I hope this expands around the country. It is sorely needed. And everyone benefits.
It is not a panacea, but researchers who have studied some of the country’s 300-plus intergenerational facilities over the past decade say the best of them provide some of the best care available for frail seniors.
Elderly adults participating in structured activities with children are more focused and in better moods than when children are not involved, scientists have found. Moreover, adults continue to be in better spirits after the children leave, suggesting the interactions may have lasting effects. Even adults with mild to moderate cognitive deficits do better when involved in activities with children.
Many older adults resist day care, even though it can delay or prevent a move to a nursing home and is less costly than professional home health care. A facility with children can seem especially humiliating. Some families get their loved ones through the door by urging them to volunteer to help with the children.
“The families tell them, ‘You have to go. The children need you,’” Ms. Hamilton-Cantu said.
photo by Iris Schneider
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Elderly adults in age-integrated daycare programs don’t actually take care of children — that’s the staff’s job — but they do have an enormous impact on children’s lives, researchers have found. Compared to their peers in traditional preschools, children in intergenerational daycare programs are more patient, express more empathy, exhibit more self-control and have better manners.
At ONEgeneration, there are no etiquette courses per se, but every time children and adults come together for an activity — and that can happen as many as eight times a day — they greet each other with, “Hi, neighbor!,” and shake hands. Children have been known to spot elderly strangers in malls and restaurants and call out to them: “Hello, neighbor!” Sometimes they even walk over and shake their hands.
Some news from Boston you may have missed.
Sal DiMasi, former Speaker of the Massachusetts House who resigned in January was indicted on public corruption charges for pocketing thousands of dollars in payments from a software company while using his office to make sure that company won state contracts.
That makes three speakers in a row indicted, two already convicted, writes Howie Carr in Bay State run by men of steal. "This isn't a democracy, it's a kleptocracy."
A corruption "Hat-trick". Massive corruption is the primary reason why it's not good when one party continues decade after decade to dominate local politics.
One 93-year-old, looking for a handicap parking spot at a Wal-Mart, hit the gas instead of the brakes and shot 25 feet inside the store, injuring nine people, including a mother and her one year old child.
While another old man, Roger Gentilhomme went out to play tennis for 2 hours, like he does every day, to celebrate his 100th birthday.
"The big question everyone asks is, 'What do you attribute this to?' " Gentilhomme said during a conversation at his home in Falmouth before driving himself to tennis. "Well, I can't attribute it to anything. I haven't the slightest idea why I'm here. But - and here's what I tell everyone - I do watch out for myself. If something starts irritating me, I try to find out what it is and get it fixed.
What leaped out for me was the Mass company that lists cadavers among its assets
Innovative Spinal Technologies, a medical device maker, shut down this year and listed among its assets in a federal bankruptcy filing, nine human bodies, including "eight previously used" cadavers.
James Tarento gibed, "What we want to how the company managed to find a cadaver that wasn't previously used!"
There will not be enough doctors, heath care or money when we boomers get old. We will have to take care of each other. Time we started learning how by paying attention to what our elderly people need most and that is to be seen and appreciated.
Mother Theresa, beatified by Pope John Paul II said "There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread."
True Grit : Growing Old in America by Jude Acosta
Ours is one of the few civilizations in recorded history that not only ignores the aged but devalues them. The way we have placed such emphatic priority on youthful sexuality, incessant and needless entertainment, and endless consumerism has in effect put the accrued wisdom of the elderly at philosophical and spiritual odds with everything the modern American marketplace stands for. We are a nation of Peter Pans and we believe that somehow we can avoid growing up if we just pretend that aging, like death, is for someone else, not us. And like very young children we cover our eyes and make believe the aged are not there.
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The irony is that while the increasing number of elderly in America may need more care and companionship than ever before, many, like my friend, Mr. Garry, will in fact be more alone. With less family living nearby, fewer social invitations, and little or no value in a world that places material success on par with spiritual salvation, they are often stuck at home, unable to care for themselves well or at all, and dependent upon government services instead of family. For many Americans, particularly those who live in front of the television, the aged and infirm are all but invisible.
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According to a growing number of mental health experts, loneliness is the greatest contributing factor to all manner of illness in our culture. University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo and writer William Patrick in their book Loneliness (WW Norton, 2008) state that loneliness is so serious a condition that it puts people at risk for heart disease, cancer and respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments. Citing three decades of research, they point out that loneliness can disturb our levels of stress hormones, immune function, and even gene expression, while positive human interaction increases levels of oxytocin, a bonding hormone that reduces blood pressure and cortisol levels. In this sense, loneliness is transformed from a purely "emotional" state to a measurable biochemical one.
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Contrary to current media spin, it does not take a whole village to change the situation of the elderly in this country. It takes one person, one moment, one conversation at a local park, and, like a sacred witness, the willingness to see them.
Last week the trustees reported that the Medicare will run out of money in less than 10 years, by 2017, two years ahead than projected last year. Social security will run out of money in 2037. It will start running deficits in 2017. The trust funds have always been a fiction since the surpluses have been used to reduce budget deficits.
From the summary issued by the trustees
Medicare's annual costs were 3.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2008, or about three quarters of Social Security's, they are projected to surpass Social Security expenditures in 2028 and reach 11.4 percent of GDP in 2083.
The argument goes Medicare is going to bankrupt us which is why we have to have universal health care. To which Megan McArdle replies
I hear this argument quite often, and it's gibberish in a prom dress. Any cost savings you want to wring out of Medicare can be wrung out of Medicare right now:
The Wall St Journal reports that the "unfunded liability" of Medicare over the next 75 years is $38 trillion. Yes, trillion. It's hard to wrap your mind around just how big a trillion is.
A trillion seconds ago, no one on this planet could read and write. Neither the Roman Empire nor the ancient Chinese dynasties had yet come into existence. None of the founders of the world's great religions today had yet been born.
A million seconds is 13 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years
Do you believe the White House estimate that it could save $2 trillion in health care over 10 years just like that the Boston Globe asks.
President Obama is right that the cost of healthcare, now more than 16 percent of the economy, is simply unsustainable.
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But will the industry's gauzy pledges of better coordination of care, more standardization of insurance claim forms, reduced administrative costs, and greater efficiency actually yield the promised savings?
Wesley Smith says we're Pushing Health Care Rationing By Not Discussing Health Care Rationing
rationing prohibits health care funders from paying for otherwise covered treatments, based on the patient’s age, state of health, disability, or perhaps, because the patient committed politically incorrect lifestyle crimes such as smoking or being overweight.
The rationing has already begun and the elderly are hardest hit.
Viking Pundit reports on a story in the Boston Globe on the "pathbreaking effort to cut medical costs" begun by Massachusetts General Hospital: send home the frail elderly from the hospital sooner and reduce their emergency room visits.
Medicare is now the country's largest purchaser of health care. OMB budget chief Peter Orszag believes that "comparative effectiveness research" will determine what works best. Problem is virtual colonoscopies work best for the elderly but not for anyone else. So as the WSJ reports in How Washington Rations, Medicare now will refuse to reimburse for virtual colonoscopies.
The problem is that what "works best" isn't the same for everyone. While not painless or risk free, virtual colonoscopy might be better for some patients -- especially among seniors who are infirm or because the presence of other diseases puts them at risk for complications. Ideally doctors would decide with their patients. But Medicare instead made the hard-and-fast choice that it was cheaper to cut it off for all beneficiaries. If some patients are worse off, well, too bad.
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All this is merely a preview of the life-and-death decisions that will be determined by politics once government finances substantially more health care than the 46% it already does. Anyone who buys Democratic claims about "choice" and "affordability" will be in for a very rude awakening.
David Brooks in Fiscal Suicide Ahead says that for Obama Health care costs are now the crucial issue of his whole presidency.
Brain Gyms are the latest in mental health writes Kelly Greene in the Wall St Journal
Patrons pay $60 a month to work out on 20 computer stations loaded with "mental fitness" software, including a "neurobics circuit" that purports to stretch the brain. Ms. Bucklin says she's addicted to an art-auction game that displays a dozen Monets for purchase. "Then they'll intersperse them with other Monets, and you have to tell them apart," she says. "I minored in art history, and I still find it difficult."
Thousands of Americans are choosing to join a small, but growing, number of "brain gyms" springing up around the country. Similar brain-teaser programs are available on home computers, sometimes free of charge. The scientific jury is still out on the efficacy of such software.
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More than 700 retirement communities have added computerized brain-fitness centers in the past three years, according to Alvaro Fernandez, co-founder of SharpBrains Inc., a firm that surveys the brain-fitness software market.
"We saw this area explode last year," says Mr. Fernandez. He estimates that consumers spent more than $80 million in 2008 on mental fitness. "You have an industry with tools and coaches. This is more real than people think."
The industry pins its claims for brain exercise on a relatively new scientific discovery: neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to rewire itself throughout life by creating neural connections in response to mental activity
Peggy Griffiths is nuts for Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bars, eating 30 a week. Clearly to her benefit as she is now 100 years old.
Her daughter Eileen Osborne, 69, added: 'When mum was a little girl, her mother told her that sweets were bad for you but chocolate was good.
'Ever since then she only ever ate chocolate, never any of the other snacks on offer.
'She absolutely loves it. In the past ten years she has eaten her way through 30 bars per week. We're always told too much chocolate isn't good for you - but it has got her to her 100th birthday.
If you're over 40, don't worry too much about those last ten pounds.
Scientists who have studied facial aging say
“Excessive loss of weight can be detrimental to youthfulness and attractiveness,’’ Dr. Guyuron said. “It’s a warning if you lose too much weight after the age of 40.’’
Other factors that may accelerate facial aging are what you would expect - smoking, sun exposure, stress - and what you wouldn't - use of antidepressants.
Twins and the Wrinkles of Aging from the Well blog at the New York Times.
Despite growing numbers on the road, fewer older drivers died in crashes and fewer were involved in fatal collisions during 1997-2006 than in years past. ... Crash deaths among drivers 70 and older fell 21 percent during the period, reversing an upward trend, even as the population of people 70 and older rose 10 percent. Compared with drivers ages 35-54, older drivers experienced much bigger declines in fatal crash involvements.
This runs counter to what most of us think. Turns out people limit their own driving as they get older. They know themselves and know their own limits.
The oldest drivers were more likely to say they restricted their own driving. Drivers 80 and older were more than twice as likely as 65-69 year-olds to self-limit driving by doing such things as avoiding night driving, making fewer trips, traveling shorter distances, and avoiding interstates and driving in ice or snow. The percentage of drivers who said they limit their driving increased with each added degree of impairment.
People under 25 are the most dangerous ones on the road, 188% more likely to cause crashes than middle-aged adults.
Let's hear it for Age, Wisdom and Driving
From the New Old Age blog, comes news of how aging boomers can care for each other when childless and without family
I learned I wasn’t alone in my fear when a New Old Age post last July, “Single, Childless and ‘Downright Terrified,’” drew more than 400 comments. Leaving aside an unpleasant back and forth among readers about whether those of us without families have chosen (and thus deserve) our solitary lives, it was a mournful chorus of women, and some men, with no special someone to sit by their hospital bed or bring them chicken soup in the event of illness.
Well, while some of us have been worrying, others are working to create a community-based model for people, particularly those who live alone, to band together and take care of each other. It’s called the Caring Collaborative, piloted in New York City last fall with plans for replication, and it’s the latest innovative project of The Transition Network, a membership organization of 5,000 women crossing the Rubicon from careers to retirement and from youth to old age.
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This is no amateurish kitchen-table project. Rather the Caring Collaborative is a foundation-funded, computerized operation that includes a service corps — members enrolled in the time bank — and an information exchange for sharing health-related expertise, connecting people newly-diagnosed with a disease to those who know the ropes and compiling lists of member-recommended doctors, products and services.
I think the best argument for our Second Amendment's right to bear arms is that the elderly, the disabled and those otherwise vulnerable do not have to live in fear but can protect themselves with a licensed gun.
That's just what a 91-year-old man in Florida did when he repelled two home invaders with his 38 caliber revolver to protect his wife of 72 years.
Terror erupted in the Johnsons' heavily barred house on Lake Stanley Road shortly after 4 p.m. Tuesday as the couple watched TV news. She was sitting in her wheelchair. He was sitting nearby on the sofa.
That's when a stranger stepped through the back door.
"What are you doing? What are you doing?" Berlie Mae Johnson, 90, remembered asking as the man stepped on her shiny-clean tile floor. "By then, he had the gun to my head. I don't know what all I said."
The man ordered the couple: "Be quiet. Don't say a word. Don't move."
Overcome by shock and fear, Berlie Mae Johnson said she couldn't move as a second man wearing a stocking over his face started to come through a sliding-glass door from the backyard.
"It's terrible. You don't know what [they're] going to do. You expect at any moment . . ." she said, her voice breaking. "I can't hold up. My nerves are shot. He'd probably have killed me."
But the love of her life was ready.
Her husband, who goes by Johnny, had his stainless-steel Police Special revolver tucked under a cushion on the sofa. He has been protective, she said, ever since they met at a Church of God service in Cocoa during the Great Depression.
"You don't think, man. You do what you have to do," Johnson said of how he grabbed his revolver as the second intruder entered. "He saw the gun and, boy, he was gone."
Shifting his aim, Johnson fired at the man still holding a gun to his wife's head.
"I shot as plain in his middle as I could have," said Johnson, describing how the man jumped and ran out the door. "I think I missed."
What a remarkable story.
The Legend of Cliff Young: The 61-year-old Farmer Won the World's Toughest Marathon
An Unlikely Competitor
Every year, Australia hosts 543.7-mile (875-kilometer) endurance racing from Sydney to Melbourne. It is considered among the world's most grueling ultra-marathons. The race takes five days to complete and is normally only attempted by world-class athletes who train specially for the event. These athletes are typically less than 30 years old and backed by large companies such as Nike.
In 1983, a man named Cliff Young showed up at the start of this race. Cliff was 61 years old and wore overalls and work boots. To everyone's shock, Cliff wasn't a spectator. He picked up his race number and joined the other runners.
The press and other athletes became curious and questioned Cliff. They told him, "You're crazy, there's no way you can finish this race." To which he replied, "Yes I can. See, I grew up on a farm where we couldn't afford horses or tractors, and the whole time I was growing up, whenever the storms would roll in, I'd have to go out and round up the sheep. We had 2,000 sheep on 2,000 acres. Sometimes I would have to run those sheep for two or three days. It took a long time, but I'd always catch them. I believe I can run this race."
When the race started, the pros quickly left Cliff behind. The crowds and television audience were entertained because Cliff didn't even run properly; he appeared to shuffle. Many even feared for the old farmer's safety.
The Tortoise and the Hare
All of the professional athletes knew that it took about 5 days to finish the race. In order to compete, one had to run about 18 hours a day and sleep the remaining 6 hours. The thing is, Cliff Young didn't know that!
When the morning of the second day came, everyone was in for another surprise. Not only was Cliff still in the race, he had continued jogging all night.
Eventually Cliff was asked about his tactics for the rest of the race. To everyone's disbelief, he claimed he would run straight through to the finish without sleeping.
Cliff kept running. Each night he came a little closer to the leading pack. By the final night, he had surpassed all of the young, world-class athletes. He was the first competitor to cross the finish line and he set a new course record.
When Cliff was awarded the winning prize of $10,000, he said he didn't know there was a prize and insisted that he did not enter for the money. He ended up giving all of his winnings to several other runners, an act that endeared him to all of Australia.
What a remarkable man.
Via Ronnie Bennett, the pre-eminent elder blogger comes this news
Memory can be an issue as we get older even without fear of dementia. Now, two new studies each have a different idea of what might help. You could try marijuana. Or, some different researchers suggest red wine. Make of it what you will.
Clicking on the links I found Scientists are high on the idea that marijuana reduces memory impairment
The more research they do, the more evidence Ohio State University scientists find that specific elements of marijuana can be good for the aging brain by reducing inflammation there and possibly even stimulating the formation of new brain cells.
The research suggests that the development of a legal drug that contains certain properties similar to those in marijuana might help prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Though the exact cause of Alzheimer’s remains unknown, chronic inflammation in the brain is believed to contribute to memory impairment.
Any new drug’s properties would resemble those of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive substance in the cannabis plant, but would not share its high-producing effects. THC joins nicotine, alcohol and caffeine as agents that, in moderation, have shown some protection against inflammation in the brain that might translate to better memory late in life.
And Red, red wine: How it fights Alzheimer's
Reporting in the Nov. 21 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, David Teplow, a UCLA professor of neurology, and colleagues show how naturally occurring compounds in red wine called polyphenols block the formation of proteins that build the toxic plaques thought to destroy brain cells, and further, how they reduce the toxicity of existing plaques, thus reducing cognitive deterioration.
I tapdanced as a young girl and later took it up again as a lawyer, taking lessons from old black man Stanley White who learned from the legendary Bojangles Robinson.
Here's Sammy Davis paying tribute
Now the London Times says A new generation is discovering the joys of tap dancing.
There's Tap Jam, a bi-monthly tap improvisation night with dancers aged 18 to 80
Back at Tap Jam the temperature is rising. The 130 people crammed into the basement at Digress, a bar on Beak Street, Soho, are a disparate lot. Young black men, old white ladies, super-cool Japanese students, well groomed hipsters in their middle years and twentysomething barflies. It's rare to find an 80-year-old retired secretary and a 31-year-old fire-eating belly dancer in the same place, but it happens at Tap Jam.
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“When people think of tap dancing they think of Singing in the Rain and Mary Poppins,” says Dan Sheridan, another organiser. “Tap Jam makes them see it in a whole new light; this is American-style tap or hoofing.” And people are coming back for more. “When we started it was just us and our friends; now we've got a much wider audience.” And it's taking off all round the country.
I'm getting the urge to take tap up again. It's far more fun than the health club which now that I think of it is getting pretty boring. Besides I love tap shoes.
Cockburn started tap in her early twenties. “I had always wanted to do it but was ill during my teenage years. As soon as I was well again I took it up. I think it's a fantastic thing; you can't have a sad tap dance, you can only be happy.”
Looking at the smiling faces around me, every colour and every age, I have to agree.
Take a look at this Challenge between Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis Jr. Wouldn't you like to be able to do that?
Aging brings mental changes - including a slowdown of mere milliseconds - that drives us to distraction, Surveying the Brain for Origins of the Senior Moment in Science Journal by Robert Lee Holtz.
Ms. Puccinelli, 69 years old, said. "There is a lack of concentration. Because you're getting older, you get more concerned about it."
By recording the electrical activity of her mind at work, neurologist Adam Gazzaley at the University of California at San Francisco was using her healthy brain as a road map of mental changes that age brings to us all. In particular, Dr. Gazzaley and his colleagues were trying to understand why aging drives us all to distraction.
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Among the brain circuits that focus attention and memory, his research suggests, aging is a matter of milliseconds. In experiments testing how well people of different ages could recall faces and landscapes, Dr. Gazzaley and scientists at UC Berkeley found that among older people, the brain was slightly slower -- 200 milliseconds or so -- to ignore irrelevant test information. That instant of interference was enough to disrupt a memory in the making, they found.
We don't ignore distractions as easily as we once did. Of course, diet and exercise play a role, but so does education.
"With the right kind of training, we can take an older mind and make it younger," Dr. Gazzaley says. "The potential exists."
A good social life also helps.
An active social life also appears to slow the rate at which memory fails, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reported this past July in the American Journal of Public Health.
Despite its distractions, a healthy brain may also mellow with age. The roller-coaster rush of dopamine, a biochemical associated with heady feelings of reward, doesn't affect older people as strongly as it does the young, Dr. Berman reported this fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Is this evidence that, among older neurons and synapses, life can lose its savor? "I would suggest it shows that older people are appreciating life in a different way," says Dr. Berman.
In other words, the dopamine drop may be a biochemical marker of something else: the wisdom to accept with grace what we cannot change.
Via Kottke comes the news that Brian Eno believes in singing is the key to a good life.
Well, there are physiological benefits, obviously: You use your lungs in a way that you probably don't for the rest of your day, breathing deeply and openly. And there are psychological benefits, too: Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness. And then there are what I would call "civilizational benefits." When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That's one of the great feelings — to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.
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The critical thing turns out to be the choice of songs. The songs that seem to work best are those based around the basic chords of blues and rock and country music. You want songs that are word-rich, but also vowel-rich because it's on the long vowels sounds of a song such as "Bring It On Home To Me" ("You know I'll alwaaaaays be your slaaaaave"), that's where your harmonies really express themselves. And when you get a lot of people singing harmony on a long note like that, it's beautiful.
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So I believe in singing to such an extent that if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing become a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for co-operation with others. This seems to be about the most important thing a school could do for you.
Group singing in chapel and assembly was always part of education until a comparatively short time ago. I remember singing together throughout my school years, at camp and at family get-togethers when my grandparents were alive. When people got together they would sing, be it at church, at work or in a friendly gathering. Sadly, with fewer people going to church and no singing at work, that experience has been lost.
So a few weeks ago when I went to a concert We the People by the Mystic Chorale, I was delighted that the conductor Nick Page expected the audience to join the 200+ members of the chorus to join in singing many of the songs.
So enjoyable was it, I've decided to join the chorale for their winter gospel concert.
The Mystic Chorale is a non-profit, volunteer organization that accepts anyone who loves to sing. The commitment for each concert is short, only 8 weeks, a perfect antidote to the winter blues.
What one dog did for a bitter old man.
The next day I sat down with the phone book and methodically called each of the mental health clinics listed in the Yellow Pages. I explained my problem to each of the sympathetic voices that answered. In vain. Just when I was giving up hope, one of the voices suddenly exclaimed, 'I just read something that might help you! Let me go get the article.' I listened as she read. The article described a remarkable study done at a nursing home. All of the patients were under treatment for chronic depression. Yet their attitudes had improved dramatically when they were given responsibility for a dog.
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'Ta-da! Look what I got for you, Dad!' I said excitedly.
Dad looked, then wrinkled his face in disgust. 'If I had wanted a dog I would have gotten one. And I would have picked out a better specimen than that bag of bones. Keep it! I don't want it' Dad waved his arm scornfully and turned back toward the house.
Read the rest of the story by Catherine Moore here.
The scientific evidence mounts:
Attending Religious Services Sharply Cuts Risk Of Death, Study Suggests
A study published by researchers at Yeshiva University and its medical school, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, strongly suggests that regular attendance at religious services reduces the risk of death by approximately 20 percent.
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“Interestingly, the protection against mortality provided by religion cannot be entirely explained by expected factors that include enhanced social support of friends or family, lifestyle choices and reduced smoking and alcohol consumption,” said Dr. Schnall, who was lead author of the study. “There is something here that we don’t quite understand. It is always possible that some unknown or unmeasured factors confounded these results,” he added.
Others:
Weekly Religious Attendance Nearly as Effective as Statins and Exercise in Extending Life
Improvements in life expectancy of those who attend religious services on a weekly basis to be comparable to those who participate in regular physical exercise and to those who take statin-type medications
Go to Church and Breathe Easier
religious activity may protect and maintain pulmonary health in the elderly.
Religious Attendance Linked to Lower Mortality in Elderly
The current findings build on a series of earlier studies at Duke and elsewhere showing that religious people have lower blood pressure, less depression and anxiety, stronger immune systems and cost the health care system less than people who are less religiously involved.
Research Shows Religion Plays a Major Role in Health, Longevity
For the first time, that extra lifespan has been quantified. While there are differences between genders and races, in general those who go to church once or more each week can look forward to about seven more years than those who never attended.
Loneliness is a signal like hunger, thirst and pain that something important is missing - connection with other people - that all humans need says John Cacioppo, author of Loneliness.
"Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection" (John T. Cacioppo, William Patrick)
The best guarantee of a long, healthy and happy life may be the connections you have with other people.
From an interview with the author in US News and World Report, Why loneliness is bad for your health
The painful feeling known as loneliness is a prompt to reconnect to others.
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Humans have a need to be affirmed up close and personal; we see this most often in marriage. But people who don't marry may find meaning elsewhere. We also have a need for a wider circle of friends and family, but we all know that close family connections can be a mixed blessing. And there's a need to feel that we belong to a larger group. Many of us tend to ignore the collective part of social connection until there is an insult or threat. An example is how, right after 9/11, Americans felt very close to one another. There was a harmony and helpfulness that was really quite surprising. Being an Obama-ite during the campaign would be another example of having a collective identity, feeling like you're part of something grand and wonderful.
People who go to church regularly live longer than nonchurchgoers. Why is that?
Churches can be very beneficial—one can feel connected to the group, the church, and to God. Those are actually different things, but both seem to have beneficial effect. God is like a supercharged friend.
Revealed. The 20 'functional foods' you should be eating for a long and active life.
Gary Williamson, professor at Leeds University calls them 'lifespanessential 'since they all contain polyphenols known for their anti-oxidant properties, helping to prevent cancer and heart disease.
Mainly fruits and vegetables, but chocolate, tea and coffee made the list
Malcolm Gladwell on Late Bloomers. Why do we equate genius with precocity?
The freshness, exuberance, and energy of youth did little for Cézanne. He was a late bloomer—and for some reason in our accounting of genius and creativity we have forgotten to make sense of the Cézannes of the world.
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Late bloomers, Galenson says, tend to work the other way around. Their approach is experimental. “Their goals are imprecise, so their procedure is tentative and incremental.
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Mark Twain was the same way. Galenson quotes the literary critic Franklin Rogers on Twain’s trial-and-error method: “His routine procedure seems to have been to start a novel with some structural plan which ordinarily soon proved defective, whereupon he would cast about for a new plot which would overcome the difficulty, rewrite what he had already written, and then push on until some new defect forced him to repeat the process once again.” Twain fiddled and despaired and revised and gave up on “Huckleberry Finn” so many times that the book took him nearly a decade to complete. The Cézannes of the world bloom late not as a result of some defect in character, or distraction, or lack of ambition, but because the kind of creativity that proceeds through trial and error necessarily takes a long time to come to fruition.
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On the road to great achievement, the late bloomer will resemble a failure: while the late bloomer is revising and despairing and changing course and slashing canvases to ribbons after months or years, what he or she produces will look like the kind of thing produced by the artist who will never bloom at all. Prodigies are easy. They advertise their genius from the get-go. Late bloomers are hard. They require forbearance and blind faith.
Good news for middle-aged and older people. Internet use 'good for brain'.
A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulates centres in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning.
The researchers say this might even help to counter-act the age-related physiological changes that cause the brain to slow down.
The study features in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.
Searching on the web stimulates more areas of the brain than reading a book. and may keep it active and healthy.
Well I certainly plan to be a 'silver surfer'.
In 'Sweetie' and 'Dear', a Hurt for the Elderly
Professionals call it elderspeak, the sweetly belittling form of address that has always rankled older people: the doctor who talks to their child rather than to them about their health; the store clerk who assumes that an older person does not know how to work a computer, or needs to be addressed slowly or in a loud voice. Then there are those who address any elderly person as “dear.”
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Those little insults can lead to more negative images of aging,” Dr. Levy said. “And those who have more negative images of aging have worse functional health over time, including lower rates of survival.”
In a long-term survey of 660 people over age 50 in a small Ohio town, published in 2002, Dr. Levy and her fellow researchers found that those who had positive perceptions of aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer, a bigger increase than that associated with exercising or not smoking. The findings held up even when the researchers controlled for differences in the participants’ health conditions.
The worst offenders are often health care workers.
Some seniors get livid, some think it bullying. The smartest shrug it off.
Activity, Emotional Stability and Conscientiousness are the personality predictors of longevity
according to a study conducted by the National Institute on Aging as reported in the July/August Psychosomatic Medicine
Those who stay active physically, are emotionally stable, and conscientious live about 2 or 3 years longer and no one knows why.
Personality counts says AARP
A JAPANESE company today unveiled a wearable airbag for the elderly that pops out when they fall.
The 1.1kg airbag looks like a traveller's waist pouch but inflates in one-tenth of a second when sensors detect the wearer has taken a tumble.
The Tokyo-based company, Prop, unveiled the ¥<148,000 ($1685) device at a fair of products for the elderly and people with disabilities.
It protects the back of the head and the buttocks with two inflated bags that contain 15 litres of gas each.
Elderly people are more prone to injury when they fall due to their brittle bones.
They will only look like the Michelin man when the airbags inflate.
The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, the oldest running study on aging, says Active, stable people live longer
The most recent findings looked at the link between personality traits of people and their lifespan. The data showed that certain personality traits were definitively linked to a longer life, including emotional stability, organisation, discipline, conscientiousness and resourcefulness.
Certain other traits led to a shorter life: anger, emotional instability, anxiousness and depression, among them. The study concluded that "longevity was associated with being conscientious, emotionally stable, and active".
10 cigars a day and a shot of whiskey in his morning tea is the secret to Jack Priestly's long life, now 100.
A retired baker and a widower since 1993, Jack
keeps active by going shopping, gardening and keeping chickens.
Jack stopped driving two months ago and now gets about on a motorised scooter.
He said: "I don't feel my age. I've still the mind of a young man. But if I had the company of a good woman, I'm sure I'd feel 40 years younger in a flash."
He stopped school in the third grade, has lived in mental health centers since 1952 when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and didn't begin drawing until his 80s.
Bent over or sitting at a table, gripping a ballpoint pen, marker or crayon, Frank Calloway spends his days turning visions from his youth into lively murals _ and at 112 years old, the images of his childhood are a window to another time.
Drawn on sheets of butcher paper and sometimes stretching to more than 30 feet long, the works mostly show rural agricultural scenes, with buildings, trains and vehicles straight out of the early 20th century. And his colorful creations are gaining more attention in the art world.
The works by a man who has lived about half his life in state mental health centers will be part of an exhibit this fall at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. His caretakers have suspended sales of his artwork until after the show after finding out some of his drawings could sell for thousands of dollars.
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"Most people see his age. You know, what I see is his ability, the beauty that he actually puts on paper, that comes out of him and his mind," she said.
Calloway's circle of admirers extends outside Alabama.
"There's a presence with him, I'm telling you, that feels angelic," said Rebecca Hoffberger, founder and director of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, which will borrow 18 scrolls from Calloway for an exhibit in October called "The Marriage of Art, Science and Philosophy."
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Plans are for Calloway to attend the opening of the Baltimore show. It will be his first trip on an airplane and likely the first time he's left Alabama. Hutto said she looks forward to sharing his work with a wider audience.
"His art overcomes boundaries," she said. "People may say, 'Well, he's a folk artist. I don't like folk art.' But if you ever meet him, there is such life in what he creates, and you can't look at one of his paintings without seeing that smile, without seeing that gentle man."
Alabama man turns 112, still spends days drawing.
How would you choose to go? Cancer, heart attack or just old age?
That's the question posed by geriatrician Dr. Joanne Lynn 'How Many of You Expect to Die?'
In the fine New Old Age blog by Jane Gross in the New York Times. Don't miss the comments.
What got me was the excellence of the graphic by Joanne Lynn.
"The image of youth or young adulthood as the best time of life is probably not an accurate stereotype."
The Washington Post makes sense of several studies pointing to the greater happiness of older adults in Older Adults May Be Happier Than Younger Ones.
The important finding that people who are biologically older are happier than younger adults runs counter to many people's expectations.
The younger adults, Smith said, had less trouble with their health but had many more of the other kinds of predicaments, and those, in the long run, tended to trump their better health.
Yet another study, Smith said, looked at job satisfaction among people of different ages and again found that those who kept working past age 65 had the highest level of job satisfaction -- going against the stereotype that older people keep working mostly because they can't do without the money.
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The studies present an interesting puzzle, said Catherine Ross, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin. Yang's finding that older adults are generally happier than younger ones seems superficially at odds with many studies that have found that older people are at higher risk for depression and other mental health problems.
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In line with Yang's findings, Ross and Mirowsky found that advanced age was positively correlated with feeling positive emotions. But the researchers also found that being older was negatively correlated with active emotions. Older people, in other words, had both more positive and more passive emotional states.
"A lot of research in different areas finds the elderly have higher levels of depression, so it looked as though mental health was bad among the elderly," she said. "What this study does is say, 'Yeah, it is not that the elderly have negative emotions, but that when they are negative, they are passive.' "
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Young people -- the very people we think from the stereotype are best off -- in fact have high levels of anger and anxiety and also high levels of depression, compared to middle-aged adults."
Younger adults were far more likely to have financial worries, troubled emotional relationships and professional stressors, she said.
If I had died in 1975, without faith, without family, without love, I would have gone with a bitter curse on my lips.
Now, my heart raises a blessing with every remaining breath.
Lawrence Harvey while awaiting a third kidney transplant, the first lasted for 20 years, the second for two.
Each week with my film club we see a movie and then go out for dinner at a nearby restaurant or pub to talk about it and everything else.
Last night we saw Young at Heart, a funny, feel-good movie like no other. I was a bit apprehensive at first wondering if the audience would be laughing at the old folks.; I was touched to see how moved and delighted the young audiences were.
They've toured Europe and the States and played in prisons. Their joy in being together and singing is infectious. Their dedication and hard work is inspiring.
HIghly recommended.
Here's one of their music videos, Staying Alive by the Bee Gees.
There's so much fun and life there, it's pure delight.
They call him 'Doc' at the prison for his four doctoral degrees.
For decades he was dean of two law schools including Notre Dame.
Now at 71, a widower and father of five, David Link will be ordained a Catholic priest this Sunday.
When his wife died in 2003 from ovarian cancer, Link said
"I certainly got a call from the Holy Spirit. It wasn't on a cell phone, but it was a pretty clear call. When the Holy Spirit calls, he doesn't ask how old you are. He just has another job for you."
Urged by his wife, he became a volunteer at the Indiana State Prison where he will continue as full time chaplain after his ordination.
When he began sending the men birthday cards, one inmate, "this big, tough-looking dude," came to his office crying with thanks. No one had ever sent him a birthday card before.
"If you had said to me 10 years ago when I was dean of the law school that I'd first of all go to the seminary, and second that I'd be here working with maximum security prisoners, I would have said you had a bad mental problem," he said.
A difficult, touchy subject about elderly parents in a nursing home.
Who controls the intimate lives of people with dementia?
An Affair to Remember.
She was 82. He was 95. They had dementia. They fell in love. And then they started having sex.
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Gerontologists highly recommend sex for the elderly because it improves mood and even overall physical function, but the legal issues are enormously complicated, as Daniel Engber explored in his 2007 article "Naughty Nursing Homes": Can someone with dementia give informed consent? How do caregivers balance safety and privacy concerns? When families object to a demented person being sexually active, are nursing homes responsible for chaperoning? This one botched love affair shows the incredible intensity and human cost of an issue that, as Dorothy's doctor says, we can't afford to go on ignoring.
British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman writes
But while we want to look younger, we are emphatically not going to get any younger. And while we can a do a great deal about the kind of clothes we wear, and the food we eat, and the holidays we take, and the colour we paint our bathroom, we can't do a damn thing about the fact that we are going to get older.
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While I happily highlight my hair and spend a small fortune on serums and oils, and anything with the word 'radiant' on the packaging, to smear onto my skin in an attempt to improve on nature, for some reason this doesn't, to my mind, fall into the same trap as starting a relationship with a surgeon.
Perhaps it's that when I go to bed at night and wake up in the morning, I can still see the real me.
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Firstly, in a time where we are all obsessed with eating healthy foods, supporting organic initiatives and shielding our children from E numbers, how on earth do you defend the choice to introduce unnatural substances into your skin, the long-term effects of which we still don't know?
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'We broke through the glass ceiling, and we broke the gender barrier, with a tremendous amount of effort, and now we all want to look like Atomic Kittens,' she said. 'Where is the emancipation in that?'
Slow medicine encourages less aggressive and less costly care at the end of life reports the New York Times in For the elderly, being heard about life's end.
Grounded in research at the Dartmouth Medical School, slow medicine encourages physicians to put on the brakes when considering care that may have high risks and limited rewards for the elderly, and it educates patients and families how to push back against emergency room trips and hospitalizations designed for those with treatable illnesses, not the inevitable erosion of advanced age.
Slow medicine, which shares with hospice care the goal of comfort rather than cure, is increasingly available in nursing homes, but for those living at home or in assisted living, a medical scare usually prompts a call to 911, with little opportunity to choose otherwise.
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The chief medical officer at U.C.L.A., Dr. Tom Rosenthal, said that aggressive treatment for the elderly at acute care hospitals can be “inhumane,” and that once a patient and family were drawn into that system, “it’s really hard to pull back from it.”
“The culture has a built-in bias that everything that can be done will be done,” Dr. Rosenthal said, adding that the pace of a hospital also discourages “real heart-to-heart discussions.”
Beginning that conversation earlier, as they do at Kendal, he said, “sounds like fundamentally the right way to practice.”
That means explaining that elderly people are rarely saved from cardiac arrest by CPR, or advising women with broken hips that they may never walk again, with or without surgery, unless they can stand physical therapy.
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Some of those most in tune with slow medicine are the adult children who watch a parent’s daily decline. Suzanne Brian, for one, was grateful that her father, then 88 and debilitated by congestive heart failure, was able to stop medications to end his life.
“It wasn’t ‘Oh, you have to do this or do that,’ “ Ms. Brian said. “It was my father’s choice. He could have changed his mind at any time. They slowly weaned him from the meds and he was comfortable the whole time. All he wanted was honor and dignity, and that’s what he got.”
Jennifer F has written a remarkable post that may cause you to reconsider your world view
All of my scattered thoughts on the subject were brought into relief the other day when I had a conversation with an immediate family member (whom I don't want to identify directly). He seemed depressed and uneasy about something, and when I asked him why he said it was about his retirement account. He's deeply distressed that he won't have enough money to afford anything other than a government-run nursing home in his old age. I reminded him that my husband and I would love for him to move in with us when it gets to the point that he doesn't feel comfortable living on his own. We weren't even talking about a situation where he might need intensive medical care, yet he flatly refused to even consider the notion.
"I would never do that to you," he said. "I would never have you put your life on hold like that."
We've had this conversation many times before, yet this time, the first since my conversion to Christianity, I was hit by just what a profoundly sad worldview this reflects. I've always wanted this family member to live with us when he can no longer live on his own, and he's always refused on the same grounds. That part is nothing new. Yet this time I saw clearly that the situation goes beyond an unfortunate refusal of help: it reflects a worldview in which well-meaning people like my relative believe that the best thing they can do for their loved-ones is to not burden them with their presence, where the very meaning of life has been twisted to suck love out of the world.
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It leads us to believe that if we were ever to lose our self-sufficiency, our presence would not just be an annoyance but would in fact prevent our loved-ones from fulfilling their very purpose in life.
When I compare my life with the self-focused worldview to my life with the other-focused worldview, the difference is striking. Not that I am anywhere near some saint-like level of always seeking to serve others before myself, but simply understanding that that is the goal, that my own life isn't about me, has changed everything. It's counter-intuitive, it requires sacrifice, and it isn't always the most comfortable path. But it is clear that, truly, this is how we were designed to live. After all these years of trying it my way, it's like I'm finally operating my life according to the instruction manual. And it is ultimately a manual for how to live a life of love, written by he who is Love itself.
I love stories about feisty old women fighting off criminals. Here's one that tops them all.
When a man smashed the glass of the door to force his way inside, a 95-year-old woman in a wheelchair fought him off with a screwdriver!
For an hour and a half she fought him until he passed out and she could call 911!
Every time the man would poke his hand through the window she jabbed him until he quit.
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"There was busted glass where they had busted out. She had blood on her. There was glass in her hair."
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“What do you tell your friends in county jail, where did you get those wounds? I don't know that he's going to tell them he got them from a 95-year-old lady confined to a wheel chair."
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Police suspect it will be a long time before anyone trespasses on her property and neighbors like Gerri call her a hero. “She's very sweet. She doesn't want to go to the nursing home and she's doing a pretty good job protecting herself.
Hats off to Gerri Grindle.
The oldest Americans are also the happiest
"The good news is that with age comes happiness," said study author Yang Yang, a University of Chicago sociologist. "Life gets better in one's perception as one ages.
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Yang's findings are based on periodic face-to-face interviews with a nationally representative sample of Americans from 1972 to 2004. About 28,000 people ages 18 to 88 took part.
They are also far more social than we have been lead to believe, one factor in their happiness, along with being content with what they have and who they are.
The unhappiest time is midlife and the boomers are the unhappiest of all.
Yang's study also found that baby boomers were the least happy. They could end up living the unfortunate old-age stereotype if they can't let go of their achievement-driven mind-set, said George, the Duke aging expert.
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So far, baby boomers aren't lowering their aspirations at the same rate earlier generations did. "They still seem to believe that they should have it all," George said. "They're still thinking about having a retirement that's going to let them do everything they haven't done yet."
With all of us boomers getting older, it's good to know that MIT has an AgeLab to develop new ideas to improve the quality of life for older folk and those that care for them.
Technology and nurses will be our best hopes for aging well because there will not be enough geriatricians for us; there's not enough now as I wrote in "Nothing, It's Too Late."
Selected by the Wall St. Journal as one of the 12 People Who Are Changing Your Retirement, Joseph Coughlin describes his work as "trying to get people to 'age cool'."
he is pushing advances in transportation, health care and housing off drawing boards and into older adults' lives.
And he can't do it quickly enough.
"If we don't hurry," he says, "the products being designed now aren't going to be there when the [baby] boomers need them."
In a piece by David Ho, MIT AgeLab Preparing for an Older Tomorrow, Coughlin is quoted
"Our greatest success is now our greatest challenge," Coughlin says. "Where are you going to live? How are you going to get around? What are you going do in those 10, 20, 30, 40 years of extra time?"
So he founded AgeLab
to unravel a paradox: Humanity in the last century achieved the dream of much longer life, but didn't plan for the effects on work, health and daily living.
One of its projects is a partnership with the Business Innovation Factory and the Tockwotton Nursing Home in Rhode Island to creating a real-world laboratory for improving elderly care by developing and testing new solutions, products and models
Some interesting thoughts on the aging of the boomers.
"Boomers have a clear sense that their own aging is next," writes Matt Thornhill, head of the Boomer Project, that focuses on understanding the boomer generation and is part of a larger market research firm.
What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been --And Continues to Be
In survey after survey, boomers tell us they are not yet "done." They have mountains to climb, worlds to conquer, wrongs to right, and grandbabies to kiss. For most boomers, they'll be over the hill when they're under the hill.
The quest, it seems, isn't for the Fountain of Youth, but the Fountain of Vitality. Boomers will spend time, money, and considerable effort to maintain their vitality until their last breath. Viva the Vital! -- Long live the vital! --will be the mantra for the next 40 years. It is the context that explains the path boomers are taking.
John Martin sees in the retirement of boomers, happy days for organizations that depend on volunteers as they watch their ranks swell by as much as 50%
Boomers are Wired to Work and are volunteering in larger numbers and greater percentages than previous generations.
Our national research suggests that people over the age of 50 (which is where the majority of boomers are at present) have reached a point in life where they are less likely to focus on "becoming someone" and instead are focusing more on "being someone." While younger cohorts are driven more by interpersonal or external social values, boomers, especially boomers over 50, are more motivated by internal values such as self-fulfillment, self-respect, and sense of accomplishment.
Boomers Search for the Wisdom in Faith
Members of the generation that came of age tripping on mind-altering substances are more than likely exploring a new path at midlife and beyond: spiritual enlighten ment. In our work at the Boomer Project, we uncovered that baby boomers, now ages 44 to 62, are shifting their life's focus from trying to "become someone" to more about "being someone." This shift starts to happen around age 50, truly "midlife" (at least) for most of us.
Boomers beyond age 50 typically have become more motivated by inner feelings and beliefs, and are not driven so much by what their friends, peers, co-workers, or even family feel or believe. Boomers at midlife are beginning to wonder about their purpose, and what legacy they will leave. And it is the culmination of these feelings that has many midlife boomers becoming more religious and spiritual.
It surprised me to learn that six in seven boomers identify a religious affiliation.
When Thornhill wondered how he found himself back at church at 48, he found Dr. Gene Cohen's concept of the smarter and wiser brain and "developmental intelligence" compelling,
This is the combination of wisdom, judgment, perspective, and vision one develops later in life. It is characterized by three types of thinking and reasoning typically developed after age 50 or so: relativistic thinking (recognizing that knowledge is relative and not absolute); dualistic thinking (the ability to uncover and resolve contradictions in opposing and seemingly incompatible views); and systemic thinking (being able to see the larger picture, to distinguish between the forest and the trees).
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Accepting religion requires faith, which is not a black and white thing at all. Most religions require followers to uncover and resolve contradictions as a matter of course. And one must be able to see the larger picture in order to accept the tenets and beliefs of most religions. All of these tasks are much easier for boomers who have brains that are growing older and wiser every day.
Making art, whether it be singing, writing, painting or crafts seems to be the key in the art of growing older happily, still contributing, still creating.
Studies Suggest There's An Art to Getting Older
In 2006, the preliminary findings from the federally funded Creativity and Aging Study suggest that
making art, or even listening to music or viewing paintings, supports physical, mental and emotional well-being and eases some symptoms of illness, including dementia.
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Sometimes arts participation can be powerful therapy. Susan Perlstein, the founder of the National Center for Creative Aging and New York's nonprofit Elders Share the Arts, recalls a Holocaust survivor who sat watching her peers perform theater for a year before she told them how she escaped death more than 60 years earlier. The group turned her story into a play and made her the star.
"She said to the group . . . she felt for the first time she could feel at home," Perlstein said. "This process of being able to share your stories and transform them into art is actually a deeply healing process. She went from a depressed, sick older person to a lively young person. It was phenomenal to watch this change."
Taken as a whole, the benefits to the well-being of the old who participate in creative arts are quite extraordinary:
• new growth of brain cells stimulated
• better overall physical health
• less depression and loneliness
• medication use down
• a heightened sense of control and social engagement
• increased sense of independence
No wonder he's called Buster. When he was a hundred, he fought off a gang of muggers in South London.
He has 17 kids and still works as a van cleaner, returning to work at age 99 saying he was bored after 2 years of retirement.
Well, he's taken up running in his spare time and completed a half-marathon in five hours, 13 minutes last weekend.
Now he plans to run the London Marathon and celebrate after as the world's oldest marathon runner.
"I've said I'll attempt it," he told Reuters by telephone from his workplace at Pimlico Plumbers. "I haven't said I'll complete it. If I do make it, all the better. I hadn't thought of doing it before but someone asked me and the money goes to charity so why not?"
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"If I finish, I'll do what I always do and have a pint and a fag," he said. "People ask what is my secret but I haven't got one. They say fags and booze are bad for you -- but I'm still here, aren't I?"
Who do you think you are, Buster?.
Buster's a hero of mine.
When we think of older people, we think of them as getting stiffer, more close-minded in their opinions. In short, "as rigid as their arteries" as Nicholas Danigelis, a sociologist at the University of Vermont says.
Yet the opposite is true. People grow more liberal and tolerant as they age; their political attitudes grow more liberal and flexible.
Danigelis in a recent study published in the October 2007 American Sociological Review, looked at the political attitudes of 46, 520 people.
"We found no support for the bogeyman of gerontology, which is that the older you get, the more conservative and rigid you become," he says.
Yes, older Americans are less tolerant of gays, blacks or women in certain positions of authority. But they were less likely to hold onto those prejudices. In some areas – censorship of library books or unpopular public speakers – the group of people in the older age bracket has became more open-minded over the last 30 plus years as younger people went in the other direction, this survey found.
“Both the grumpy young people and the grumpy old people became more tolerant over the years,” said Danigelis, in an interview. “But the grumpy old people did so at a much quicker pace.”
They may be old dogs, but they are open to new opinions, more so than the young pups.
Ah, the benefits of living a long life.
While still a preliminary finding, it seems that the mental acuity of seniors is improving, older people are functioning at a higher level for a longer time.
And the five easy steps to living long and well reports the New York Times are
... abstaining from smoking, weight management, blood pressure control, regular exercise and avoiding diabetes. The study reports that all are significantly correlated with healthy survival after 90.
While it is hardly astonishing that choices like not smoking are associated with longer life, it is significant that these behaviors in the early elderly years — all of them modifiable — so strongly predict survival into extreme old age.
“The take-home message,” said Dr. Laurel B. Yates, a geriatric specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who was the lead author of the study, “is that an individual does have some control over his destiny in terms of what he can do to improve the probability that not only might he live a long time, but also have good health and good function in those older years.”
"I have a population that, having survived this terrible illness, is now getting illnesses of old age 10 or 20 years sooner than normal," said Dr. Ardis Moe, a physician at UCLA's Center for Clinical AIDS Research and Education. "That's the bad news. The good news is that they're not dead."
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With HIV, growing older, faster
Now more than a quarter of the estimated 1 million Americans living with HIV are, like Gibson and Golay, older than 50, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2015, half will be older than 50. At least two long-range studies of people aging with HIV are underway, by the National Institutes of Health and the Veterans Health Administration.
A 2006 study by the New York-based AIDS Community Research Initiative of America on the interaction of HIV and aging on mental health found depression to be almost 13 times higher in longtime survivors than in the general population. As do the very elderly, whose suicide rate is the highest of any age group, longtime HIV survivors often grow despondent over health disabilities and the deaths of friends.
"Everybody I knew died in the late '80s or early '90s," said Los Angeles resident and longtime survivor Thomas Woolsey, 59. "It sounds like I'm the lucky one, but I don't really think so. What good is a life without any friends?"
Most people lose a lot of their desire to live when they lose all their friends, particularly if they don't have close family.
You've probably seen or read about brain fitness software that are supposed to ward off memory loss and combat the dulling of the mind.
Most haven't done any scientific research to bolster their health claims.
Two scientists have taken a skeptical view.
Sandra Aamod, editor of the journal Nature Neuroscience, and Sam Wang, professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton University, offered a critical view of the products in a November New York Times opinion piece. A better bet, the authors argued, is physical exercise.
"So instead of spending money on computer games or puzzles to improve your brain's health, invest in a gym membership," the authors wrote. "Or just turn off the computer and go for a brisk walk."
Retraining the brain for the aging workforce
The search for the quick fix and the quick buck continues. If software doesn't work, maybe a surgical procedure or a drug will do the trick.
The old ways are still the best even if we get bored hearing them.
good nutrition
exercise
socializing with friends
positive attitude towards aging
spirituality
mental stimulation
Leading a sedentary lifestyle may make us genetically old before our time.
Sedentary life 'speeds up ageing'.
They particularly focused on telomeres, the repeat sequences of DNA that sit on the ends of chromosomes, protecting them from damage.
As people age, their telomeres become shorter, leaving cells more susceptible to damage and death.
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But men and women who were less physically active in their leisure time had shorter leukocyte telomeres compared to those who were more active.
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The most active people had telomeres of a length comparable to those found in inactive people who were up to 10 years' younger, on average.
The grandmother who fought back during a carjacking.
"I said, 'Look, if you do don't stop this car and get out I am going to stab you in the eye with this ink pen and I'm serious,' 'OK.' So, he turned the corner right there at the Kangaroo and he got out."
Why didn't someone think of this before? Lights on walkers may cut falls
Forget driving in the dark — sometimes it's dangerous just walking in the dark.
As the population ages, medical teams are responding to more calls from people who have fallen in the night. Many are from older adults who toppled over their walkers while reaching for a light switch on the way to the kitchen or bathroom.
Credit Ron Olshwanger, director of the Creve Coeur Fire Protection District, whose own experience with his own mother ultimately led to his inspiration.
The lights (which are a lot like bicycle lights) cost $34 at Medical West, a medical supply firm that can install them on new or existing walkers.
Olshwanger emphasizes that he and the fire department won't make any profit off the headlights. His inspiration is his mother, Bernice Bormaster, who died five years ago. After breaking her hip, she called her son three times in the middle of the night for help getting back to bed.
"It's a perfect example of what can happen. A lot of these people, their minds are fine, their bodies are just a little weak." Olshwanger said. "These people want to live a normal life, and I think this will help."
HT bookofjoe
Last week I wrote Life Imitates Art, this week there is a much finer piece in The Boston Globe about the situation facing Sandra Day O'Connor called A love supreme finds space in dementia.
So this, in the end, is what love is.
Former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor's husband, suffering from Alzheimer's disease, has a romance with another woman, and the former justice is thrilled - even visits with the new couple while they hold hands on the porch swing - because it is a relief to see her husband of 55 years so content.
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And despite the stereotypes, researchers who study emotions across the life span say that old love is in many ways more satisfying than young love - even as it is also more complex.
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Researchers trying to understand aging and emotion performed brain scans on people across a range of ages, gauging their reactions to positive and negative scenes. Young people tended to respond to the negative scenes. Those in middle age took in a better balance of the positive. And older people responded only to the positive scenes.
"As people get older, they seem to naturally look at the world through positivity and be willing to accept things that when we're young we would find disturbing and vexing," said Dr. John Gabrieli, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at MIT and one of the researchers.
Or maybe creative people have a greater sense about what's in the air.
Justice O'Connor's husband forms romance with fellow Alzheimer's patient.
Last week I watched Away From Her, a movie starring Julie Christie as Fiona who, suffering from Alzheimer's disease, decides she would be better off in a retirement home than with her husband of fifty years whom she dearly loves, despite some troubled spots that they never discuss.
New patients at the retirement home are not allowed visitors for thirty days so they can adjust more quickly. When the husband finally is allowed to visit his wife he finds Fiona has fallen in love with a fellow patient.
The movie is a brilliant adaption by Sarah Polley of an Alice Munro short story, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain."
Ronni Bennett over at Time Goes By has posted a two-part interview with Dr. William Thomas, a young geriatrician and author of What are Old People For?
"What Are Old People For?: How Elders Will Save the World" (William H. Thomas)
Here is one excerpt.
We human beings live a long time after our reproductive peak. This is no accident. Our species took the necessity of aging and, from that, refined the virtues of elderhood. Elders are an integral, biologically determined element of the human cultural fabric and it is time they understood this role and begin to play their part.
And another on the two most important things he's learned from elders.
1. Wisdom lies in knowing what to overlook. 2. In the end, no one gets out alive and so, for the time we are here, it is all about relationships. Nothing else really matters.
Part One
Part Two
Grandmother celebrates 100th birthday by becoming world's oldest paraglider.
"I was sitting in a chair floating above the mountains. I'm not scared at all.
"I love heights, I love climbing, I love getting up in the air. I hope to do this again when I am 105, but this might be my final goodbye to all my flying escapades," she said.
Civic Ventures, a think tank founded in the late 1990s is "reframing the
debate about aging in America and redefining the second half of life as a source of social and individual renewal"
It's about "helping society achieve the greatest return on experience."
They begun a number of programs including the Experience Corps, a national service program for Americans over 55, the Next Chapter working in local communities to help people in the second half of life connect with peers and find pathways to significant service.
The Purpose Prize provides 5 awards of $100,000 each to people over 60 who are taking on society's biggest challenges.
Here are some of the winners about whom Mark Freedman, founder and President of Civic Ventures said,
"These men and women - some national figures, some local heroes - disprove the notion that innovation is the province of the young and show us the essence of what's possible in an aging society."
Nominations for the 2008 Purpose Prize are open November 15 through March 1.
The foundation also publishes a number of booklets available for download including The Boomers' Guide to Good Work
Just about everyone in Australia knows Olive. She's the blogger who is turning 108.
Three cheers for Olive!
You can watch her sing My Blue Heaven on YouTube and hear her tell stories as well.
Mona Shaw reached her breaking point, then reached for her hammer and so lived out what most of us only fantasize about.
Taking a Whack Against Comcast
The insulting idea that, as Shaw puts it, "they thought just because we're old enough to get Social Security that we lack both brains and backbone."
So, after stewing over it all weekend, on the following Monday, she went downstairs, got Don's claw hammer and said: "C'mon, honey, we're going to Comcast."
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Hammer time: Shaw storms in the company's office. BAM! She whacks the keyboard of the customer service rep. BAM! Down goes the monitor. BAM! She totals the telephone. People scatter, scream, cops show up and what does she do? POW! A parting shot to the phone!
"They cuffed me right then," she says.
Her take on Comcast: "What a bunch of sub-moronic imbeciles."
The best thing to keep normal, aging brains sharp is physical exercise which seems to help the brain as much as the body.
And you want a 'bushy' brain not a 'twiggy' one.
A healthy brain is a bushy one. Branch-like tentacles extend from the ends of the brain's cells, enabling them to communicate with each other. The more you learn, the more those connections form.
Doctors discuss theories on aging brains.
About three weeks ago, the chef at a nursing home in England brought in a video games console, the Nintendo Wii, that belonged to his son so that the staff could play it on the weekend.
But once the residents, ages 80-103, got a gander at the console, they were so enthralled they demanded the staff purchase one immediately. Forget bridge, crosswords, even the telly, all these residents want to do is play Wii.
"They were absolutely hooked.
"They're up of their armchairs and moving about and there's a real team spirit."
The games system has proved to be such a success that executives at Sunrise Senior Living are now planning to buy one for each of their 15 residential homes.
If this goes ahead, inter-care home tournaments would take place with teams of elderly residents travelling to other care homes via mini-buses for matches.
Dr Lorna Layward, research manager at Help the Aged, said: "Anything that gets elderly people up off their feet and trying something new is a very good thing.
Elderly 'addicted' to Nintendo Wii at care home.
76 years old, Doris Anderson was hunting elk with her husband when their truck broke down. They began walking out when they got separated in the woods. Two weeks passed, the hunt had stopped, the memorial service was being planned, when Doris was found by the police, alive and well.
Surviving canyon ordeal
"My mom is much stronger than I ever knew that she was, I thought that she was more fragile than that and she's proved me wrong and I'm glad," she added.
Equally delighted is Mrs Anderson's husband Harold who had carried on looking for help when his wife had become exhausted and decided to try to return to their vehicle.
A disorientated Mr Anderson was later picked up by another hunting group, but they failed to find his wife.
"I thought my wife was dead," Mr Anderson said of the news that his wife was alive. "It's a living miracle, it has to be."
The New York Times has a good piece on the Grass-Roots Effort to Grow Old at Home with a handy sidebar giving contacts for aging in place communities across the country.
“A few neighborhood-based, relatively inexpensive strategies can have an enormous effect,” Mr. McCallion said. “If people don’t feel so overwhelmed, they don’t feel pushed into precipitous decisions that can’t always be reversed.”
For inspiration, the nascent groups looked to Beacon Hill Village in Boston, which pioneered the approach six years ago. Beacon Hill’s 400 members pay yearly dues — $580 for an individual and $780 for a couple, plus à la carte fees — in exchange for the security of knowing that a prescreened carpenter, chef, computer expert or home health aide is one phone call away.
I wrote about this new phenomenon that started on Beacon Hill in Aging at Home last year.
It's cheaper by far, and desired by a great majority of the elderly. The biggest question will it work in the suburbs, outside an urban neighborhood?
At Times Go By, Ronni Bennett nicely organizes links and summaries to David Wolfe on Jung's Seven Tasks of Aging
Here quickly are the seven tasks -
1. Facing the Reality of Aging and Dying
2. Life Review
3. Defining Life Realistically
4. Letting Go of the Ego.
5. Finding a New Rooting in the Self
6. Determining the Meaning of One's Life.
7. Rebirth - Dying with Life
When a electronics company no longer sees future profits in electronics because of competition from Asia
and decides to focus on the elderly who want to live independently, that's big news. But that's just what Phillips Electronics has done.
Electronics Giant Seeks a Cure in Health Care (WSJ, subscription only)
Philips paid $750 million last year to buy Massachusetts-based Lifeline, an acquisition that represented a turning point for the company.
For decades, its medical-systems division made and sold large, professional equipment like X-ray and CAT-scan machines to hospitals. Now, Philips is attempting to meld its health-care experience with its knowledge of consumer marketing. The goal: carve out a new high-growth business selling health-related products and services.
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One of the hot areas Philips identified was "independent living," or elderly people who wanted to live on their own for as long as possible.
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Philips organized focus groups of elderly people and their adult children in Madrid, Frankfurt, San Francisco and Boston. They made some key findings. For instance, a stigma exists among many seniors who are reluctant to acknowledge their frailty or ill health. Another problem: Elderly patients often aren't comfortable with high-tech products, and prefer a measure of human interaction. Sometimes, arthritic fingers prevent them from navigating tiny buttons.
Philips developed a profile of the elderly customer it wanted to target. Internally, they dubbed it the "Senior Solutions Sweet Spot." People in this group, they determined, valued self-reliance, felt that staying connected to friends and family was important and yet wanted to address "functional decline" like weakening vision or trouble walking.
This is coming just in time for aging boomers since we know there won't be enough geriatricians, It's already too late.
When the family tree becomes a beanpole, there's no one left to take care of the old folk.
So, Italy's Aged Turn to Foreigners for Care
Marzano is one of a swelling number of Italians entrusting themselves to an army of foreign workers from eastern Europe, South America, Asia and Africa who are doing what families here are increasingly can't or won't do - take care of their elderly.
Long life and low birthrates have conspired to change family life, which long had been the one institution Italians could count on while history rolled past, with its parade of conquerors and short-lived governments.
Italy's demographics - and Europe's as a whole - give new meaning to the term "Old World."
Twenty-four of the world's 25 oldest countries are in Europe, noted a joint report by the European Commission
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"I would have thought I would have lived with my son; I would never have thought that it would be like this," said Marzano.
The alternative solution in Italy is to send the old folk to be cared for by nuns, many of whom have converted their former schools into rest homes.
I'm so delighted to have access to my blogs again even though I've lost all my draft posts, no doubt my most brilliant. I'm off to my Smith College reunion in an hour or two and looking forward to seeing all my classmates and to learn what's happened in their lives.
Here's a picture of me and friends on Ivy Day, some years ago. I'm the one on the right in the shadow.
"..whenever I had a problem, I went to something wholesome to solve it."
One of the “wholesome” things that helped, he said, was bowling.
That's about as good an explanation of dealing with problems as I have ever heard.
The Older-and-Wiser Hypothesis in the New York Times Sunday magazine.
The popular image of the Wise Man usually does not include a guy in a bowling shirt, but several qualities have emerged again and again in older people like J. who score high on Ardelt’s wisdom scale. They learn from previous negative experiences. They are able to step outside themselves and assess a troubling situation with calm reflection. They recast a crisis as a problem to be addressed, a puzzle to be solved. They take action in situations they can control and accept the inability to do so when matters are outside their control.
so how do academics define wisdom now that they have begun studying it? For one thing, you don't have to be smart or accomplished or even old, though most older people are more even-keeled and emotionally resilient.
Certain qualities associated with wisdom recur in the academic literature: a clear-eyed view of human nature and the human predicament; emotional resiliency and the ability to cope in the face of adversity; an openness to other possibilities; forgiveness; humility; and a knack for learning from lifetime experiences. And yet as psychologists have noted, there is a yin-yang to the idea that makes it difficult to pin down. Wisdom is founded upon knowledge, but part of the physics of wisdom is shaped by uncertainty. Action is important, but so is judicious inaction. Emotion is central to wisdom, yet detachment is essential.
Vivian Clayton whose research has made many breakthroughs in understanding, first analyzed the Hebrew bible
“What emerged from that analysis,” she says, “was that wisdom meant a lot of different things. But it was always associated with knowledge, frequently applied to human social situations, involved judgment and reflection and was almost always embedded in a component of compassion.” The essential importance of balance was embodied in the Hebrew word for wisdom, chochmah, which ancient peoples understood to evoke the combination of both heart and mind in reaching a decision.
Another researcher Birren boiled it down to the "Berlin Paradigm" and defined wisdom as
an expert knowledge system concerning the fundamental pragmatics of life.
Ardelt who's now doing research in Boston analyzing Harvard University graduates says
People who rated high in wisdom, she adds, were “very generous,” both financially and emotionally; among those who rated low in wisdom, “there was this occupation with the self.”
What is very clear is that old people with a more positive attitude towards old age lived seven and a half years longer.
They can regulate their emotions better, registering the negative, focusing on the positive.
It may be that the seeds of wisdom are planted early in life with exposure to adversity or failure, that one called a "stress inoculation" that enhances the person's ability to regulate emotions.
Ronni Bennett delivers unwelcome news and a whole lot of numbers from as well as a good exegesis of Atul Gawade's piece in The New Yorker on The Way We Age Now
There will not be enough doctors trained in geriatrics to deal with us aging boomers. There's not enough now.
Seems as if the number of geriatricians is declining while the number of plastic surgeons is rising. Doctors just don't want to deal with "Old Crocks" which is what we all will be given enough time.
Even if we stop obsessing on how well we look, and start focusing on how well we are, we're out of luck and on our own. When asked whether enough geriatricians could be trained to serve the booming elder population, Chad Boult, professor at John Hopkins said,
"Nothing, it's too late."
Read Ronni's post but don't miss the Gawade piece to get the full flavor of what we individually and as a society are avoiding, the certainty of our decrepitude and the words of a wonderful writer.
Even as our bones and teeth soften, the rest of our body hardens. Blood vessels, joints, the muscle and valves of the heart, and even the lungs pick up substantial deposits of calcium and turn stiff. Under a microscope, the vessels and soft tissues display the same form of calcium that you find in bone. When you reach inside an elderly patient during surgery, the aorta and other major vessels often feel crunchy under your fingers. A recent study has found that loss of bone density may be an even better predictor of death from atherosclerotic disease than cholesterol levels. As we age, it’s as if the calcium flows out of our skeletons and into our tissues.
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Decline remains our fate; death wil come. But, until that last backup system inside each of us fails, decline can occur in two ways. One is early an precipitately, with an old age of enfeeblement and dependence, sustained primarily by nursing homes and hospitals. Th other way is more gradual, preserving, for as long as possible, your ability to control your own life
Is it hopeless? Are we all doomed? Not if Chad Boult can get geriatricians to train primary care doctors to treat the very old. But that's a tall order given that today, 97% of medical students take no course in geriatrics, 97%!
Frankly, I have a lot more hope in Gould's backup plan called "Guided Care" which calls for nurses to be given a highly compressed, three-week course in making geriatric care plans for individual patients and working with patients, families and doctors to implement the plans.
I count myself very lucky that my sister Colleen, a nurse, plans to become a certified nurse practitioner to work with us future "old crocks."
Venus Ramey, Miss America in 1944, is now 82 and needs a walker to get around her Kentucky farm where she sells trees.
When she caught Curtis Parish stealing scrap metal from her yard, she took out her gun and shot out his tires as he was leaving.
"The first time I was robbed on the other side road about 6 or 7 years ago, I caught one man," Ramey said.
But now both police and Ramey say they don't think this man will try to steal from her again.
Police say Ramey had every right to fire the gun since they say she witnessed the men committing a crime on her property.
I wonder how many older people feel safe only because they have a gun to defend themselves and to keep people from preying on them.
You may know him as geriatric 1927 , Peter Oakley, the Englishman who became an unexpected star on YouTube when he began telling his life story in videos.
Now he's "the new old age happening". Now he's going to be a music star as he tells us himself and lets the secret out with a message from the old people to the youth of the world.
We are old. We are here. We have much to contribute. We object to the abuse that sometimes happens to old people.
At the behest of the BBC, he's sings "Talking About My Generation" by the Who and backed up by a geriatric chorus with an average age of 78, called the Zimmers. A CD was produced at Abbey Roads Studio by Mike Hedges with a release date for the CD is May 28th, proceeds going to age-concerned charities. He's hoping it climbs the charts to get the message out.
Ronni, that's your cue.
I watched the slide show and the video here on MySpace.
It's fabulous.
Big thanks to Hootsbuddy
Update. Buster is part of the band! I know Buster. He's the 100-year-old man who fought off a gang of muggers.
[AUTHOR'S NOTE: Last month, I guest blogged at Ronni Bennett's Time Goes By, the indispensable blog for anyone who wants the real skinny on what it's like to get older.
I could say Ronni is a Dame Commander but she's more of a mother hen keeping track of a growing brood of over 50 "elderbloggers", swatting away ageist snark while still laying before us one perfectly composed post every day to enjoy with breakfast.
Her photo time line is a model of how family photos can be meaningfully enhanced with just a few lines of context. As a movie buff, her TGB ElderMovie List is a fine resource when looking for a movie you can watch without embarrassment with your parents and with pleasure just by yourself. So when she asked me to write something about aging, Margaret Rutherford immediately came to mind.]
Growing older has never really bothered me, perhaps because I was lucky in having wonderful role models of older women. Every May there is an alumnae parade at Smith College and the largest, loudest cheers go up for the oldest women in their 80s or 90s who march proudly under the banner of their graduating class. I’d be all right, I thought, if I could be one of them.
But it was seeing Margaret Rutherford for the first time that absolutely convinced me how delightful it could be to be like her. I was gobsmacked and totally enchanted when I first saw her play Miss Marple in the four “murder” films based on the Agatha Christie novels: Murder She Said, Murder at the Gallop, Murder Most Foul, and Murder Ahoy - every one of which deserves prominent placement on the TGB ElderMovie List
She was endearing, stout as an armchair and as comfortable too, a bicycle-riding, tea-making, pie-baking sleuth with an admiring male pal, cheerful in cape and hat, perfectly dressed no matter what the occasion, sensible to human frailties, fearless, smart as a whip and as funny as all get out. Who knew that being an old lady could be so much fun?
A force of nature, she could do things with her mouth, her tongue in cheek, that have never been equaled and will make you forswear even the idea of plastic surgery if it would rob you of the expressiveness of a ravishing, totally lovable old face like hers.
Born in a London suburb in 1892, nine years after her father murdered her grandfather with a chamber pot, Margaret Rutherford was an only child. Her mother died when she was 3 and she was brought up by a pair of guardian aunts.
Maybe the experience of living with a mentally ill father who was readmitted to Broadmoor, a British hospital for the criminally insane, when she was only 12, disposed her to a life in the theater. She wasn’t pretty, but she was funny and I think a late bloomer. She was 33 when she made her stage debut at the Old Vic in 1925 and 53 when she married a fellow actor Stringer Davis.
She really came into her own in her late 60s and 70s when she began to play Miss Marple. She worked with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, winning an Academy Award best supporting actress in The V.I.P.s. In her 70s, the Queen named her first an officer of the British Empire, later a Dame Commander.
And what a Dame Commander she was as Miss Marple, laying bare evil and overcoming it with goodness, everything made right. And she did it by becoming and being her magnificent self all the time. Take one scene from Murder Ahoy:
MISS MARPLE: Are you implying that I am unhinged?
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR CRADDOCK: No. No, of course not!
MISS MARPLE: Then what are you implying, pray?
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR CRADDOCK: Well, just that you are temporarily not yourself.
MISS MARPLE: Chief Inspector, I am always myself!
In one interview, she said,
"I hope I'm an individual. I suppose an eccentric is a super individual. Perhaps an eccentric is just off centre - ex-centric. But that contradicts a belief of mine that we've got to be centrifugal."
Centrifugal she was, radiating out from a deep core of self, to delight and gift the world.
Since I believe that the point of aging is to become more ourselves, our best selves, and to give our best selves away, I would make Margaret Rutherford a patron saint of aging.
She’s mine anyway.
Because human nature doesn't change, bringing out the classics to train doctors is illuminating.
The Difficult Patient, a Problem Old as History
Sophocles somehow got that tenuous position just right, just as he knew that sick people, isolated and transformed by chronic disease, dread being alone and forgotten more than they dread pain or even death.
What will happen when so many singles - never married, divorced or widowed - get older alone?
I say let's give 3 cheers to the 100-year-old man who fought off a gang of muggers in south London.
This WWII vet called Buster busted the chops of 3 youths who jumped on him from behind as he was leaving a pub and knocked him down. They ran away while Buster, bloody and bruised, walked to the hospital.
I was confused and I was lashing out at them. How the helI I found the strength I don't know. I think it came from my temper. I don't lose it often but when I do it's not a pretty sight.
Buster who was born in 1906 and has 17 children still works as a van cleaner and said
As long as I still wake up in the morning, I will continue to work.
In this digital age comes a new way of tapping into the wisdom of people with a great deal of life experience.
An Online Outlet for the Wisdom of the Aged.
600 seniors answer several thousand letters a month AND publish a weekly advice column in 22 newspapers.
Mayyasi purses her lips and goes to work, mauve fingernails clicking across the keyboard. At 73, she is restlessly retired. This is her volunteer work. People need her, and she is their cyber-grandmother, a virtual plate of fresh sugar cookies, warm and reassuring in lives full of cold rain.
Is a courtesan, not a prostitute, but a courtesan the ideal archetype for a truly modern woman?
Robert Paterson and his sister Diana will be exploring the lifestyle of courtesans in a short series on Trusted Space that looks very interesting.
Here's a taste.
Looks are transient. A beautiful woman becomes a faded beauty, something sad to behold.
A clever, witty and kind woman ages without her age being noticed, and she, has maturity, and good sense and a great deal to offer younger women and she knows well her time has passed and she loves nothing more than to pass on her experience to a
younger intelligent woman she respects.
Age is no obstacle for her. She has no need of plastic surgery because she takes on her new role as grand dame with great relief.
She has had many men and many experiences, and she is happy to live with her memories and move forward with her personal interests. She does not need to diet because she is now fulfilled by things that feed her mind. Her pleasure of the body has been replaced by the utter pleasure of all things interesting to her.
She sleeps alone and comfortably. She leaves the fretting of love and not love to younger women. She has no more of those thoughts to cloud her mind and take away her sleep. She is comfortable with herself.
Education is the signal factor that most effects good health and long life.
The Surprising Secret to a Long Life
The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income.
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Year after year, in study after study, says Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, education “keeps coming up.”
And, health economists say, those factors that are popularly believed to be crucial — money and health insurance, for example, pale in comparison.
It may be too late for Christmas, but designer crutches are cool. For that special someone who wants to age with grace and grit.
Adding comfort to an uncomfortable item are LemonAid Crutches.
It's real physical exercise, not crossword puzzles, that keeps your aging brain fit reports the Wall St Journal.
For the first time, scientists have found something that not only halts the brain shrinkage that starts in a person's 40s, especially in regions responsible for memory and higher cognition, but actually reverses it: aerobic exercise. As little as three hours a week of brisk walking -- no Stairmaster required -- apparently increases blood flow to the brain and triggers biochemical changes that increase production of new brain neurons.
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support for the brain benefits of physical exercise has become stronger. A number of earlier studies showed that elderly people who take up aerobic exercise show improved cognitive function after a few months, says Arthur Kramer of the University of Illinois, Urbana
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As little as three hours a week of aerobic exercise increased the brain's volume of gray matter (actual neurons) and white matter (connections between neurons), they report in the November issue of the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences. "After only three months," says Prof. Kramer, "the people who exercised had the brain volumes of people three years younger.
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"This is the first time anyone has shown that exercise increases brain volume in the elderly," says Dr. Kramer. "It suggests that aerobic exercise can stave off neural decline, and even roll back some normal age-related deterioration of brain structure."
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With more gray matter and white matter, "the brain is more interconnected, more plastic and more adaptive to change," Prof. Kramer says.
Dogs may hold the secret to a long life.
DOGS may be the secret to health and happiness because they encouraged their owners to walk them daily whatever their mood or circumstances, British researchers said today.
Researchers at the University of Portsmouth found that dog owners felt obliged to walk their dogs despite bad weather or low moods, keeping them fit and making them feel better once they were out.
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Ms Knight said that many participants in the study were retired people, including those who had been widowed or otherwise lived alone, or were recovering from illness or operations.
She said that they discussed occasions when they had felt lonely, isolated or depressed, and reported that their dogs helped them stay physically fitter and helped maintain social contacts.
Besides, what other creature gives so much unconditional love and affection?
Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps.
It is without a doubt the best deal
man has ever made.
Roger Caras
Our poet laureate, Donald Hall is 78, says that poetry is well suited to the rigors of old age.
"Poems are made for other persons to read but made out of silence and solitude, and perhaps there is more silence and solitude in the world of the old."
Take 95-year-old Anne Porter featured today in the Wall Street Journal and whose first volume of poetry was published when she was 83.
Asked why she keeps writing poems through her 80s and 90s, Mrs. Porter responds that art may be the only pursuit that old age can't wreck:
"You can't sing anymore, you can't dance anymore, you can't drive anymore -- but you can still write,"
Here she is on "Old in the City."
You stay away from doctors,
They'd send you to the hospital,
Where pieces are cut out of you,
And after that you die.
On finding a ticket that says "Keep This Ticket" in her purse, she wrote.
I keep it carefully
Because I'm old
Which means
I'll soon be leaving
For another country
Where possibly
Some blinding-bright
Enormous angel
Will stop me
At the border
And ask
To see my ticket
On getting older, she says
"People don't use their creativity as they get older," she said. "They think this is supposed to be the end of this and the end of that. But you can't always be so sure that it is the end."
With the help of her readers, Ronnie Bennett at TimeGoesBy has put together a list of "eldermovies" which just might be handy if you're spending a weekend with an elderly parent.
I haven't been posting as much as usual because I've been taking care of my mother who just had major surgery to remove cancer from her colon.
Like many older people, she doesn't have a computer or internet access. Yet as she recovers, she realizes that she'll need a cell phone if she plans to drive again, just in case of an emergency.
Jitterbug is what she's looking at. They have made cell phones easy-to-use for the technologically-challenged. With big buttons, bright screens and no unnecessary features, it looks great for the elderly who want something just for an emergency. Best of all, there's an operator always standing by to help out.
Has anyone had experience with them?
He started law school at 86 and finished at 91, one year ahead of schedule.
And to do it, he had to teach himself how to use a computer and the Internet.
Allan Stewart said, "Time is of the essence. I think if I had let it run too much longer I might not have finished it."
Good show, mate.
Why do some people age well and others get frail?
Two reasons:
1. undetected heart disease
2. having positive images of growing older
Old but Not Frail: A Matter of Heart and Head
You’re only as old as you think you are. Rigorous studies are now showing that seeing, or hearing, gloomy nostrums about what it is like to be old can make people walk more slowly, hear and remember less well, and even affect their cardiovascular systems. Positive images of aging have the opposite effects. The constant message that old people are expected to be slow and weak and forgetful is not a reason for the full-blown frailty syndrome.
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More and more scientists say they have been won over by an accumulating body of evidence.
“I am changing my initially skeptical view,” says Richard Suzman, who is director of the office of behavioral and social research programs at the National Institute on Aging. “There is growing evidence that these subjective experiences might be more important than we thought.”
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Dr. Levy wondered, were there long-term effects of believing the stereotypes of aging? She found a study that could provide answers, the Ohio Longitudinal Study of Aging and Retirement. The two-decade-long study included 1,157 people, nearly every resident of Oxford, Ohio, who was 50 or older and was not suffering from dementia. And it had questions about beliefs about aging.
It turned out that people who had more positive views about aging were healthier over time. They lived an average of 7.6 years longer than those of a similar age who did not hold such views, and even had less hearing loss when their hearing was tested three years after the study began
Our fears of aging become self-fulfilling prophecies
Neferititi was actually a fascinating aging beauty
Cleopatra was not a young hottie, but a mature beauty, a woman of a certain age. She had wrinkles on her neck and bags under her eyes according to a new examination of the famous bust.
Which just underscores the importance of lighting.
He was forced to take a day off when he turned 100.
He had planned to mark his 100th with a pint at his local but colleagues arranged a VIP tour of Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium, where he will be presented with a shirt with 'Buster 100' on the back.
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Buster said: "Boredom is a big killer. I went back to work as I like to keep active. If I didn't work I would become the most miserable sod you have ever come across so I don't want to stop working."
New ways to grow older at New Rentals that Aim to Age with Creativity.
Like the Burbank Senior Artists Colony the NYT reporter likens to Golden Girls meets Yaddoo.
They sing, they dance, they paint, they create their own movies and radio shows.
We’re thinking beyond the problems of aging to its potential,” said Dr. Gene D. Cohen, the director of the Center on Aging, Health and Humanities at the George Washington University Medical Center. “What’s emerging is a very talented group of people who are an under-recognized national resource.”
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The colony is the brainchild of Tim Carpenter, the founder of More Than Shelter for Seniors, who grew up near Yaddo, the New York artists’ community. Mr. Carpenter recruited an advisory board sprinkled with actors to hone the concept and drew an initial core of tenants, ages 55 and older, through local arts organizations. No tryouts or portfolios are required, but the artistic ambitions of residents transcend the flutophone or macaroni-glitter-and-glue crowd.
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Like a challenging painting, life at the arts colony has become an exercise in perspective. “You meet yourself,” she said. “You find out who you really are.”
He thought he had found an easy mark in the woman in a wheelchair. He bent over to grab the chain around her neck; she grabbed her pistol and shot him in the elbow.
Margaret Johnson, applauded across the country, is no victim because she took responsibility for protecting herself seriously.
I found The Fame Motive very interesting because I never understood the desire for fame. To me, the upside pales against the downside, the lack of privacy and control,
But the speculation at the end struck me most. If this need for approval never dies, then turning to a deepening belief in God in one's later years and/or focusing on leaving a legacy seem to be eminently positive ways to handle life's disappointments and a hell of a lot better all around than whining about them.
People with an overriding desire to be widely known to strangers are different from those who primarily covet wealth and influence. Their fame-seeking behavior appears rooted in a desire for social acceptance, a longing for the existential reassurance promised by wide renown.
These yearnings can become more acute in life’s later years, as the opportunities for fame dwindle, “but the motive never dies, and when we realize we’re not going to make it in this lifetime, we find some other route: posthumous fame,” said Orville Gilbert Brim, a psychologist who is completing a book called “The Fame Motive.” ...
“It’s like belief in the afterlife in medieval communities, where people couldn’t wait to die and go on to better life,” Dr. Brim said. “That’s how strong it is.”
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“It’s a distinct type, people who expect to get meaning out of fame, who believe the only way to have their lives make sense is to be famous,” said Tim Kasser, a psychologist at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. “We all need to make meaning out of our lives, and this is one way people attempt to do it.”
Therapists and researchers, including Dr. Brim, have traced longing for renown to lingering feelings of rejection or neglect. After all, celebrity is the ultimate high school in-group, writ large. It appears a perfect balm for the sting of social exclusion, or neglect by emotionally or physically absent parents.
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The participants in the study who focused on goals tied to others’ approval, like fame, reported significantly higher levels of distress than those interested primarily in self-acceptance and friendship.
Surveys done since then, in communities around the world, suggest the same thing: aiming for a target as elusive as fame, and so dependent on the judgments of others, is psychologically treacherous.
Freud might have agreed: he is said to have fainted only twice in his life, both times when he perceived a threat to his legacy.
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In compiling his research, Dr. Brim, 83, thought much about how an intense desire to reach this unknowable, alluring state of being might affect older people’s behavior, if the motive did not fade.
“I concluded that several things could happen, and one of them is to find another source of approval,” he said. “That might be a great love, if you’re lucky. Or perhaps it is a deepening belief in God. But I think many people suffer with realization that they are not going to be famous and there’s nothing they can do to solve it.”
It brought to mind, The Libidinous Later Years.
This is what consciously formed legacies are about –...the.. fight against our extinction. We cannot succeed indefinitely at that in a physical sense, but we can through a legacy that extends our beingness beyond the time of the flesh.
Maybe it's time to get off the stage.
Panic for Rolling Stones as tour tickets go unsold
But perhaps most embarrassing of all for the band who have a combined age of 249 is that cut-price tickets are also being sold to pensioners through the company Saga.
Normally, I'd post this on Legacy Matters, but a better example of aging with grace and grit can't be found than this septuagenarian British widower who's become one of the most popular posters on YouTube, opening each of his videos with a blues song and tagging each, "grumbles" and "gripes"
Pensioner becomes surprise YouTube star.
He's called geriatic1927.
Peter posted his first video on YouTube about a week ago, under the user name geriatric1927 which refers to the year of his birth. He called it "first try."
In the clip, which starts with "geriatric gripes and grumbles" and some blues music, Peter tells how he became addicted to YouTube.
"It's a fascinating place to go to see all the wonderful videos that you young people have produced so I thought I would have a go at doing one myself," he says, sitting against a backdrop of floral wallpaper and family photographs.
"What I hope I will be able to do is to just to bitch and grumble about life in general from the perspective of an old person who has been there and done that and hopefully you will respond in some way by your comments."
I love him. Here you can find the videos he's posted telling his life story
He's 91 but Leo Burns is still an amazing athlete.
91-Year-Old Driver Is Still Setting Record Pace With Unbeaten Filly
To Dean Hoffman, Burns is “a remarkable story by any stretch, even more so because he’s so nonchalant about it.”
“It’s not that he’s going out there to be a novelty,” said Hoffman, the senior editor of Hoof Beats, the national trotting group’s official publication. “He’s going out there driving and winning. What he’s doing just staggers the imagination.”
While many may see harness racing as fancy — the pastime of yesteryear moguls like Cornelius Vanderbilt and Leland Stanford — it is physically demanding, at times punishing, to its drivers.
Strapped precariously into sulkies, drivers do not have air bags or seat belts as fallbacks if something goes wrong during races in which speeds reach 30 miles an hour, or more.
“It’s a young man’s game,” said Leroy Moore, 70, a longtime acquaintance of Burns who insisted that when on-track accidents happen, “young men bounce better than older people.”
WIT and wisdom make up happy hours.
The senior citizen improv class is a first for WIT, a professional theater collective that puts on about 100 performances and teaches more than 200 students a year.
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Freund feels "astonished" by the quality and quantity of material that her classmates have to draw from, "and they're dirty, and they're funny, and they're imaginative."
Another wonderful post from the Doctor Is In wherein he ruminates on the endless pursuit of a longer life.
For we who live longer in such an idyllic world may not live better: we may indeed live far worse. Should we somehow master these illnesses which cripple us in our old age, and thereby live beyond our years, will we then encounter new, even more frightening illnesses and disabilities? And what of the spirit? Will a man who lives longer thereby have a longer opportunity to do good, or rather to do evil? Will longevity increase our wisdom, or augment our depravity? Will we, like Dorian Gray, awake to find our ageless beauty but a shell for our monstrous souls?
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Like all, I trust, I hope to live life long, and seek a journey lived in good health and sound mind. But even more–far more indeed–do I desire that those days yet remaining–be they long or short–be rich in purpose, wise in time spent, and graced by love.
Brooke Astor, now 104, inherited millions from her husband, Vincent Astor whose father died in the sinking of the Titanic.
Astor is a noted philanthropist, giving away millions to the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall and the Museum of Natural History as well as many smaller projects and for which she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.
No matter how rich, no one is immune from the perils of old age and incapacity. Her legal guardian is her son from her first marriage, Anthony Marshall, 82, a Broadway producer.
Her grandson, Philip Marshall, has filed papers in court alleging "elder abuse" and requesting that his father Anthony Marshall be moved as Brooke Astor's guardian.
Despite the $2.3 million Anthony Marshall pays himself yearly as his mother's guardian, he cut off Astor's access to expensive medication, reduced her doctors' visits and ordered her staff not to take her to an emergency room or call 911 without contacting him first.
Relative says N.Y. philanthropist abused.
Philanthropist Brooke Astor, the 104-year-old society queen who gave away nearly $200 million to city charities, is now sleeping on a filthy couch in torn nightgowns while her son withholds money and proper medical care, her grandson charged in court papers.
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The papers also claim that Astor has been denied many of the staples of her high-society life. Her Estee Lauder face creams were replaced with petroleum jelly and her French chef was fired, they said. Nurses had to use their own money to purchase hair bonnets and socks for Astor, the papers say.
It is appalling how some children treat their aging parents.
If your older parents insist on driving and they still can safely, it's a good thing because they are far less likely to enter a nursing home or an assisted living center.
The American Journal of Public Health published the results of a study by researchers at John Hopkins based on extensive interviews over 10 years.
Giving Up Driving May be Express Lane to Long-Term Care
"The independence that accompanies a driver's license and car has long been linked anecdotally to a better quality of life for seniors."
Mitsubishi Pencil Co. has drawn attention with a new set of coloring pencils designed for adults as a coloring boom among middle-aged and senior people continues across Japan.
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Coloring has emerged as a simple pastime for retired members of the baby-boom generation, and its popularity has surged with claims that thinking about and separating colors has the effect of a mental workout.
It's one way to cultivate your eye and beauty which is immensely gratifying. Too few of us have the time when we're working.
I've always looked forward to painting in my later life.
Good news for aging brains or why we get older AND mellower.
It turns out that we become MORE emotionally stable as we grow older because our brains gradually reorganizes our emotion system, moving from the amygdala to the pre-frontal cortex, from the more animal brain, center of the automatic fear response, to the the more evolved, conscious thinking brain.
That slow move gives us increased control over our negative emotions and greater accessibility to our positive emotions.
This gradual reorganization of the brain's emotion system may result from older folk responding to accumulating personal experiences by increasingly looking for meaning in life, the researchers propose in the June 14 Journal of Neuroscience.
Evidence that emotional functions improve in older brains "indicates that our ability to register the significance of information is preserved, and even enhanced, as we age," Williams says.
Maria Mueller, 95, was found slumped over in her chair by her son who couldn't find a pulse. Neither could the local doctor who declared her dead.
She suddenly sprang up and asked when Germany was next playing in the World Cup.
When told she had been declared dead by doctors, Maria Mueller replied: "Not likely, not until I see if Germany wins the World Cup.
"There's still life in these old bones yet, and I certainly couldn't miss the football.
When chemotherapy did not work for her leukemia, she had to wait for a bone marrow transplant to save her life. She joked what if the bone marrow was from a Republican!
Well, it was as Mary Traver from Peter Paul and Mary learned when she called the donor to thank her.
We are more alike than we are different.
Peter, Paul & Mary Still Have a Song to Sing All Over This Land.
These days Ms. Travers's thoughts turn to much more than music. In conversation, she mused on mortality and the trio's long relationship.
"I think I scared the boys," Ms. Travers said of her ordeal, referring to Mr. Yarrow and Mr. Stookey, who are both 68. "I think of them as my brothers." She was sitting in Mr. Yarrow's apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where her husband, Ethan Robbins ("I call him St. Ethan"), often stayed while she was being treated at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Said Mr. Yarrow said of the cancer scare, "In our case, every little bit of nonsense between us disappeared."
Aging with Grace and Grit--NOT
Two elderly women devised a complex plot in which they befriended homeless men, took out life insurance policies on them, and then killed the men in hit-and-run accidents in alleys around Los Angeles to collect $2.2 million in payments, police said Monday.
Said police spokesman Lt Paul Vernon,
"It is one of the most sinister, evil plots I've ever seen"
A whole new business has emerged that helps seniors relocate from longtime homes to smaller spaces.
In Moving on Down, The Washington Post features this senior move service offering help with the physical task and the emotional strain.
"For someone who has a lifetime's worth of accumulation, think of the volume and physical task of doing it. There are the emotions of our things: a woman giving up dining room furniture that she has served holidays meals on, her china closet with all her pretty things," said Martinko. "A lot of the losses are revisited. Often they have lost a spouse, they have lost their mobility. Maybe they are giving up driving, losing their vision, their hearing, their home."
Sometimes it is easier to let a stranger take charge.
National Association of Senior Move Managers here
Dr. Stephen Ruppenthal has eight ways to see growing older is full of possibilities and adventure.
1. Cultivate your relationships
2. Connect with your spirituality
3. Make a difference
4. Protect your health
5. Exercise your intellect
6. Nurture your creativity
7. Rejoice in nature
8. Build your legacy
Age matters less when we pour ourselves into people and things that will in their own way continue us.
We are fortunate to have about 20 "bonus years" to do all of these. I wrote in What's the Point of Aging - expect the best of aging and you will have it.
A great relief indeed, to become more like ourselves. Better still, our better selves.
Ronni Bennett echoes that thought in Becoming Who We Are
Now I believe I was too quick, at 50, to have set myself in stone. It is unlikely that we change our bedrock natures, but it a rare individual who can avoid gaining new knowledge, understanding and perhaps a little wisdom as the years pass - and that alters our perspectives and therefore who we are....
we are all, unto our deathbeds, in the process of becoming. Sometimes I entertain the notion that that's what our “job” is while we’re on Earth.
Robert Brady, an American who's lived in Japan for many years and posts at Pure Land Mountain is guest blogging at Ronni Bennett's blog Time Goes By, What it's really like to get older
Yesterday he wrote about his father-in-law who is descended from a long line of samuri, Keiji Kodaira who graduated from college at 80
Accomplished and still accomplishing, Kodaira just released his first CD at 91. He wrote the traditional Japanese songs over 50 years while he was a teacher and later about his life, but he and his brother produced the CD themselves and did all the illustrations as well as a songbook in the past year on a computer.
That’s another great thing well-spent elders do: besides setting examples as they lead the way, they raise the bar.
Asians have far more positive images of an active and vital old age that result in a far happier old age. Because of that they are far happier as they grow older.
It may be that as the sun sets, we turn West for role models, towards those societies with great expectations for the elders among them.
Hell, I want to release a CD when I'm 91. I expect that as we grow older and more digitally fluent, we will have many more opportunities to develop our own creativity than we can imagine.
From Nature, Wrinkled cell nuclei may make us age. It may be that blocking an aberrant protein could keep cells "pert and young".
The team suggests that healthy cells always make a trace amount of an aberrant form of lamin A protein, but that young cells can sense and eliminate it. Elderly cells, it seems, cannot.
Critically, blocking production of this deviant protein corrected all the problems with the nucleus. "You can take these old cells and make them young again," Misteli says.
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"If this really has a physiological role in normal elderly people then it's a huge deal," says David Sinclair who studies the molecular mechanisms of ageing at Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The New York Times says Elderbloggers Stake Their Claim.
Ronnie Bennett of Time Goes By is quoted
Blogging helps keep older minds sharp, offers a platform in which to express views and opens social networks all over the world,
While in Britain, a foundation has built a township in India so that the elderly can be outsourced
Dignity Lifestyle, as the new township is known, is a first-of-its-kind concept in India. The foundation is emphatic about the fact that it is not an old-age home. It is about ìproductive ageingî, where the elderly are able to enjoy facilities like libraries, film shows and talks. As the town is part of the state governmentís semi-rural area development programme, the elderly have the option of getting involved in the regeneration of the area through literacy and other developmental programmes.
Uma Devi, administration manager of Dignity Foundation, said: ìIn India, we donít have a culture of dumping our elderly in old-age homes and this is not a home but more a lifestyle. We have a full-fledged geriatric care unit to take care of the needs of those requiring extra care due to diseases like Alzheimerís.î
Back in the U.S, there's a new blog chronicling Ageism in America sponsored by the International Longevity Center
I say you're never too old to learn yoga or tai chi. Karate is usually for younger folk.
Not this granny though. Granny used karate
75 year old Anica D was sleeping when an intruder broke into her house and attacked her.
No one answered her calls for help so she tried out some karate moves she learned from television, immobilized the 30 year burglar, then called the police who arrested him and later charged him with burglary and attempted rape.
A lot of us who are growing older, some with, others without spouses are looking for a new way to live. Not for us, nursing homes or living in Sun City. Florida or Arizona may be too far from our families.
We want, like we always did, more. We want to stay close to friends, be independent yet live in a community where new friends can be made, meals can be shared and neighbors counted on to help if needed. We want something affordable, easy to maintain yet comfortable and we don't want to become dependent on our children.
In talking with a few friends about the idea of living together sometime in the future, we agree on the physical and emotional virtues of living in a small community or neighborhood, but we never got to the point of figuring out where or how or when.
Luckily, Charles Durrett has published a handbook, Senior Co-housing, A Community Approach to Independent Living that gives us a process to follow when we get serious. Why make mistakes that other people have already made? Why not take advantage of the lessons learned elsewhere?
"Senior Cohousing: A Community Approach to Independent Living" (Charles Durrett)
His book will be helpful to many.
Will robots fill the space now empty of husband, children and pets?
Seemingly sentient robots can fill void, researchers say.
The AIBO from Sony ''gives me a sense of identity," Light said. ''The dog loves me all the time. . . . It gives me an entrée into a world I had thought I'd lost forever."
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Alan Beck, lead researcher in the Purdue study, said he feels no misgivings when using the robots among elders who are mentally competent and who let themselves imagine that the machine has feelings. ''It's a suspension of disbelief," he said.
You're never to old to create the rest of your life. You can be 80 and revolutionary.
They are unlikely revolutionaries. Bearing walkers and canes, a veritable Merck Manual of ailments among them, the 12 old friends — average age 80 — looked as though they should have been sitting down to a game of Scrabble, not pioneering a new kind of commune.
Opting for old age on their own terms, they were starting a new chapter in their lives as residents of Glacier Circle, the country's first self-planned housing development for the elderly — a community they had conceived and designed themselves, right down to its purple gutters.
Over the past five years, the residents of Glacier Circle have found and bought land together, hired an architect together, ironed out insurance together, lobbied for a zoning change together and existentially probed togetherness together.
"Here you get to pick your family instead of being born into it," said Peggy Northup-Dawson, 79, a retired family therapist and mother of six who is legally blind. "We recognized that when you're physically closer to each other, you pay more attention, look in on each other. The idea was to share care."
In California, New Kind of Commune for Elderly , in the NYTimes.
We're going to be seeing a lot more of these stories.
Well, what do you know. From my old neighborhood on Beacon Hill, a great alternative to nursing homes and assisted living centers. An existing community figures out how to age where they live and still get the services they need without depending on adult children.
Aging at Home: For a Lucky Few a Wish Come True
ALONE in his row house on Beacon Hill, with four precipitous flights of stairs and icy cobblestones outside the front door, John Sears, 75, still managed to look after himself after he was hit by a taxicab and left with a broken knee.
That is because Mr. Sears was one phone call away from everything he needed to remain in his home, the goal of more than 80 percent of the nation's elderly as they confront advancing age, according to consistent polls.
Mr. Sears required both practical assistance and peace of mind: Transportation to and from the hospital. An advocate with him at medical appointments. Home-delivered meals from favorite restaurants. Someone at his side as he hobbled to the bank and the barber. Someone else to install grab bars in his bathroom. A way to summon help in an emergency. People to look in on him.
They are all only one phone call away and organized by Beacon Hill Village, a non profit organization, created by the local residents themselves for themselves with a little help
In the lingo of the US Administration on Aging, it's a NORC - a natural occurring retirement community.
"I don't want a so-called expert determining how I should be treated or what should be available to me," said 72-year-old Susan McWhinney-Morse, one of the founders. "The thing I most cherish here is that it's we, the older people, who are creating our own universe."
Five years ago, Beacon Hill Village was a wish, not a plan.
Today, it has 340 members ages 52 to 98, an annual budget of $300,000, an executive director and staff, a stable of established service providers and enough foundation support to subsidize moderate or low-income members, who number one-fifth of the total. The annual fee is $550 for an individual and $780 for a household, plus the additional cost of discounted "à la carte" services.
A how-to manual is coming next month.
While Ellen Goodman ponders whether Boomers at 60, are a Benefit or Burden
Super Bowl XL is now officially the site of the first successful protest movement of the aging baby boomers: for the right to rock 'n' roll
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We seem to be developing two distinct story lines about the boomers at 60. The generation is portrayed as either a crushing burden or a huge benefit.
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The truth is that baby boomers have never had much more in common than a date book. The folks who turn 60 this year are as different as Bill Clinton and George Bush, Donald Trump and Cher. Even if boomers share a fascination with their aging process, aging itself may be as individualistic as a set of genes.
Ronni Bennett, settling in, is quite sure that aging is great.
The young are welcome to their youth, which has its own pleasures. I wouldn't trade my newfound comfort to return to those years because now, even in a culture that wants me to disappear from view, to not remind them that they too will be (and look) old one day, being old feels like I've won a prize. The gains so outweigh the losses and are so personally empowering and exciting that I almost wish it could have happened sooner - except each of us comes to understanding and acceptance in our own time.
Japan is now seeing a soaring rate of crime by those over 65 at the same time that crimes by youth have fallen. Geriatric crime up in Japan.
From theft to arson to murder, figures by the National Police Agency tell a sorry tale of soaring “neo-geriatric” crime during 2005. In a year when youth crime fell, the over-65s accounted for more than one in ten of all Japanese arrests — a dramatic leap from the one-in-50 level recorded in 1990.
Crimes favoured by the elderly are pick-pocketing and shoplifting. In many cases, said one police officer, they have developed a cunning strategy to avoid arrest even if caught red-handed: feigning senile dementia.
But murder is also sharply on the rise, with the over-65s responsible for 141 incidents last year. In most cases, the strangling or stabbing was by a husband or wife who had found that after more than 50 years of marriage they could no longer stand each other.
Demographic trends play a large part, but it may be that the silver-haired have just too much time on their hands. A former police psychologist says
“Neo-Geriatrics are those over 65 who are still fit, healthy and want to get more out of their lives. Without work, they’ll be filled with anxiety and there’s a likelihood they may turn to crime.”
More from Time's special report on Tuning up your Brain
More supple and elastic than anyone realized is the aging brain because aging in fact makes the brain better.
"In midlife," says UCLA neurologist George Bartzokis, "you're beginning to maximize the ability to use the entirety of the information in your brain on an everyday, ongoing, second-to-second basis. Biologically, that's what wisdom is."
In fact,
Essentially, the brain spends decades upgrading itself from a dial-up Internet to a high-speed version, not fully completing the job until age 45 or so.
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It's that talent for reflective thinking that explains the role older adults have always played in the human culture. It's not for nothing that history's firebrands and ideologues are typically young, while its judges and peacemakers and great theologians tend to be older. Not everyone achieves the sharp thought and serene mien that can come with age. But for those who do, the later years can be the best years they have ever had.
John Scripter was on his death bed with only days left to live when he consulted with his wife and then agreed to become the first heart transplant at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was really, really scared. The doctors thought, maybe they could give him another 7, maybe 10, years of life with the transplant.
Now, a folk hero, Scripter returned to MGH for a 20th anniversary celebration of his transplant. Doctors now expect him to live another 15 to 20 years.
He faced his fear and won maybe as much as an additional 40 years of life. Since more than 200 people have gotten transplants at MGH and won whole new lives. Families have remained intact, children are not orphans.
This is why people should make out organ donation cards. If you are in an accident and your heart or liver can be saved, wouldn't you want to give a perfect stranger another 40 years of life?
Donate Life.
Here's a Donor Card, free and printable.
There are also some wonderful stories
Gloria has told Suzi of her grief for Suzi's loss and her intention to be sure she is deserving of Bobby's gift. Suzi says that her grief "turned to joy when I discovered that my husband's death was not final but had given five people a chance to live." Melissa, who wrote in that first letter to Gloria that she hoped a child had received one of her dad's organs and could live to grow up, understands now that the gift that saved Gloria's life also "saved" the lives of her son Arylon and daughter Aquia, who came so close to becoming motherless at ages 9 and 6. Gloria and family, who attended Melissa's wedding, now are celebrating with Suzi the birth of Melissa's little boy, Robert.
If you want to learn all about Aubrey de Grey, the English biogerontologist who claims we can live to be 1000, who has won the respect of some scientists and the scorn of others, you must read The Man Who Would Murder Death.
Whether it's above, beyond or beneath me, I find the idea of living to 1000 years exhausting even to think about. All this focus on the survival of the physical body alone seems creepy.
Facing age discrimination in searching for a job, the 55-Plus Crowd takes to eBAy Auctions.
Many people age 55 and older are turning to the online marketplace.
For some retirees, eBay has become a kind of financial lifeline, supplementing pension plans or savings that may not be sufficient.
Others have uncovered a latent entrepreneurial streak in themselves or simply see eBay as a creative outlet; they enjoy the sales process and the interaction an eBay business gives them with people around the world.
A large and growing body of evidence is showing what some of us know instinctively - younger people are more physically resilient, but older people are far more resilient emotionally.
That's why they are often called "tough old birds."
From With Age Comes Resilience, Storm's Aftermath Proves in today's Washington Post.
"Study after study has shown that for older people, negative emotions have less of an effect than with young people -- and for the elderly those effects dissipate faster," said Gene D. Cohen, a geriatric psychiatrist at George Washington University who for 20 years directed research on aging at the National Institutes of Health.
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"You don't live to 80 without being tough," said Robert E. Reichlin, a clinical psychologist and specialist on early onset Alzheimer's disease at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He treated elderly evacuees at the Astrodome. "Older adults do bounce back well because they have seen a lot and they have lived through a lot. Psychologically, they can take a lot more in stride than young people."
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"Most people would intuitively think that older people would not be able to handle adversity," Cohen said. "But they have survived the death of a significant other, loss of prestigious work, loss of health. They are very high on the scale of creatively adapting to adversity."
No one does more to rail against ageism, the last acceptable prejudice - than Ronnie Bennett.
Take a look at The Courage To Be Our Age.
So why do we try so hard to deny our age? Because we live in age-phobic culture that is discriminatory and disrespectful, littered with false beliefs about old age. No one wants to live in such a world, so we go along with the cultural imperative to maintain a facsimile of youth, actively complicit in our own second-class citizenry.
Ageism is as evil as every other ism and it will persist as long as we pretend to be younger than we are.
And if you think you're not prejudiced, just take her test on aging myths to see how you do. After all, if you don't know what's true, it's hard not to be prejudiced.
Oranges, legumes, leafy green vegetables all contain folates. So do folic acid supplements.
Now we learn that folates appear to have more impact on reducing Alzheimer's risk than vitamin E, as does healthy diets overall.
From a long-term study by the National Institute on Aging.
The Australians began a 20 year study in 1999 to examine the changes in people's thinking and mood as they age.
Preliminary results are in.
It is guaranteed to raise a cheer among those who enjoy a tipple: moderate drinkers are better thinkers than teetotallers or those who overindulge.
Research by the Australian National University in Canberra suggests drinking in moderation boost your brainpower. But none at all, or too much, can make you a dullard.
A study of 7,000 people in their early 20s, 40s and 60s found that those who drank within safe limits had better verbal skills, memory and speed of thinking than those at the extremes of the drinking spectrum. The safe consumption level was considered to be 14 to 28 standard drinks a week for a man and seven to 14 for a woman.
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The results may reflect the fact that alcohol can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and increase blood flow to the brain - factors linked to improved mental function. They also support research that suggests moderate alcohol intake can reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes by improving circulation.
Something happens in middle age when you realize the road ahead is shorter than the road that got you there. Time is more precious because you realize you will run out and you don't know when.
Time to live for real, time to live on purpose.
Here's how Rob Paterson describes his 55th birthday.
So for me there is a poignancy of reaching a milestone. Life has become very precious for me as I acknowledge that my father had less than a year to live when he reached his 55th. How much time do I have? How much time do you have? What would it mean to have less than a year to live?
Of course none of us know and it may only be an hour or a day for many of us but we imagine that we have decades ahead of us.
For much of my youth I imagined that I had time.
No more bullshit for me now only life.
No more worrying about silly things. No more wasting time with people who make me feel bad. No more working for things that mean nothing.
More play. More being with those that I love. More doing dangerous things that do mean something. More being nice to myself. More doing and less thinking. More time with dogs and nature.
More drinking better wine. More with my body and less with my mind. More love less bitterness. More love. More love.
How well we react to stress is one of the most significant factors for predicting how well we age writes Tara Parker Pope in the Wall Street Journal's The Secrets of Successful Aging.
"One of the myths of aging is to choose your parents wisely," says John W. Rowe, who, before becoming chairman of Aetna Inc., served as director of the MacArthur Foundation Research on Successful Aging, one of the largest aging studies in the country. "People feel there is a genetic program they are playing out. But since only about one-third of aging is heritable, the rest is acquired -- that means you are responsible for your own old age."
Staying connected with strong relationships is especially important.
Connectedness in old age is enormously important.
Second are the personality traits such a optimism, adaptability and a willingness to try new things. People with such traits get over day to day stress sooner.
Other coping skills that you can develop are
• seeking control when you can
• getting accurate information so you know what to expect.
• keeping friends and family close
• finding exercise you like and doing it on a regular basis
• getting more sleep.
Plato once said, "Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom," but only if you get there and age well.