Paul Hetzler

PAUL HETZLER
The Advocate

Whether or not its precise definition is at the tip of our tongues, we all get the drift of what biogas means: there’s biology involved, and the result is gas.

If you’re ever on the same flight as the national sauerkraut-eating team on their way home after taking gold at the Paris Olympics, the biogas will be unmistakeable. And inescapable. More common (and less fictional) examples of biogas include cows’ belches and the bubbles that swarm to the water’s surface if you wade into a marsh.

Composed chiefly of methane (CH₄) at concentrations that range from 50 to 60 per cent, biogas can be used in place of natural gas for home-heating and to fuel internal-combustion engines to generate electricity.

28 times more potent than CO2

Formed by microbes under anaerobic conditions (oxygen-free), methane is a greenhouse gas more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere. Methane is valuable when harnessed and put to good use, but makes the world hotter when it’s released into the air. This is one of the reasons it’s crucial to “harvest” biogas that is naturally released by landfills and manure pits.

Methane itself is colourless and odourless, but biogas is not pure methane. In that context, one generally finds methanein the company of dodgy pals like hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), which is responsible for the rotten-egg smell of farts and swamp gas. Not only is hydrogen sulfide a stinker, at high levels it’s toxic and flammable as well.

Another contaminant is ammonia, which forms corrosive nitrogen oxides. In addition to being greenhouse gases, nitrogen oxides cause or worsen the symptoms of emphysema, asthma and bronchitis when we breathe them in. Landfill biogas is frequently tainted by siloxanes found in lubricants and detergents. Siloxanes are also hazardous to breathe. Before biogas can be used as fuel in commercial engines to generate power, these impurities must be filtered out.

Generates heat and electricity,

Even if biogas did not yield perks like heat and electricity, we’d still have to extract it from landfills to keep the darned things from blowing up. Methane accumulates in landfills as organic matter decomposes in oxygen-deprived conditions underground. This led to a spate of biogas explosions, some quite destructive, in landfills across the U.S. and Europe in the 1960s through the 1980s.

Although such events are less frequent now, landfill fires and explosions continue. Recent cases in southeast Calgary in 2022; and Orillia, Ont., and near Vernon, B.C., earlier this year; are reminders that even though biogas can generate electricity for us, not everyone has gotten the memo on the need to manage it.

Biogas is often made in something called a methane reactor, or digester, which “digests” animal manure, sewage or household garbage anaerobically. The resulting methane, which would otherwise have been released to the atmosphere, is collected and used for heat, electrical generation or other applications.

In addition, digester-sourced biogas, which is higher in methane and lower in impurities than landfill gas, can be injected into the natural-gas grid or compressed into liquid and shipped to world markets.

Quebec ships biogas

The first large-scale biogas project in the country began when the Trans Québec & Maritimes Pipeline started shipping biogas in 2003 from a landfill near Ste. Geneviève de Berthier in the Lanaudière region.  According to StatsCan, the number of biogas ventures in Canada rose twofold between 2010 and 2020, and is expected to double again by 2025.

In its essence, a methane digester is an air-tight vessel that is filled with animal manure, food scraps, spoiled hay or other cheap, abundant organic waste. Since plenty of bacteria are already in the organic matter, you don’t need to supplement them. The only element that’s missing is time. It can take anywhere from five to 90 days for methane to “ripen,” depending on the type of vessel, what you put in it and, of course, climate (digesters work faster in Vancouver than in Nunavut). In large-scale digesters, new material is continually moved through the vessel, whereas backyard setups need to be periodically cleaned out and recharged. The residue left over when the process is done is typically used for fertilizer.

Methane digesters generate revenue

These days, livestock farmers are being encouraged to install methane digesters as an additional source of income or to offset heating costs. Digesters reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and manure processed in a digester retains more nitrogen than manure stored in open-air lagoons. It’s not brain surgery, but there is a learning curve, as well as labour inputs. The Canadian Biogas Association (https://biogasassociation.ca/resources/funding_and_incentives) lists funding sources available to farmers who want to start making biogas. Further information can be found at https://farmingbiogas.ca/  

Digester technology works on a very small scale as well. Backyard units that run on household waste are common in developing areas of the world, and are gaining traction in western Europe. The Chinese have been involved with methane digestion since about 1960, and in the 1970s, roughly 6 million home digesters were given to Chinese farmers. Home digesters are popular in India, Pakistan, Nepal and parts of Africa. In Germany, Europe’s foremost biogas producer, the government gives incentives and subsidies to farmers and others to help them adopt digester technology.

Rural residents can buy home biogas kits online, as long as local regulations don’t prohibit their use. If you’re handy, instructions for making your own backyard methane digester are available.  

Biogas technology is growing as a discipline at many universities. If you’ve eaten too much sauerkraut, you’ll just have to let digestion run its course. Away from others, please.

Paul Hetzler
The Advocate

To help explain how evolutionary change occurs over time, Charles Darwin used the phrase “survival of the fittest,” meaning that organisms with traits best-suited to their surroundings are more likely to reproduce and pass on those attributes to their offspring. For most animals, it’s a slow process that takes countless generations, but we see it in real time with microbes.

When an antibiotic is used for a bacterial infection, on occasion there may be a very few that live due to a gene variation that lets them break down the drug. The survivors then multiply to form a new strain of resistant bacteria, eventually giving rise to “superbugs,” like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. While this is not exactly natural selection, the same principal holds true: the fittest microbes (in this case, those than can withstand a toxin) survive.

But in popular culture, the concept of “survival of the fittest” is often conflated with physical fitness. Extreme sport competitions have adopted the phrase as their motto, and it was even the title of a 2018 reality TV show. In nature, however, the fittest is rarely the strongest.

Though survival is about finding enough food and water, it’s also about not becoming an entrée on someone else’s menu. For most animals fitness is dodging fangs and claws to live another day.

For a lot of species, fitness is blending in with the background. While I’m impressed by photos of seamless camouflage, a full-length film on it would be like watching paint dry.

On the other hand, I’d buy tickets to watch an animal immobilize attackers with glue-like projectile vomit, spew jets of hot acid at predators, or use its internal organs as projectiles.

Faking death works

Even faking death to avoid actual death is a theatrical affair.

If I were faced with something that wanted me for supper, like a zombie or a bear, my inclination would be to run. Dropping to the ground inert wouldn’t be top of mind. Yet, for a few critters, it seems to work. A well-known example is the Virginia opossum, also known as the American opossum, whose dramatic death re-enactments gave rise to the phrase “playing possum,” meaning to play dead, or to be a faker in general.

Found throughout southern Quebec and Ontario, as well as parts of British Colombia, this native marsupial has been expanding its range northward for decades. If you haven’t seen opossums in your area yet, you very well might in the future. Contrary to popular belief, it does not “play” dead. When threatened, an involuntary response called tonic immobility kicks in. Its muscles go rigid and its heart rate and respiration drop sharply.

Deeply unconscious in this state, it might be a tempting morsel to a carnivore, except that it also salivates profusely, urinates, defecates and releases a foul-smelling fluid from its anal glands. Apparently, no self-respecting predator wants to deal with that mess.

Other animals that exhibit this behaviour include reptiles, like the eastern hognose snake, which is native to Quebec, and at least one type of snake bleeds from its mouth as part of its act. Feigned death is known in a number of rodent and bird species, as well as insects. Tonic immobility can even occur in humans during acute traumatic events.

Some resort to goo

Chemical defense is an ancient survival tool used by microbes, fungi, plants and, of course, animals. The perfect example of this may be the striped skunk, abundant in southern Canada and found as far north as Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. Its weapon of choice is N-butyl mercaptan, related to the nasty stuff put in natural gas so that we can detect a gas leak. It’s very effective, and skunk encounters are memorable and unpleasant.

It’s a good thing the bombardier beetle is not the size of a skunk, or we’d all be in trouble. Distributed throughout North America, this 2.5-cm-long beetle shoots a boiling-hot corrosive cocktail to nail predators as far as 20 centimetres away. Without exaggeration, its concoction is literally 100 degrees F. They have two special abdominal chambers, one for hydrogen peroxide, and the other for hydroquinone. When needed, these are combined, along with a catalyst, and a violent reaction ensues, jetting a defensive liquid at about 40 kilometres an hour.

The northern fulmar, a gull-like sea bird native to the eastern Canadian Arctic, launches a different sort of cocktail. When confronted by a bird of prey like an Arctic skua, it vomits a stream of putrid, oily goo that it keeps on hand in a stomach compartment for just such occasions. This orange substance often clogs the would-be assassin’s flight feathers so it can’t effectively fly for a time. More importantly, the oil strips the natural waterproofing from the predator’s feathers, which means it can’t float and could easily drown. 

When your profession is “prey,” you do whatever it takes to be fit enough to survive.

Paul Hetzler
The Advocate

In addition to being a reliable source of honey, not to mention personal satisfaction, backyard beekeeping can be a rich learning experience for the whole family. And yet, at the same time, honeybees are causing grave and, in some cases, irreversible harm to the environment.

It’s imperative that beekeepers learn about the threats to native pollinators posed by honeybees, and actively work to mitigate the damage as much as possible.

Just to be clear, honeybees are a non-native species whose population is burgeoning. They certainly don’t need our help to survive. Statistics Canada reports there were 783,575 honeybee colonies in Canada in 2021, up sharply from 561,297 in 2011 – a 40-per-cent jump in 10 years.

It’s true honeybees are vital to industrial-scale agriculture, like on California’s almond farms, which are the largest in the world, and in Florida’s citrus groves. Although they are relatively poor pollinators, they’re the only ones that can be transported in great numbers.

Outside of vast tree-crop plantations that are inhospitable to native bees, honeybees don’t measurably boost pollination rates, according to a multi-year study by Cornell University. Led by Dr. Scott McArt, a bee specialist at Cornell’s Dyce Laboratory for Bee Research, the team concluded honeybees had an insignificant effect on pollination in all but the largest apple orchards in the study. The 110 species of wild bees the researchers cataloged on apple blossoms did the real work.

Honeybees displace other bees

The problem with honeybees is that they displace, and sometimes extirpate, native bees.

A long-running study by Concordia University noted that honeybee hives on the island of Montreal skyrocketed from less than 250 in 2013 to nearly 3,000 by 2020. During that time, the overall number of wild native bees across 15 sites dropped by an average of 1,200 per sample. Far more concerning was the loss of diversity. In 2013, 163 species of wild bees were documented. In 2020, that number was 120. Forty-three species of native bees disappeared from the record in seven years due to honeybees. That’s huge.

For years, professional beekeepers in the U.K. have been asking the public to moderate the recent “outbreak” of hives, which is putting native bees at risk. The London Beekeepers’ Association is concerned that “the prevailing ‘save the bees’ narrative is often based on poor, misleading or absent information about bees and their needs. It can imply that keeping honeybees will help bees.”

Push to limit honeybee populations

In fact, there is now a global push, led by current and former beekeepers, to limit honeybee populations in order to save wild bees, which do practically all the pollinating in the world.

One could dismiss such pleas from professional beekeepers as self-serving, but Andrew Whitehouse of the insect-conservation group Buglife agrees that the public’s unfettered embrace of honeybees is having dire consequences.

“We know the main reason native pollinators are in decline is a lack of wildflowers in our countryside and urban areas,” Whitehouse said. “To increase competition for limited resources puts a huge pressure on the wild pollinators.”

Too many honeybees also bring diseases to native pollinators.

As Dr. Jane Memmott of Bristol University in England has stated, honeybee hives are sometimes “little ecosystems of plagues and contagion.”

Invasion of the bees

Even the loudest critics of backyard beekeeping don’t want to see it banned. But anyone who likes the thought of a hive on their rooftop or back lot needs to remember the wildflowers in any locale are already spoken for by native pollinators. A meadow in bloom is not virgin territory that honeybees are free to exploit without impact. When a non-native species arrives in large numbers, there will always be repercussions.

It is a moral imperative that beekeepers – big and small – compensate for the nectar and pollen their honeybees consume in a season. Wild bees were there first, and relied on the existing forage to survive. If you keep bees, provide about one acre of flowering plants per hive. This is essential to keep native pollinators healthy.

Flowers that bloom at different times, grow to various heights, and have a multitude of floral structures and colours will serve the greatest diversity of native pollinators. Very often, this can be achieved by simply letting things go wild. Maybe cut back (so to speak) on mowing. Choose some areas to mow once a year in late fall, and others to cut every second or third year.

Bumblebees, which are four times more effective at pollinating than honeybees, often nest in rock piles and old foundations, things that tend to get “tidied up” as rural areas get more populated. Mason bees make use of all types of unkemptness for their nests. Since both kinds of bees are super-pollinators, a small decrease in their population is worrisome. A change in mindset regarding aesthetics will go a long way toward saving bees of all stripes.

And finally, if you don’t have land on which to grow wildflowers, please curb your enthusiasm. Seriously. Divesting is best, but cutting back is good, too. Perhaps one hive can suit your needs, rather than two or three.

Paul Hetzler
The Advocate

As a longtime gardener who likes to make healthy and eye-pleasing meals, I enjoy the colourful veggies that have come on the market in the past decade or so. Even apartment-dwellers with space on a balcony or patio for a few containers can now grow red lettuce, orange cauliflower, pink potatoes, golden beets, black tomatoes and purple carrots. These and other rainbow-hued produce are also available at farmers’ markets and in large grocery stores.

But as Doctor Suess noted in his children’s book Green Eggs and Ham, pigmented foods need the right context or people are likely to balk.

While bright colours are charming in a stir-fry or omelette, purple milk and orange meatloaf don’t have the same appeal.

Aside from blueberries, blue foods are a tough sell for me. Only chicken cordon bleu with a glass of Blue Nun sound enticing, and neither of those is actually blue. In particular, I find the phrase “blue fungus” to be an appetite suppressant. And yet, an edible blue mushroom called Lactarius indigo may provide us with a powerful means of battling the climate crisis, as well as helping to alleviate food and water insecurity.

Also known as the indigo milk-cap or blue milk-mushroom, L. indigo is native to forested regions of eastern North America, East Asia, Central America and parts of Western Europe. This mushroom’s most unusual feature is that when cut or broken, it oozes a milky blue latex. Once exposed to the air, its gooey blue “blood” slowly turns green. All of which screams “yum,” of course.

The indigo milk-cap is one of many species of mycorrhizal fungi that form symbiotic relationships with tree roots. Though mycorrhizae take small amounts of sugars from roots, they greatly boost their efficiency, allowing trees to absorb water and nutrients more readily. In this win-win scenario, L. indigo lives off trees while making them healthier and faster-growing overall.

Eaten fresh, indigo milk-caps are said to have the crispness of an apple. Their flavour varies from site to site, but is usually described as mild, and when cooked tastes similar to a portobello. Indigo milk-caps and other mushrooms can also be processed to mimic seafood, meat and cheese products, as well as used to make soy sauce, or even fermented into wine and beer.

In a study published in February 2022, researchers from the University of Stirling in England, and El Colegio de la Frontera Sur San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico, showed that the amount of protein found in blue milk mushrooms on a hectare of forest exceeds that of beef cattle raised on a hectare of pasture. Not only that, the mushrooms can be harvested year after year with no inputs.

However, the real beauty of these mushrooms is that forests that are either inoculated with L. indigo spores, or already have existing populations of the fungus, remain intact. For a variety of reasons, it takes roughly a century for a tree seedling to become an effective carbon store. These “shroom-forests” will continue to grow and sequester carbon, thus helping to mitigate climate change, and all the while can still be used for recreation or hunting. Land managers can keep harvesting a percentage of mature trees on the same prudent schedule as before, without compromising forest health or affecting the L. indigo mushroom crop.

Worldwide, forests are being clear-cut at the alarming rate of about 24.7 million acres a year. In South America, around 85 per cent of deforestation is for the creation of pasture for beef cattle, and to grow other kinds of animal feeds. Worldwide, beef cattle burp enough methane each year to equal more than 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide, on top of the many other types of greenhouse-gas emissions caused by deforestation.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), “When sustainably managed, forests contribute significantly to reducing soil erosion….” The FAO also says forests help conserve water, protect fisheries, safeguard biodiversity and provide us with cultural and spiritual benefits.

The FAO reports that close to 80 per cent of humanity faces water insecurity. With about three-quarters of the world’s fresh water originating from forested watersheds, it’s more important than ever to leave forests in place. Harvesting blue milk-mushrooms on a portion of the woodlands now slated for conversion to beef pasture and planting new forests with trees inoculated with L. indigo are great ideas, but will require buy-in from landowners, and most likely some kind of government incentives as well.

Public acceptance of foods based on L. indigo will also be crucial. In 1960, Dr. Seuss got his characters to accept green eggs and ham by pestering them with an intrusive stalker. These days, such antics would get Sam-I-Am taken away in handcuffs. But with soaring food prices giving everyone the “food blues,” perhaps a good PR campaign can sell the world blue veggie-burgers and imitation cheese.

As severe weather events become increasingly common, as well as more costly and destructive, consumer demand is likely to shift away from carbon-intensive food sources to some degree. Growing blue milk-mushrooms in your woodlot isn’t for every landowner. But it’s important to be aware of the many agro-forestry options that could give smaller diversified farms a leg-up as consumer tastes change going forward.

Paul Hetzler
The Advocate

If a certain fungus is not available this year, Santa’s sleigh will be grounded on Christmas Eve, and gloom will reign at the North Pole.

Sometimes called the fly agaric because it supposedly was once used to kill flies, A. muscaria is common throughout North America and Eurasia from temperate latitudes to the far north. If you spend much time in the woods, there’s a good chance you’ve seen this fungus. It’s actually a tree-root symbiont, taking a small amount of sap from tree roots, but greatly boosting their efficiency in return.

Fungi are always present in a forest, although we can’t see them. By weight as well as volume, the vast majority of any fungus is hidden underground, or in things like old snags, stumps and logs. The “body” of a fungus is the dense, often mat-like mycelium that you may find under the bark of a dead tree or if you chop into rotted wood. Its “arms” are threadlike hyphae that extend out from the mycelium in search of neat stuff to do, like talking to trees (we think) and eating small animals (well, nematodes).

Mushrooms are what happen when fungi get in the mood to make babies. They don’t scroll through “Timber” for a hook-up, though, or otherwise have fun reproducing. If a fungus has consumed lots of organic matter for energy and enough moisture is present, it pushes out some erect structures like ’shrooms or conks (a.k.a. brackets, shelf-fungi), depending on species. These are called fruiting or spore-bearing bodies. Tiny spores, zillions of them, rain from the undersides of fruiting bodies and are carried on the wind to germinate elsewhere.

The fruiting body of A. muscaria is big: Its domed cap is known to get 30 centimetres or more in diameter, though 8-20 cm across is more typical, and it stands 6-20 cm tall. Sporting a bright reddish (orange on occasion) cap studded with prominent white spots, the fly agaric is one of the most recognizable free-standing mushrooms in the world; it’s the big polka-dotted red mushroom of colouring books, garden statuary, and Alice in Wonderland.

A. muscaria has psychoactive properties, and for millennia has been ritually ingested by Siberian shaman. It is also eaten by wild reindeer for – well, flying, I guess. Comet, Cupid, and loads of other blitzed reindeer (or caribou as we know them) have been seen lurching about after they’ve selectively browsed these mushrooms.

Santa’s reindeer-powered sleigh entered pop culture in the late 19th century, which is no surprise given that reindeer have had a close relationship with humans for millennia. At least a dozen thriving cultures still rely on this species today, including the Inupiat, Inuit and Gwich’in of North America and the Sámi of Nordic countries and northwest Russia.

Saint Nick’s team is shown having antlers, even though males shed theirs in autumn. However, unlike other members of the deer family, female reindeer also have antlers, which they keep until after spring calving. Clearly, Santa’s coterie of coursers are females. It figures – that’s who does most of the work in our species, too.

Naming these animals wasn’t Santa’s invention. The Sámi, traditional herders of feral reindeer, name the ones they train to pull sleighs. But airborne gift delivery may have been Santa’s brainchild. He knew that reindeer leg tendons click loudly as they walk or run. It’s hard to sneak up on kids with nine reindeer making a racket like hail on a tin roof. Good thing someone told him about Amanita muscaria.

The name Amanita may ring a bell: A close relative of the fly agaric, Amanita phalloides or death-cap, made the news this fall when three people in Australia were killed by a vengeful in-law. Turns out she slipped a few caps into their stew. Native to Eurasia, the death-cap was introduced to the Pacific coast and is now on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. Just a cap fragment can devastate one’s liver and kidneys, making organ transplant the only “antidote.”

But our cheerful A. muscaria, in addition to being hallucinogenic, can induce nausea. This unpleasant side-effect is mitigated by drying with gentle heat – high heat takes all the fun out of the fly agaric by destroying its mind-altering properties. In Siberia and other regions, A. muscaria was often placed in stockings and hung near a fireplace to dry. This way, the moderate heat rendered them (mushrooms, not stockings) OK to use. Maybe it’s just me, but the image of stockings full of red-and-white stuff, hung by the chimney (with care, presumably) sounds familiar.

If you’re skeptical about a fungus-Christmas link, search for “mushroom Christmas” online and you’ll get a bazillion, give or take a few, images of A. muscaria tree ornaments, cards, candle holders, wrapping paper, and you-name-it.

In Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong’s hilarious 1971 sketch “Santa and His Old Lady,” Cheech explains how the flying sleigh is fuelled by “magic dust” that Santa gives the reindeer, and then takes himself. Maybe it’s a reference to fly agaric – who knows?

Although it grows throughout most of Quebec, please don’t experiment with A. muscaria. For one thing, autumn-picked mushrooms are said to be up to 10 times stronger than those gathered in spring and summer. Also, potency varies by site.

From tree ornaments to stockings full of goodies, the fly agaric has inspired many of the secular trappings of Christmas. If Cheech and Chong are right, it could account for Santa’s unnatural jolliness, too. And we know it’s the reason Santa’s team are able to soar around the world delivering presents. But then, maybe the reindeer only think they’re flying.

Paul Hetzler
The Advocate

Children who grow up on farms are privileged, though they may not always see the truth of that until later on. It seems much of the “digital generation” become adults, chronologically, at least, without knowing how to use a hammer, let alone fix a flat or do an oil change.

Farm kids learn many skills that serve them well, both on and off the farm. These can range from tractor safety, welding and engine repair to greenhouse management, direct marketing, and produce traceability. In every case, farm kids learn to work hard and problem-solve in the real world. In the process, they gain self-confidence. This is priceless.

But there are more fundamental, if lesser known, benefits of rural life. Kids who grow up surrounded by nature have a big mental, physical and cognitive lead over urban kids. There is solid proof that daily exposure to things like trees, animals, rocks, birds and open sky makes children feel happier and more confident. They’re more active, less anxious and learn better.

Scientists haven’t yet mapped all the neurological and biochemical pathways behind these effects. But controlled experiments from around the world agree the positive changes that happen when kids live close to nature are real.

According to a 2018 Danish study, youngsters who get outside on a regular basis have a lowered risk of depression, schizophrenia, eating disorders and substance use later in life.

Outdoors helps attention

In 2011, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that being outdoors lessens childhood ADHD symptoms. In fact, a growing number of psychologists now think time spent in nature could restore attention on a long-term basis.

Here’s an eye-opener: When children simply play with dirt, their anxiety and stress levels drop more than play that does not involve getting muddy. And they feel happier. This makes me wonder if breathing dirt while doing field work on an open-cab tractor does the same.

Connecting with nature also improves what’s known as eudaimonic well-being, a deep sense one belongs in the world. In other words, farming helps give life meaning. It’s probably one reason so many farmers can keep going in the face of daily challenges.

In addition, dirt (or soil) is vital for strong childhood immune systems. A study done in Finland looked at 10 urban day-care centres with concrete play yards. At five centres, researchers built “forests” for kids to use, trucking in good topsoil and native trees, shrubs and flowers. After four weeks, blood tests showed that the immune systems of kids who played in the dirt were notably healthier than their initial baseline at the start of the study, and the control group.

Effects on immune systems

The research team concluded a nature-poor childhood, the norm in our culture where 80 per cent are urban-dwellers, results in “uneducated immune systems.” This may render kids prone to immune-mediated ailments like severe allergies and celiac disease.

Immune systems aren’t the only things “educated” by nature. School performance is enhanced as well.

Pupils who spend time outdoors absorb material faster and retain more of what they learn. And the longer kids spend in fields, forests or streams, the bigger their academic gains are.

A 2019 study from the University of Chicago showed connecting with nature “improves working memory, cognitive flexibility and attentional control.”

In another experiment, students who looked out at green space for 40 seconds before a test did better than those who didn’t. Several other studies have shown listening to natural sounds raises marks on tough exams.

Nature inspires kindness

It’s been documented that nature makes kids nicer: primary-school students are kinder to peers and adults after forays into nature than after visiting urban landmarks.

Researchers at the University of Rochester report exposure to the natural world makes people tend to nurture relationships, value community more and be more generous.

Fortuitously, kids have an innate attraction to nature. If adults want to encourage kids to explore and examine the real world, stuff like magnifiers, notebooks, trowels and containers can enrich their experience. Let kids bring nature indoors by making space (within reason) at home for moss, rocks, bark and other found items.

Nothing beats direct experience for getting kids’ attention. Young folks will remember yellow birch if they make wintergreen tea from its twigs. Spicebush smells like cloves, while black cherry reeks of bitter almond. Teen girls have particular respect for the white pine when they learn of its historic link with North American women’s rights. Kids and youth can learn to make a superb pink lemonade from the berries of staghorn sumac. And it’s OK to bring in a little tech into the picture now and then; free phone apps to identify plants, insects and birds abound.

The summer I was 13, I began full-time work on a neighbour’s farm, a 2,700-acre mix of dry beans, corn, wheat, contract-grown sweet corn and dairy-replacement heifers. From that point, I was hooked, staying on for 10 more years. I wasn’t aware of the benefits of being out in nature back then, but these likely factored into the picture. The job came at a time it was best I was out of the house, and it’s fair to say the self-confidence and time in nature I got on the farm saved my teenage life. The hard-earned pay was welcome, but not the main benefit.

Even if children move away and don’t take over the family farm, they’ve profited from starting out there. Most of us have kids in our lives – nieces, nephews, grandkids – in urban areas. Let’s take them out to dig holes and get muddy as much as possible. It brings out their best nature. 

Paul Hetzler
The Advocate

There is good news about treating cognitive decline – and it’s tasty. 

In North America, nearly one in 10 adults over the age of 65 has some form of dementia, including Alzheimer’s, while another 20 or so per cent have mild cognitive impairment. With treatment costs rising and our senior cohort expanding faster than the population at large, dementia is a topic that won’t  get old any time soon.

Though Alzheimer’s disease was first described in 1906, it seems to have been mostly forgotten until the mid-1970s, when real research began. Historically, those with dementia were locked in asylums and subjected to brutal “cures,” like lobotomies and electric shocks, practices that continued through the 1950s. Later, anti-psychotics, like haloperidol, came into vogue for calming aggressive patients ­– until it was found these drugs made dementia worse.

Donepezil and other cholinesterase inhibitors, which tweak brain chemistry to aid memory, came on the scene in the late 1990s. And now, there’s a drug called lecanimab, which was just approved this year, that slows or even prevents the formation of brain plaques thought to cause Alzheimer’s and certain other dementias. 

More than drugs to treat dementia

But treatment goes beyond medication. Proven techniques for mild dementia include what’s known as cognitive stimulation therapy. In a group setting, patients discuss world events, collaborate on novel tasks and play word and math games. For those with advanced brain disease, reminiscence therapy is a one-on-one talk about times past, using beloved objects or favourite songs to help spark memories.

We know smell and recall are closely linked. But until a few years ago, aromatherapy for dementia patients was relegated to non-medical use by family and friends of loved ones, since there was little science to support its value. Fortunately, that has all changed.

The reason smells can evoke deep emotions and rich memories is because other sensory inputs go through the thalamus, a “sorting hat” that routes data for processing elsewhere in our brains. But aromas zip from our olfactory bulb directly to our hippocampus, without passing “GO” or collecting $200. The hippocampus is involved in memory formation, and has been shown to be more strongly connected to smell than to any other sense. Aroma is likely how Santa, who’s hundreds of years old, still keeps track of all those kids and presents. He’s got fragrant evergreen boughs, a tang of reindeer dung and smoky chimneys to jog his memory.

Mice respond well to mint

In a report that came out in April, researchers from the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, detailed how a mere whiff of menthol, an essential oil extracted from mint leaves, improved cognitive function in mice. I’m not sure if we need or want our mice to be any smarter, but that’s what happened to every test animal. However, this is not the most intriguing part of the study.

In addition to normal mice, the research team got their hands on a strain of transgenic mice that were modified to have the kind of brain plaques that cause Alzheimer’s disease in people. These poor mice got dementia quite young. To the researchers’ surprise, brief daily exposure to mint oil for six months was enough to completely halt cognitive decline in mice with Alzheimer’s.

The cool thing about mint is that it’s easy to grow. In fact, the hard part might be keeping it in check. It prefers moist, rich soils, but seems to thrive just about anywhere. Place a fresh mint sprig in water, and it will begin to root in a week or so. Once the roots are fairly well developed, transfer it to a corner of your property where it won’t be a nuisance if it spreads. Dried mint can be kept in glass jars for use in winter.

Essential oils improve brain function

A topically related study at the University of California at Irvine this year took aromatherapy one step further. Published in July, the report states that diffusing trace amounts of essential oils into the air during sleep improved brain function 226 per cent in adults age 60-65. The odorants used in the six-month trial were not specified, but it’s a safe bet mint oil works as well, if not better, than other scents. I’ve already begun doing this at night. I’ll let you know when I feel 226 per-cent smarter.

Study looked at effects of maple syrup

In 2016, scientists from the University of Toronto went public with findings – which they admitted were preliminary – that maple syrup helps prevent Alzheimer’s. Natural phenolic compounds in maple syrup seem to keep tangles and plaques from forming in the brain. It’s only right that this research took place in the maple capital of the world. Since that time, studies in the U.S. continue to affirm the results from the earlier work at the University if Toronto.

Exercise, good sleep habits, a balanced diet and plenty of social interaction will help protect brain function. It’s best to avoid smoking and limit alcohol as well.

Given this new information on the benefits of eating syrup and sniffing menthol, I think we should all add mint ice cream topped with maple syrup to our diets. Just to give our brains a leg up. There’s no sense taking chances.