Category Archives for Health & Wellness

Poll Says Americans Shy Away from Wanting to Live to Age 120

Published in Pawtucket Times, August 16, 2013

What if new biomedical advances could slow the aging process and allow people to live into their 12th decade (to age 120), would you want to have these new medical treatments? Although you might take this opportunity to keep death at bay for decades, a new research survey by the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project finds most Americans (56%) say “no” – they, personally, would not want treatments to enable dramatically longer life spans. But roughly two-thirds (68%) think that most other people would choose to live to 120 and beyond.

Released last week, the ten page report, “Living to 120 and Beyond: American’s Views on Aging, Medical Advances and Radical Life Extension,” notes that “some futurists think that even more radical changes are coming, including medical treatments that could slow, stop or reverse the aging process and allow humans to remain healthy and productive to the age of 120 or m ore. The possibility that extraordinary life spans could become ordinary life spaces no longer seems far-fetched.”

The Pew Research Center Report’s findings are tabulated from data compiled from a new nationwide telephone survey, conducted March 21-April 8, 2013, on cell phones and landlines, among a nationally representative sample of 2,012 adults. The overall margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Is Living Longer Better?

The Pew Research Center’s survey explores the public’s attitudes toward aging, medical advances and what some biomedical researchers call “radical life extension” – the possibility that scientific breakthroughs someday could allow people to live much longer than is possible today. The findings indicated that overall, more Americans think dramatically longer life spans would be bad (51%) than good (41%) for society.

The researchers asked adult recipients how long they ideally would like to live, more than two-thirds (69%) cite an age between ages 79 and 100. (For this writer, eighty-nine years old is just the ripe old age to shed my mortal coil in this world.). The median desired life span of the survey respondents is 90 years – about 11 years longer than the current average U.S. life expectancy, which is 78.7 years. Just 9% of Americans say they want to live more than 100 years.

According to the researchers, because most people say they have heard little or nothing about the possibility of radically extended lifetimes, and because the scientific breakthroughs are far from certain, the wording of the survey questions focus on the result – much longer life spans – and are deliberately vague about how this would be achieved or how healthy an average person would be at 120 and beyond.

The survey also seeks to put the forward-looking questions about radical life extension into perspective by asking the respondents about their views on aging, health care, medical advances in general, personal life satisfaction and bioethical issues.

According to the researchers, the study’s findings indicate that the U.S. public is not particularly concerned about the gradual rise in the percentage of Americans who are 65 and older. Nearly nine-in-ten adults surveyed stated that “having more elderly people in the population” either is a good thing for society (41%) or doesn’t make much difference (47%). Just 10% see the graying of America as a bad thing.

A Cure for Most Cancers, a Possibility

The findings indicate that the public also tends to view medical advances in general as good thing (63%) rather than as interfering with the natural cycle of life (32%). Moreover, the public is optimistic that some extraordinary breakthroughs will occur in the next few decades. For instance, about seven-in-ten adult Americans think that by the year 2050 there will be a cure for most forms of cancer (69%) and that artificial arms and legs will perform better than natural ones (71%).

Survey respondents expressed skepticism that radical life extension will be possible anytime soon. Only a quarter think that by 2050 the average American will live to be 120 years old; nearly three-quarters (73%) say this either “probably” or “definitely” will not happen. And, if it does happen, many Americans foresee both positive and negative consequences for society.

While forty-four percent of the respondents, for example, say that radical life extension would make the economy more productive because people could work longer, fifty-three percent disagree. Two-thirds say they think that dramatically longer life spans “would strain our natural resources” and that medical scientists would offer life-extending treatments before they fully understood the health effects. And although a solid majority of respondents (79%) think that life-extending treatments should be available to everyone who wants them, most (66%) also think that, in practice, only the wealthy would have access to the new technology.

The researchers found that there some differences among religious groups when it comes to their attitudes about medical treatments that would slow the aging process and extend life by decades. Black Protestants are among the most likely to say radical life extension would be a good thing for society (54%). By contrast, fewer white evangelical Protestants (34%) and white Catholics (31%) say the same. Hispanic Catholics (44%) are more likely than white Catholics (31%) to think these treatments would be a good thing for society.

Ideal Life Span for Some Rhode Islanders

But what do Rhode Islander’s think about living longer, say into their 12th decade.

Kasey Johnson, development associate at Slater Mill Museum, will not seek out advanced medical technologies to extend her life. “Aging is viewed negatively in our culture,” the East Greenwich resident says, noting that those reaching very old age are often times seen by many as a drain on the nation’s economy and resources.

Johnson notes, Americans were not raised to honor or revere their elderly like they do in other cultures. “We end up resenting them for the time and energy it takes us to care for them. I wouldn’t want to live longer, only to be seen as a burden by everyone else,” says the 26 year old.

Graphic designer Neville Lassotovitch, 69, who lives with her retired husband, Peter, 70, and Daisy, their 17-year old beagle, in Barrington, would not mind extending her the years of her life by decades, but only if she was surrounded by her husband, good friends and children. “I would not want to be alone with out them,” she said.

Fifty-one year old Ken McGill, heading Pawtucket’s Board of Canvassers, sees a bright prospect of living a longer life. He has a lot to check off on his bucket list. “Nobody likes to pass on,” quips McGill, who notes that he plans to retire at age 70. “This would give me a good forty years to do all the things I have wanted to do, like traveling to see the world, even moving to Florida,” says the long-time Pawtucket resident.

Finally, like McGill, Keri Ambrosino, of Design By Keri, would “love” to live to the ripe old age of 120 years as long as her quality of life stayed “youthful” and her thinking remained sharp. “Quality of life overbears on quantity in my book,” says the 33 year old West Warwick resident.

Other Reports Released on Radical Life Extension

There is, at present, no method of slowing the aging process and extending the average life expectancy to 120 years or more. But research aimed at unlocking the secrets of aging is underway at universities and corporate labs, and religious leaders, bioethicists and philosophers have begun to think about the morality of radical life extension.

Together with the survey results, Pew Research Center is releasing two accompanying reports. “To Count Our Days: The Scientific and Ethical Dimensions of Radical Life Extension” presents an overview of the scientific research and the emerging ethical debate. “Religious Leaders’ Views on Radical Life Extension” describes how some clergy, bioethicists, theologians and other scholars think their religious traditions might approach the issue.

Herb Weiss, LRI ’12, is a Pawtucket-based writer who covers aging, health care and medical issues. He can be reached at hweissri@aol.com

Increasing Your Odds of Living to 100 and Beyond

Published January 18, 2013, Pawtucket Times

Just barely holding onto the record for being the nation’s oldest person for about two weeks, Mamie Rearden, of Edgefield, a 114-year-old South Carolina woman, died on Jan. 2, just three weeks after a fall broke her hip. The amazing thing though, is for how long she was so healthy and living independently. According to recently published research, most people who reach the age of 110 years and beyond, only spend, on average the last 5 years of their incredibly long lives with age-related diseases.

According to the Associated Press (AP), the Gerontology Research Group, an organization verifying age information for the Guinness World Records, noted that Rearden’s Sept. 7, 1898, birth was recorded and therefore verified in the 1900 U.S. Census, making her the nation’s oldest living person after last month’s passing of 115-year-old Dina Manfredini of Iowa. Before Rearden died, she was more than a year younger than the world’s oldest person, 115-year-old Jiroemon Kimura of Japan.

Rearden, married to her husband for 59 years until his death in 1979, raised 11 children, 10 of whom are alive. The former teacher and housewife first learned how to drive a car at age 65. At this time she worked for an Edgefield County program locating children whose parents were keeping them out of school, reported AP.

Studying the Nation’s Oldest Citizens

Dr. Thomas Perls, a geriatrician who heads the Boston University-based New England Centenarian Study (NECS), considers Rearden’s longevity to be a very rare occurrence. She was one of around 70 supercentenarians (people who have reached age 110) living in this country, he says.

Almost 20 years ago, when Perls’ longitudinal study began, about 1 per 10,000 people in the United States survived to age 100. However, he notes that they are now more common at a rate of 1 per 5,000.

“Now most people think that getting to your eighties is expected,” says Dr. Perls. Simply put, more Americans are now living longer today than in previous generations because the high childhood mortality rates in the early 1900s have been slashed due to hugely improved public health measures like clean water, vaccinations and a safe food supply combined with a more educated population and improved socioeconomic conditions, he noted.

Meanwhile, vaccinations for older people, effective antibiotics and medications for what have become chronic rather than acute lethal diseases, as well as curative surgeries are now markedly improving middle-age people’s chances of living to even older ages, adds Dr. Perls.

Finding the Secrets of Longevity

Dr. Perls says his passion for working with the nation’s oldest began when at 16 years old he worked as an orderly in a nursing home. In 1986, he received his medical degree from the University of Rochester, later a Masters from the Harvard School of Public Health. His specialization in geriatrics ultimately would propel him into a life-long interest in finding the secrets as to why people successfully age well and live for more than a century.

Born in Palo Alto, California, Dr. Perls later moved to Colorado and is now residing in Boston. A professor at Boston University School of Medicine, Dr. Perls, board certified in internal medicine and geriatric medicine, has coauthored a book for the lay public, entitled, Living to 100, co-edited an academic book, and penned 106 juried articles. He is the author of the online Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator. It uses the most current and carefully research medical and scientific data to estimate how old you will live to be (www.livingto100.com) and provides some general advice according to your answers to about 40 questions that take about 7 minutes to complete.

Initially at Harvard University, the NECS later relocated to Boston University School of Medicine, giving his longevity initiative “room to grow,” says Perls, who is NECS’s founding director. Today this demographic initiative, now considered to be the world’s largest study of centenarians and supercentenarians, is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), private foundations and “cherished” individual donors, he says. Study participants and their families fill out health and family history questionnaires, and provide a blood sample for studying their genes.

Along with the NECS, Dr. Perls also directs the Boston-based study center of the multi-center and international Long Life Family Study (LLFS) which is a study of families that have multiple members living to extreme old age. Both initiatives are enabling researchers to find out how and why centenarians and their children, who are in their seventies and eighties, live the vast majority of their lives disability-free.

As to those who participate in his NECS and LLFS initiatives, the youngest is about 45 years old (a very young child of a centenarian) and the oldest ever enrolled was 119 years old, the second oldest person in the world, ever, states Perls. Since he begun the NECS, out of 2,200 participants, 1,200 were age 100 and over, he added. The remaining participants were children of centenarians or in the study’s control group. “Because of their ages, most of these folks have now passed away,” he said, adding that at any one time about 10% of the total centenarians in the study are alive.

Unraveling the Data

During his long career studying centenarians, the research findings indicate that it is common for centenarians to have brothers and sisters who also live to be very old. “Exceptional longevity runs strong in families,” he notes.

Dr. Perls’ research also debunked long-held beliefs that the longer you live, the sicker you get. But even if centenarians were afflicted by multiple age-related diseases in their nineties, on average 90 percent functioned independently at the average age of 93 years, he says. Centenarians living to age 100 were found to have avoided age-related disabilities as well as diseases until, on average, their last 5 years.

While a healthy life style is definitely important to living into ones’ eighties with much of that time spent in good health, Dr. Perls states that having the right genes becomes more and more crucial for living to a much older age.

Research indicates that living to your mid-eighties is 70-80% environmental and habits and 30-20% genes. Seventh Day Adventists were found to have the longest average life expectancy in the United States, that is 88 years. Most of that longevity was likely due to their healthy habits which include being vegetarian, regularly exercising, not smoking or drinking alcohol and also doing things that decrease the effect of stress.

However, many Americans do just the opposite, with unhealthy diets, not exercising and still, many people smoke, notes Dr. Perls. So it is not surprising that on average, Americans die 8-10 years earlier than Seventh Day Adventists, at the average age of about 80 years. (According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in 2010, the U.S. life expectancy was 75 years for males and 80 years for females.)

“We should take advantage of our genes and not fight them,” Perls says, by adopting healthier lifestyles.

Perls believes that DNA research on very old people should for now not focus on identifying genes that predict diseases. Rather the findings in the near future might just offer clues to how some genes slow the aging process and protect people from age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s and heart attacks. Such discoveries could lead to the development of drugs that protect against multiple chronic diseases.

A Final Note…

Make working to create a healthier life style a top priority on your New Year’s resolution list. This effort might just ratchet up your life expectancy into the mid-eighties and if you have longevity in your family, even longer. Why not stop smoking, and watch your drinking, too. Even make exercise, weight training and keeping your mind active as part of your daily routine. Combine these lifestyle changes with better eating habits, meditating or yoga, or even doing low impact exercises like tai chi, and you’re on your way to increased longevity.

Ultimately, a healthier life style along with good genes may well help you increase the odds of living to 100 and beyond.

If you know anyone who is 105 years old or older, please mention the New England Centenarian Study to them and/or their family. The Study can be reached at (888) 333-6327 or you can go online http://www.bumc.bu.edu/centenarian for more information.

Herb Weiss, LRI ’12, is a freelance writer who covers aging, health care and medical issues. He can be reached at hweissri@aol.com.

Tips on Finding an Age-Friendly Fitness Center

    Published on November 16, 2012, Pawtucket Times

           With the cold frigid weather approaching, that 30 minute daily walk around the block may well fall by the wayside in the winter months. While this activity is just what the doctor ordered to help keep you physically fit and feeling good, many aging baby boomers and seniors ‘look inward’ by turning to a local gym, by bringing their regular exercise indoors.

Seeking that Perfect Age-Friendly Fitness Center

            According to the Vancouver, British Columbia-based International Council on Active Aging (ICAA),aging baby boomers and seniors are joining health and wellness facilities faster than any other age group today, however many of these facilities are ill-prepared or not equipped to serve those in their later years.

While older “adult-focused” small gyms like ‘Nifty After Fifty’ are available, “even the large 24 Hour Fitness chains seek to attract older adults”, says Patricia Ryan, ICAA’s Vice-President of Education, noting that “over 70 percent of YMCAs had older adult programs according to a stat cited in ICAA Active Aging in America, Industry Outlook 2010.

Ryan recommends that when shopping around for a fitness center that caters to older baby boomers and seniors, always compare and contrast information gathered, using the following checklists, created by ICAA, to identify age-friendly fitness center.

            Become a savvy shopper when touring your local fitness center, by making sure it gears its amenities and organizational philosophies towards your needs – those age fifty-something and beyond.  ICAA, the world’s largest senior fitness association, has created a check list to help older persons to rate and compare local fitness facilities so they can choose one that meets their age-specific needs.

Some specific questions to consider can ultimately ensure that the center you choose meets your specific physical needs:

  1. Are the locker rooms clean, accessible and monitored by staff?
  2. Do you feel comfortable in the atmosphere of the facility?
  3. Are the membership contracts and marketing materials available in large print?
  4. Are signs visible and easy to understand?
  5. Does the facility’s cardiovascular equipment have the following age-friendly features – a display panel that is easy to read, easy to change and easy to understand?
  6. Is the music acceptable and set at a reasonable level?
  7. Do the facility’s treadmills start slowly, at 0.5 mph?
  8. Do the recumbent bikes or steppers have a wide and comfortable seat with armrests?
  9. Does the facility’s strength-building equipment have instructional placards that have simple diagrams, easy-to read text and font, and correct usage information.
  10. Does the facility’s strength-building equipment have a low starting resistance, less than five pounds?
  11. Does the facility offer programs designed to meet the needs of those with a variety of chronic conditions (specifically osteoporosis, cardiovascular, disease, diabetes, balance abnormalities, muscular weakness)?
  12.  Do the group exercise classes have different levels of intensity, duration and size?
  13.  Is there an extensive screening and assessment process (for balance, functional   abilities, osteoporosis)?’
  14.  Is the staff certified by a nationally recognized organization to work with people who have various health issues that may arise with age (specifically osteoporosis, hypertension, arthritis)?
  15. Is the staff knowledgeable about the impact that medication can have on exercise?

To download the complete checklist, visit the ICAA website,  www.icaa.cc/checklist.htm.

Getting Healthy, Building Closer Relationships   

It’s no secret to Maureen Wilcox, 45, of the need to cater to an aging population.  Wilcox,  a certified Personal Trainer at the Attleboro YMCA located across from the City’s Public Library on South Main Street in Attleboro, MA estimates that 30 percent of the nonprofit group’s membership is age 50 and over.  Many of these members are seeking advice on how to better manage or prevent age-related health concerns, the most common being: arthritis, high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiac health and obesity.

Wilcox notes that this large constituency finds value in the Attleboro YMCA’s wide variety of programs that are geared towards baby-boomers and seniors.  These programs include resistance and strength training, aqua classes, Zumba classes, chair exercises, yoga and Tai Chi. “These classes will help you to manage a healthy body weight, stimulate your immune system, increase strength, improve posture, increase your flexibility and balance and help prevent chronic illnesses”, she adds. 

             According to Wilcox, a fitness center can also be a place to build friendships among older persons.  “A supportive community can enhance camaraderie among the participants, keeping them motivated and committed to meeting their exercise goals,” she says, adding that commitment to an exercise regime may well be more important than pushing weights around..

Over the years working, Wilcox has seen many new members in their later years forge new friendships at the Attleboro YMCA.  “Seeing people regularly allows them to develop meaningful relationships where they ultimately become an extended family,” she says.

“Relationships developed by participating in exercise classes also builds a small community among the senior age group members,” Wilcox notes, adding that they often participate in social trips and group outings outside of the Attleboro YMCA.  She notes, some seniors while exercising on their stationary bikes, read a big print book, To Kill Mocking Bird, adding health and wellness to an already established community literacy initiative.

Finally, in addition to personal training, various group exercise classes, including a running club,  LIVESTRONG is also offered at the Attleboro YMCA, says Wilcox.  It’s a free 12-week personal training program that provides a place where cancer survivors can come together.   Along with specially-trained staff to safely work in small groups,  participating members receive one-to-one attention while working toward maintaining or regaining their independence, everyday fitness, and overall health & wellness.  These participants share a bond that only cancer survivors can relate to.  “This is an inspirational program and one which we are all proud to be a part of,” prides Wilcox.

Getting to the Bottom Line

             Outdoor walking or the gym? That depends on personal preference and time availability.  “Brisk walking is beneficial, emphasizing ‘brisk,’ “says ICAA’s Ryan. “Faster walking to increase intensity has been reported in several studies in ICAA Research Review, to enhance your health, rather than the frequency,” she noted.

In addition, Ryan adds that scheduled classes in a fitness center help a person plan physical activity into their days and there should be equipment and classes for variety. There is expertise available in many (but not all) cases, especially in gyms targeting older adults and medically integrated fitness centers, a.k.a hospital wellness programs. There is recognition among most fitness clubs that older adults are not only a huge population to attract, but also a very good customer because of expendable income, she says.

“Exercise plays a vital role in healthy aging,” says Michael Fine, MD, Director of the Rhode Island Department of Health.  “Regular exercise is an important weapon in the battle against chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes.  Exercise also helps us maintain flexibility, balance and mobility.  It isn’t necessary to join a gym or buy expensive equipment; a brisk walk around the block is a great place to start if you’ve been sedentary. The key is to find an activity you enjoy and to make time for it each day.”

Ryan strongly agrees with Dr. Fine. “The most important message for those late in life is to MOVE, and to add physical activity into each day.  Physical activity is the magic pill. Whether walking, raking and hauling leaves, playing soccer or even going to a fitness club, it’s the right thing to do for healthy aging.

Herb Weiss, LRI ’12,  is a Pawtucket-free lance writer who covers aging, medical and health care issues.  He can be reached at hweissri@aol.com.