From Presidents to Pop Stars: The Remarkable World of Lefties

Ready to discover how the left-handed among us may hold the keys to stroke recovery, complex reasoning, and even financial success? I'm Teresa, your host for the Infuse YOU podcast, and this week we're celebrating Left Handers Day with a deep dive into the world of the leftie. From famous former presidents like Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, to musical icons like Paul McCartney and Lady Gaga, we'll explore the surprising advantages of being left-handed. Join me as we raise a toast to lefties around the world, and uncover the health perks and enhanced creativity that comes with being a southpaw.

Next week, the celebration continues as we honor National Couples Day. You’ll hear personal anecdotes and historical facts that will warm your heart and leave you feeling closer to your significant other. Whether you're left-handed, right-handed, or ambidextrous, there's something for everyone in the Infuse YOU podcast. So, grab your favorite mug (left-handed, of course), and join me as we embrace the uniqueness in all of us, sharing love and joy on our journey together.

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Chapters

• 0:09 Celebrating National Left Handers Day
• 8:36 Celebrating Left-Handedness and National Couples Day

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Welcome to season two of the Infusion podcast. My name is Teresa and I am your host. I'm excited to be back for another season. The goal of this podcast is to help women and young girls fill up their cups. Oftentimes, we are so focused on helping and supporting others that we forget to take care of ourselves too. My mission is to spread love and joy through movement, education and motivation.

Speaker 1: 0:32

Today we are celebrating National Left Handers Day. So the truth is, I had no idea that there was a day that was dedicated to people like myself that are left handed, but it shouldn't have surprised me, since there is literally a national day for almost everything. So some famous left handers are presidents, former presidents, ronald Reagan, bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Also, paul McCartney and Jimmy Hendrix are the world's greatest left handed guitarists. There's also Oprah Winfrey, julia Roberts and Lady Gaga, who are all left handed. In the baseball world, we had the legendary South Paws, babe Ruth and Sandy Kofax, so I guess this puts me in some good company.

Speaker 1: 1:17

Being a left handed individual, I used to always tease my friends in school and tell them that left handed people were smarter because there were so few of us. Few of us, excuse me. Statistics currently show that approximately 12% of the people in the world are left handed. International Left Handed Day celebrates the differences and the distinctiveness of left handed individuals. This day was first celebrated by Dean R Campbell, founder of the Left Handers International Inc. This was back in 1976. Didn't know that either. Didn't even know that it existed. So if you're left handed like me, grab your left handed cup and make a toast to all the left handers everywhere.

Speaker 1: 1:56

Now, although I am left handed, I can do lots of things with my right. So some people call me double jointed or ambidextrous. I can never say that word correctly, but I write with my left hand. I do mostly everything with my left hand. So some cool stats that I found interesting to learn about us lefties are in 1960, this is the year when left handed people were essentially seen as being in a league with the devil. They thought that something was wrong with left handed people. They were in cahoots with the devil because there were so few of them and they were different than the majority. Same things are going on today in the world about people of different backgrounds and ethnicity. So hey, we're different and that's okay. Now, less than 1% of the guitarists who play are left handed.

Speaker 1: 2:47

Now this one really got me, because I suffer from allergies. Have you ever thought about starting your own podcast? Do you like to talk to people? Do you have something to share with the world? Well, if that is, you just like I was. I was so confused, didn't know where to start, what tools to use, what tools I needed, but I'm so excited to be partnering with Buzz Sprouts. They helped me kickstart my podcast. They have all of the resources that you need, both in written form and also YouTube tutorials, and if you sign up for their paid plan, you will receive a $20 credit if you use the link in my profile bio and you will also be helping to support the infusion podcast.

Speaker 1: 3:24

So the likelihood for left handers to suffer from allergies is 11 times greater than right handed people. What? Now also another one that was very interesting. The percentage of left handers with bilateral limb movement is 94%. That's a big percentage.

Speaker 1: 3:45

This one was also very interesting. A lot of these were just reading them. I was like what? So the time that it takes left handers to reach puberty is four to five months later than their right-handed peers? Hmm, I don't think that was true for me, but that's what the stats say.

Speaker 1: 4:06

Okay, now, 23% of the men are more left-handed than women. 23% more men are left-handed than women. And then 40% of the top tennis players the current top tennis players 40% of them are lefties. Yay, go lefties. So I'm proud to be a lefty Always have been. Being left-handed has never made me feel like I was odd or awkward or not as good as others. So if you are a lefty and you are listening to this podcast, show your lefty pride. Don't let anyone make you feel or think that something is wrong with you because you are not among the majority of the world who are right handers. So what? Who cares right? Now, in addition to these cool stats that I shared about us left handers, I also found a list of some weird advantages that they say we have because we are left-handed. So I'm just gonna share a few. The first one is daydream believer. So lefties make up only about 12% of the population, but studies find that us lefties score higher when it comes to creativity, imagination, daydreaming and intuition. Get this. Lefties are also better at rhythm and visualization. I am a dance fitness instructor. I've been dancing since I was little, so maybe I got my rhythm because I'm left-handed who knows, this one was cool to find health perks.

Speaker 1: 5:43

So left-handed stroke victims reportedly recovered faster than right-handed stroke victims. Now, doctors couldn't find a clear reason. However, they do believe that it's due to left-handed people having the strength on both sides of their brain to succeed in a right-handed world. So, because many lefties are better at using their non-dominant hand, it's less difficult for them to recover from a stroke that damages one part of their brain. So that's great to know. I don't wanna have a stroke, but that's great to know.

Speaker 1: 6:16

Now, left-handed people are said to be good at complex reasoning, resulting in a higher number of lefty Nobel Priests winners Nobel Prize winners, excuse me writers, artists, musicians, architects and mathematicians. Now, I loved math when I was in school, was a whiz at it. I went all the way up to the highest math that I could take in high school, even though I didn't really need it to graduate. I just like math. So that explains a lot. According to research published in the American Journal of Psychology, lefties appear to be better at divergent thinking as well.

Speaker 1: 6:54

Lastly, I wanna share about sports. Actually, there's two more I wanna share. One is sports. So left-handers may have the edge in competitions where their opponents face each other, so that's like tennis, baseball and boxing. This is due to the fact that left-handed athletes have more opportunity to practice against right-handed opponents because mostly all of their opponents are predominantly right-handed, whereas on the opposite side, right-handed opponents don't face too many left-handed opponents, so they don't have anyone to practice against. One example that I found the boxers. We just saw a boxing match. If you watch boxing with Terence Crawford and Arrell Spence Now, roy Jones and Terence Crawford tend to switch to the Southpaw stance to take advantage of the fact that most fighters lack the experience against left-handed opponents.

Speaker 1: 7:45

But if you watch the fight that just happened recently, terence Crawford came out the gate in the Southpaw stance. He never started in the right stance and then switched it up, so a lot of people are saying that's why he won the fight against Arrell Spence. Now, I'm not a boxing fan, just sharing some stats, all right. Now the last thing about left-handers. Another weird advantage that they have listed for us is left-handed college graduates go on to become 26% richer than right-handed students.

Speaker 1: 8:15

In addition, four of the five original designers of the Macintosh, apple Computer guess what? They're lefties. So left-handers out there in the world, you got this. Whatever, you're reaching for your goals. Whatever you want to do, do you boo? Okay, I'm proud to be a lefty.

Speaker 1: 8:36

I hope you those of you that are listening that are lefties are proud to be lefties as well, and I'm super excited that I decided to do this episode to learn more about people like me. So tune in next week, because it's national couples day. Those of you that have been following me on this podcast, I love my national days. I'm always looking up what's coming up next because then I can share my own personal journey that's tied to that national day and also share some history around it.

Speaker 1: 9:03

As I said in the beginning, I am here to educate, to motivate, to move you through my podcast, through my fitness, through my everyday life. So next week is national couples day. I'm going to give you a sneak peek into my love life and share a little bit about how my husband and I have maintained our relationship for over 20 years Now. Believe me, it has not been a cakewalk. You have been listening to the infuse you podcast. I hope that something was said today that will help you along your life journey. Until next time, continue to do you, be you, infuse you and be blessed.