason for it; it’s just one of those general sail-trimming gigs that we warm up to in middle age. I’m lazy at heart, so I’d rather reduce bad habits than actually pick up any good ones.

But when I encountered a favorite old brand of soda at a general store a matter of weeks ago, well, I couldn’t resist. Before too long I was having one can a day.

During this span I happened to cross paths with a guy who wrote a book on, of all things, healthy eating. He gives lectures on the topic. I joked about my soda indulgence. A member of his cadre told me that a lot of people that look healthy from the outside are actually in bad shape because their livers are messed up from eating too much sugar.

So I figured I’d peruse a few books on the topic by doctors who seemed credible. Based on what I read it does seem likely that imbibing too much sugar can be a habit-forming gig that can, indeed, mess up some of our internal organs.

A little bit of candy isn’t going to ruin most of us. But let’s consider that having one large soda per day at a typical fast food joint can mean downing over five lbs of sugar over the course of one month. If I look at a 5-lb. bag of sugar, and if I contemplate the mechanisms inside me that have to process that stuff, it doesn’t seem like a winning proposition.

Anyway, this gig leads to a broader riddle, namely why we’d be designed to want things that aren’t good for us. That’s a profound question. It’s also a question that economics (my field of study in college) has never come to terms with.

In the textbook economic model of decisions and transactions, consumers are pursuing the maximization of their “hedonic” benefits. In other words, they want to be as happy as possible. That sure makes sense at first glance. After all, everybody wants to be happy. Right?

Well, not so fast.

What’s missing here is the fact that indulging an impulse is one thing, but being genuinely fulfilled is something else. We’ve taken two different, even competing, notions, and lumped them together under broad terms such as “happy.”

As for sugar, here’s some logic that makes sense to me: In primitive times, when starvation was a very real threat, getting enough sugar to eat was a matter of survival. But when we’re faced with a situation of constant abundance, our reflex to gobble it up becomes counter-productive. We’ve been dropped into a modern game but we’re still running an ancient operating system.

I’m not trying to stir up worries before the holidays commence. Still, Saipan is decidedly not immune to the woes that sugar can hold. I’ve heard doctors and nurses bemoan this situation for a long time now. I can’t fix the situation, but I can mention it sometimes. So that’s just what I do.

If you’re wondering if I’m going to make a pig of myself for Halloween, well, yes, of course I am. After all, I ain’t no goody-goody. I just want to be a little less bad.