Eat Your Veg and Make Art

 

Fondly remembering the cast of the DC-area premiere of Itโ€™s My Party!, October, 2025

 

Want to live a longer-than-average life? But โ€œlongevity brosโ€ kind of creep you out? Hereโ€™s a new strategy that does not involve injections, pills, weird workouts or restrictive diets

recent study out of University College London (UCL) found that ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜จ๐˜ข๐˜จ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ต๐˜ด is good not only for your brain, but for your body.

Leading to a possibly longer life.

โ€œโ€ฆ ACEng [arts and cultural engagement] a much more recently recognized health behavior, is related to epigenetic aging, with magnitudes comparable to PA [Physical activity]. These findings position ACEng as a potential contributor to healthy aging at the biological level, supporting its inclusion in public health strategies.โ€ 

As someone who has long had to fight the notion that art is "good for kids" โ€œa frill,โ€ โ€œa nice to have but not a ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ท๐˜ฆ,โ€ I am glad to see this study making the rounds.

As an arts practitioner whose public speaking clients inhabit non-arts spaces, I am frequently extolling the benefits of arts participation.

There have been studies before, linking arts to brain health and emotional health. But it's an especially wonderful thing to read that arts engagement is a health behavior that can decelerate, and ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜บ ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ epigenetic aging!

Because I need to live a ๐˜ญ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต longer to get all my stuff done.