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Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)
A Link Between Wellness and Intelligence?
Ever wonder what role, if any, intelligence might play in the choice of a wellness lifestyle? Could there be some correlation between wisdom and wellness, preferably one that is not inverse? It might not surprise you to learn that I happen to have an opinion on this matter, and I'm willing to share it.
As one who more or less lives as well as promotes a wellness lifestyle, I'd like to believe intelligence plays a great role, that it helps to be smart if not brilliant or even perhaps a bit of a genius if you want to succeed at wellness. Haha. Unfortunately, there is no evidence for such a belief! Furthermore, I doubt anyone has done empirical work on this proposition, but the issue is important, so let's have a closer look.
Let's ask, "What do we really know about intelligence, what affects it and how might varied levels of it affect behavior patterns?" Not too much.
What about hot topics such as "Are varied races of equal intelligence?" Now there's a question few will touch in this era of political correctness. It's a question that could break up a friendship, ruin a dinner party and maybe start a war. It is almost as controversial as asking if women are as smart as men (or vice-versa)! A few brave souls here and there have studied some of these connections, but their complex conclusions usually create a firestorm of protest from those who are not flattered by the findings. In addition, the findings are always arguable due to the variables that account for differences in test scores.
So, let me put a milder question: "What IS intelligence?" Well, if I were smarter I might know. Think of it as Jim Holt recently did in a review of Arthur Jensen's recent book (The g Factor) as "the power of the 'chip' in your head, the information- processing capacity that IQ tests try to gauge." (For more on this topic, see the June 2, 1998 review column in the Wall Street Journal entitled "The Smart Set," page A20.)
Intelligence accounts for differences in the way we perform different mental activities, such as spatial tests, verbal analogies and arithmetic reasoning. Jensen's "g" factor refers to a single source of mental horsepower that is "general," that is, that drives all else. Here is the important point, in case you wondered where I was going with all this: Intelligence depends on brain size and density (men have bigger brains; the female brain is denser!) and electrochemical activity in the gray matter.
All of these conditions are affected by genes AND conditions in the womb, birth complications, early childhood diseases, nutrition and how much the parents or other nurturers talk to the infant (or play Mozart's music, according to some fanciful theorists not taken too seriously—though everyone admits listening to Eine Klina Knockmuzik does the parents no harm and surely lowers stress all around.)
While I can't prove this, I suspect that intelligence and a tendency to live a wellness lifestyle are affected by whether the kid is exposed to my books at an early age and how soon he/she gets his/her hands on a computer keyboard and signs on to the Wellness Center here at SeekWellness.com!
Be smart—choose a self-managing disciplined approach to lifestyle artistry. And enjoy.
Domain: mentalSubdomain: emotional intelligence
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