Leisure activities, caregiving demands and catecholamine levels in dementia caregivers

This study examined whether satisfaction from leisure activities moderates the relationship between caregiving demands (i.e., hours per day spent caring for a spouse with dementia) and resting levels of the catecholamines norepinephrine (NE) and epinephrine (EPI). Spousal caregivers (n = 107; mean age = 73.95 ± 8.12 years) were assessed in home for plasma levels of NE and EPI, amount of care provided, and leisure satisfaction. Regression was used to determine whether leisure satisfaction moderated the relationship between hours providing care per day and catecholamine levels. A significant interaction was found between hours caregiving and leisure satisfaction for NE, but not for EPI. Post hoc regressions were conducted for both NE and EPI. At low leisure satisfaction, time spent caring for a spouse was positively associated with plasma NE (β = 0.41; p = 0.005) and EPI (β = 0.44; p = 0.003). In contrast, at high levels of satisfaction, time caregiving was not significantly associated with plasma NE (β = -0.08; p = 0.57) or EPI (β = 0.23; p = 0.12). These findings suggest that leisure satisfaction may protect caregivers from increases in catecholamines, which have been implicated in cardiovascular risk. Further support for these findings may impact psychological treatments for distressed caregivers.

A Longitudinal Analysis of the Relations Among Stress, Depressive Symptoms, Leisure Satisfaction, and Endothelial Function in Caregivers

Stress and depressive symptoms have been associated with impaired endothelial function as measured by brachial artery flow-mediated dilation (FMD), possibly through repeated and heightened activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Behavioral correlates of depression, such as satisfaction with leisure activities (i.e., leisure satisfaction), may also be associated with endothelial function via their association with depressive symptoms. This study examined the longitudinal associations between stress, depressive symptoms, leisure satisfaction, and endothelial function as measured by FMD.

Longitudinal Relationship of Low Leisure Satisfaction but not Depressive Symptoms With Systemic Low-Grade Inflammation in Dementia Caregivers.

Objectives.This study aimed to further elucidate the biobehavioral mechanisms linking dementia caregiving with an increased cardiovascular disease risk. We hypothesized that both elevated depressive symptoms and a behavioral correlate of depression, low leisure satisfaction, are associated with systemic inflammation.Method.We studied 121 elderly Alzheimer's disease caregivers who underwent 4 annual assessments for depressive symptoms, leisure satisfaction, and circulating levels of inflammatory markers. We used mixed-regression analyses controlling for sociodemographic and health-relevant covariates to examine longitudinal relationships between constructs of interest. RESULTS: There were inverse relationships between total leisure satisfaction and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α; p = .047), interleukin-8 (IL-8; p < .001), and interferon-γ (IFG; p = .020) but not with IL-6 (p = .21) and C-reactive protein (p = .65). Lower enjoyment from leisure activities was related to higher levels of TNF-α (p = .045), IL-8 (p < .001), and IFG (p = .002), whereas lower frequency of leisure activities was related only to higher IL-8 levels (p = .023). Depressive symptoms were not associated with any inflammatory marker (all p values > .17). Depressive symptoms did not mediate the relationship between leisure satisfaction and inflammation.Discussion.Lower satisfaction with leisure activities is related to higher low-grade systemic inflammation. This knowledge may provide a promising way of improving cardiovascular health in dementia caregivers through behavioral activation treatments targeting low leisure satisfaction.

"Two hundred ninety-four": Remediation and multimodal performance in tourist placemaking

We offer here a multimodal discourse analysis of a range of verbal (writing and speech), nonverbal (movement and gesture) and technological (photography and video) resources used by tourists at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In doing so, we pin-point the recycling and layering of mediatized representations (e.g. guidebooks and official brochures), mediated actions (e.g. climbing the Tower or posing in front of it), and remediated practices (e.g. posting a YouTube video of oneself climbing the 294 steps to the top of the Tower). Through this kind of empirically-based examination of tourists’ discursive and embodied performances – their ways of talking about and behaving in spaces – we witness how people never simply visit places but are always actively shaping and making these places. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is, therefore, as much an emergent production of the tourist imagination as it is a pre-existing, lop-sided construction of stone.

Aristeas the Tourist

"Herodotus the Tourist" was the title given by James Redfield to his inquiry into Herodotus's ethnological system (Classical Philology, 80.2, 1985: 97-118). Redfield's insights, together with François Hartog's monograph The mirror of Herodotus (University of California Press, 1988), definitively modified our interpretation of Herodotus's Histories. In the present paper, I analyse the so-called Letter of Aristeas from a narratological perspective, suggesting that the anonymous author of the Letter deliberately constructed his main character ("Aristeas") as a Herodotus-like figure, who visits Judea and Jerusalem as yet another "tourist". In so-doing, the author's pseudo-ethnographic text produces a specific Jewish self-definition and identity in the Hellenistic period, mirroring both Greek representations of the Jews as a people of philosophers, and a Jewish interpretation of the ideal bios philosophikos, best typified through the Jewish compliance with the Mosaic legislation.