Danny ChaiI’ve heard many, many parents say that having children makes you lose brain cells somehow. There may be something to that, because I’m definitely getting dumber. I had this lunch interview last week and the guy was asking me my M.S. advisor’s name. And for the life of me, I could not remember. You have to understand, this guy is uber-famous in the AI world, a pioneer. Also, his name is such that there’s repetition in the first and last name, like Kris Kristofferson, Magnus Magnussen, or Boutros Boutros-Ghali (bonus points if you know who all three of those people are). And still, I could not recall his freaking name. Totally embarrassing.
It’s not just that, it’s everything; my recall has gone way, way down. I have no idea what’s going on. Honestly, I’m a little worried about it; maybe it’s a harbinger of really bad things to come. You may not know this but I have hypochondriac tendencies, and my biggest worry is that I have Alzheimer’s Disease. I worry more after reading about this book, which argues that Alzheimer’s Disease is a disease much like Mad Cow disease, also caught by eating tainted beef.
The authors note that the progression of Alzheimer’s is much like Mad Cow and CJD, and all form tangle like structures in the brain. Also, Alzheimer’s was virtually absent in the medical literature until the past 100 years, which is when modern beef processing techniques (where they feed naturally vegetarian cows remnants of other cows, the process by which Mad Cow spreads) emerged. When other countries introduce similar techniques, the rate of Alzheimer’s goes up. In countries where this type of beef production and consumption is low, like India, the rate of Alzheimer’s is very low.
I saw this chart where they plot beef consumption per capita and the rate of Alzheimer’s disease for different countries and it correlates very closely. Totally disturbing. So yeah, I’m seriously contemplating not eating beef unless I know for sure it’s fully grain-fed.