Family Health: Left Handed Day
International Left Handed Day was on 13th August. I have six children, four of whom are lefties and have wondered whether this was a help or hindrance for them...
Since 1976, 13th August has been observed as an annual day dedicated to the minority dexterity – lefties (southpaw). An estimated 10 percent of humanity has a dominant left hand – a breakdown that has stayed the same for the past 5,000 years.
In the Netherlands, USA and UK approximately 13% of people are left handed, whilst in Korea, China and Japan it is a much lower percentage at 2-4%.
The reason the proportion of left handers has remained a small but stable number throughout evolution is thought to be a balance of competitive and co-operative forces. Famous lefties include Barack Obama, Sir Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Rafa Nadal, Phil Mickelson and Leonardo Da Vinci.
The brain is cross-wired, meaning that the right side controls the left side of the body and vice versa. Hence the well known saying ‘only left handed people are in their right minds’. The right-hand side of the brain is thought to coordinate the left side of the body and control tasks to do with the arts and creativity.
Experiments showed that when given two tasks to complete simultaneously, southpaw participants performed best. This is because right handed people tend to solve problems by breaking them down into parts and analysing each piece one at a time. Whereas left handed people tend to look at the problem as a whole and use pattern-matching to try and solve it.
Studies show that creatives, such as painters and musicians were more likely to be left handers. It has also been shown that a higher than expected number of architects are identifi ed as being a lefty.
Lefties make especially good baseball players, tennis players, cricket batsmen, boxers and fencers (almost 40% of the current top tennis players and 50% of top baseball hitters are lefties). Essentially lefties tend to excel at sports where players face off one-on-one. This is because right-handed players are used to mainly playing against other right- handed players and not lefties.
It is likely that a tenth of the population will continue to be lefties at least for the next 5,000 years.
Dr Mark Bridgman
Hadleigh Lodge Surgery
www.thehadleighpractice.nhs.uk
Canford Bathrooms 07545 540794
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