Category Archives for Health & Wellness

The Best of…Experts: Eat Less, Exercise

Published January 2007, Senior Digest

            As we begin the New Year, many people launch promises through New Year’s resolutions or take this time to reflect on overall better lifestyle improvements.    State aging and health care experts say that if your goal is to live longer, consider squeezing in time to enhance your fitness and health through ongoing exercise and better eating.

           Phillip G. Clark, ScD, Professor and Director Program in Gerontology and Rhode Island Geriatric Education Center, notes that exercise is key to living a healthier life.  “Use it or lose it,” he tells Senior Digest.   If older adults don’t continue to use their capabilities, whether physical or mental, they may eventually lose those abilities. So, it is important for aging baby boomers and seniors to continue to be as active as they can, within the limits of any impairments or health problems they may have.

           Before beginning any program always check with your doctor to be sure it is okay. “Your doctor will advise you on other special conditions or limitations you may need to address in developing your own program,” Dr. Clark says.

Exercise, the Best Pill

          Dr. Clark believes that exercise is the “best pill,” Regular exercise for older adults are linked to all sorts of positive physical and mental health outcomes and advantages, he says.  People just feel better physically and mentally especially if they exercise properly on a regular basis.

          The University of Rhode Island (URI) gerontologist compares physical activity to a savings account.  Dr. Clark says, “If you ‘put’ deposits into your exercise savings on a regular basis, you can ‘draw’ on these when you are sick or have to hospitalized to help minimize the impact of any setback on your functioning.”  

          To exercise, costly weight machines and bikes are not necessary, Clark says.  “Keep it simple,” Dr. Clark recommends.  “For many older adults, just walking regularly can have a number of positive benefits. In the winter when the weather is bad, some folks walk around inside their local senior housing building or at the mall,” he says.

             Deb Riebe, PhD., a Professor in URI’s Department to Kinesiology, says that research has found resistance training is another viable option for aging baby boomers and seniors to consider staying fit.  .

 Consider Resistance Training and Balance Exercises

             The URI exercise physiologist notes that muscle strength peaks at age 30 for most people.  After age 50, there is a real decline in muscle strength.  By your 60s or 70s, if you don’t exercise or participate in a resistance training program it will become more difficult to perform simple activities of daily living, like carrying the vacuum cleaner or groceries, says Riebe.

             Strengthening your muscles can be done simply by lifting small hand weights that can purchased in local stores, adds Riebe, noting that you can use your own body weight to strengthen your muscles in your legs by sitting in your dining room and than standing up.  Perform this simple resistance training exercise 10 times.

             “Balance exercises are also very good to prevent a person from falling.  “A good example of a balance exercise is to stand up on one leg using a chair for support,” she says.  

             Don’t use lack of time as a reason to not exercise, warns Riebe.  “Fit 30 or 40 minutes of exercise into your daily routine.  But for those who chose not to you can always park your car far away from a store and walk a little longer distance.  Or you do a few exercises during a television commercial, “combining leisure with a quick work out,” she says.

              Even when socializing with friends or family, Riebe recommends going out and taking a walk around the neighborhood.  “Everyone will benefit,” she says… 

               Anne Marie Connolly, MS, Director of Rhode Island’s Get Fit Rhode Island, Program, oversees Governor Donald Carcieri’s worksite wellness initiative for state employees.  Programs like Rhode Island’s are being launched nationwide by the mandate of state health commissioners and insurance companies attempting to reel in spiraling health care costs. 

               To improve health behavior, brochures, on site lectures (controlling stress and high blood pressure) and behavior change classes (physical exercise and smoking cessation) are aimed at the 20,000 state workers, whose average age is 47 years old.

 Good Nutrition Important, Too

              Connolly, a professor and research associate at URI’s Kinesiology Department stresses the importance that nutrition plays in maintaining one’s good health.  “Research tells us that people should eat smaller portions, increase their fruit and vegetable and decrease fat, high calorie foods and sweets from their diet,” she recommends.

              For persons with high blood pressure, heart disease or diabetes, consider asking your physician for a consult to see a nutritionist.  Connolly notes that this visit is covered by most of health insurance companies.  “A change in your diet can make significant improvements in many chronic conditions.” 

              Connolly observes that some people don’t buy vegetables and fruits because of cost.  “Look around for supermarkets that offer smaller packaging or portions of vegetables and fruits. Salad and fruit bars enable a person to buy to portion or quantity they need,”: she says.  Even in senior housing, you can work with others to buy cheaply.  Split a head of lettuce with a neighbor. Create a schedule to rotate the purchasing of fruits and vegetables, too.   

              As to exercise, Connolly suggests people start off slowly, more important find an exercise that you will like to do.  As a consultant to Club Med, she came to believe that exercise should be fun and not a chore.  “Look back and see what you did when you were younger,” Connolly adds.  “One woman who took tap dancing in her younger years picked it up again.  It does not have to have to be the same intensity as when you were younger.”   

              For persons with arthritis, try going to a local senior center or YMCA and enroll in exercise programs specifically designed for that chronic condition.  “Water exercise is extremely wonderful for people with arthritis,” she says.

               Connolly notes that some Medicare providers even give special discounts for senior citizens who join health care club chains, costing the older person just $10.00 per month.  Check out your Medicare health care plan’s benefits to see if you are eligible to participate.

              Experts agree that the exercise benefits both young and old. “What is remarkable about the human body, people of all ages respond to physical exercise in the same way,” Connolly says.  .

               Herb Weiss is a Pawtucket-based writer whose articles on health, medical and aging issue.  This article was published in January 2007 in Senior Digest. He can be reached at hweissri@aol.com.

Centenarian Takes Priest’s Advice

Published in Senior Digest on May 2006

A life long resident of this community, Blanche Dugas remembers the happy memories of raising her three children in a home on 12th Street, right across from Capon Park.

Dugas, who now resides at Canterbury Woods, an assisted living facility at 100 Garfield Ave., said raising her family with a loving husband was the most important accomplishments in her life.

The 101-year old woman said her old neighborhood was a great place for her children to grow up. “I would send them to the park with a lunch,” she said, shrugging her shoulders with the realization that the world today is not the world she grew up in. “You never worried about your children being picked up by strangers,” she said.

She would start her mornings off by taking to her mother who just happened to have a kitchen window facing her.  You guessed it – Blanche built her house right next to her parents lot.

She fondly talked about her husband, who was 83 when he passed on in the early 1980s with dementia. “We were very close,” she said, adding how pleased she was that she married “such a good guy.”

Now Blanche reflects on her days before she got married at the ripe old age of 22.  During their  nine-month courtship, Phillip Dugas would drive his Model T more than 35 miles, from Putnam, Conn., to her house to visit on Thursday and Sundays. Blanch would marry this young man, the one who she met at Ocean Grove in Swansea. With a good reputation for cutting meat, her husband opened a small grocery store in this city’s Dodgeville section. His reputation brought in customers, allowing the store to thrive for 50 years.

Blanche is proud to be the oldest person in St. Joseph’s parish. When she turned 100 she reeied a medallion, which she wears all the time, from the bishop of Fall River, along with a citation President and Laura Bush recognizing her milestone age, too.

“God has been great to me,” she says, noting that he has left her with her “thinking, hearing, and eyesight.” “What else do you need to live,” she says jokingly. She ties her longevity to living a good, clean life.

“They tell me that there must be a reason for me living such a long life. I pray a lot for the residents of the assisted living facility and for then families,” Blanche said.

However, she is not a stranger to the power of prayer. A priest once told her that if you want to live a long healthy life, you should pray with your family.

“We did that in my family and also in my marriage,” Blanche said.

100 and Still Counting

Published in Senator Digest on May 2006.

The State Department of Elderly Affairs (DEA) is honoring centenarians and their contributions to society in May in observation of Older Americans Month.

“When you stop and think about the thousands of years of living history that centenarians represent, we begin to realize that their experience and wisdom are gifts to be treasured,” Corinne Calise Russo, the DEA  Director told Senior Digest.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the 2000 population count found 1,048,319 persons residing in the Ocean State. The data also revealed that 75,718 of those residents were age 75 and over. But, for those reaching age 100 and over, the number literally falls in the hundreds, a demographic milestone few will reach.

For the past 29 years, the DEA has been charged with organizing the annual Governor’s Centenarians Brunch, an event to celebrate people who have lived to be age 100. Over the year, the DEA’s brunch for the state’s oldest old has become the centerpiece of the agency’s celebration of May as Older Americans Month, says Russo.

In the early years, the Governor’s Centenarians Brunch was held in the State Room at the Statehouse.  In later years, the brunch was moved to community-based locations because of the climbing number of centenarians who were able to attend.

Six times, one of the oldest-know Rhode Islanders, Sam Goldberg, 106, has attended the Governor’s Centenarians’ Brunch with his elder peers, all who either reached age 100 that year or who have lived over a century.  Last year DEA organizers had located and invited 250 Rhode Islanders age 100 and over.  Only 50 attended the brunch. They expected the attendance for this year’s even to be around 60.

Goldberg, a resident of Village of Waterman Lake, Greenville, was born in 1900 in Lodz, Poland. Like many people at that time, his father came to the United States first to work to support his family.  Later, in 1907, Goldberg, his mother, two brothers and two sisters would come over and live, reuniting with their father.

During 1916, Goldberg worked in Hartford, Conn., at a company making ball bearings, for automobiles.

With the outbreak of World War 1, a recruiter in Atlanta signed him up in the United States Calvary. Little did the recruiter know that Goldberg would be one of the few remaining World War I veterans alive in 2006.

Goldberg was not destined to see battle oversee. He would be stationed in San Antonio, Texas, assigned to “guard the boarders against the bad guys.”  During his 17 months in the Army, he would also patrol the 40-mile boarder in Hachita and Columbus, New Mexico. “It was like police work,” remembered Goldberg.

After the Army stint, Goldberg returned to civilian life, working at Willy’s Overland Cars in New York. In 1922, he relocated to work at the company’s Providence dealership.  He moved to the city’s Elmwood neighborhood.  Goldberg has lied in the Ocean State for 84 years, was married for 76 years and raised three children.  He worked all of his life in the car business and said he became a partner at Hurd, a Cranston-based auto dealership, retiring at age 70.

While many people remember the destruction brought about by the Hurricane of 1938, it brought in lots of business in Goldberg’s Chrysler car dealership located on Reservoir Avenue in Cranston. “It increased our business because insurance companies paid to fix cars damaged by the storm,” he said.

Goldberg also remembered the days when Providence was populated with a large number of jewelry companies with thousands of workers.

“You had industry here. You have nothing like that now,” he says.

Why are more people living past age 100?

According to the New England Centenarian Study at the Boston University Medical School, centenarians are the fastest growing segment of our population. The second fastest growing segment is people age 85 and over.

The study started in 1994 has generated data that sheds light on the nation’s oldest old.  The BU Medical School’s website noted that centenarians have many characteristics in common.  Few centenarians are obese, and men and nearly always lean. Those individuals were never heavy smokers, and they could handle stress better than most.

Meanwhile, the study found that women centenarians had a history of bearing children after the age of 35 and even 40.  Researchers say that it is probably not the act of bearing a child in one’s 40s that promotes long life, but doing so may be an indicator that the woman’s reproductive system is aging slowly and that the rest of her body is as well.

The study also found at least 50 percent of the centenarians have first-degree relatives and/or grandparents who also achieved very old age, and many have exceptionally old siblings.  The data indicates that many of the centenarians’ children between age 65 and 82 appear to be following in their parents’ footsteps with marked delays in cardiovascular disease, diabetes and overall mortality.

DEA Director Russo says,” Each year (at the Governor’s Centenarians’ Brunch) we ask centenarians that age-old question,” What is the secrete to your longevity?” Their answers are varied as the personalities involved, but they all contain basic themes.  Stay active and alert.  Stay connected to family, friends and the world around you.  And most of all be grateful for each day and the joy it brings.

Goldberg seems to fit many of the predictors for living over age 100 that have been identified by the New England Centenarian Study. He is lean and never was obese. He never smoked either. But when questioned about his longevity, he laughed and said,” I keep breathing. You take in air.” Maybe his longevity is tied to a good sense of humor, too.