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Solving the Mystery of Human Aging ... the Butler Did It
Dr. Robert Butler is the man who captured the essence of the real crisis of human aging in his Pulitzer Prize winning book which asked a fundamental question, "Growing Old in America: Why Survive?". Good point. Why live longer if an extended life consists of a mere shadow of one's earlier existence? Well, if Butler has his way, that's all about to change. No, he's not intending just to extend life. The intention is to make later life just as fulfilling as early and midlife. That scenario has a cost-benefit for America. A healthier, active, and productive age is one that is more free of unnecessary and expensive ailments. If we only knew exactly how the process of aging works.
If the International Longevity Center (ILC-USA) has its way, we may soon get the answers needed to help make the later years more productive. The ILC has just issued a call for an increase in funding for biomedical research on the mechanisms of aging and the causes of age-related diseases. That call appears in the ILC-USA's report called "The Aging Factor in Health and Disease: The Promise of Basic Research on Aging". The report is the outcome of a two-day multi-disciplinary workshop where a select group of highly distinguished scientists met to discuss the current status of biomedical aging research and identify promising research areas which could be the foundation for the medical advances that would prevent, delay, and even reverse the adverse effects associated with aging.
"It’s been 175 years since the British actuary Benjamin Gompertz observed that after age 30 there’s a doubling of the force of mortality every seven years until the eighth or ninth decade", says ILC-USA President, Robert N. Butler. "This equation reflects underlying molecular and cellular deterioration that predisposes to
disease and death. There have been insufficient funds available, however, to study these processes that define the biology of aging." Currently, the National Institutes of Health spends only about
$100 million of its $15 billion budget to study the biology of aging at the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The biology of aging program is just one-fifth of the NIA’s budget.
The ILC-USA report also indicates that the United States spends only 0.03% as much on aging research as it does on health care services for older people. Today, there are about 35 million Americans age 65 and older and that number is expected to rise to at least 69 million by the year 2020. People age 85 and older, the "oldest old," are the fastest growing segment of the population, which is expected to double by the year 2020 to about seven million or over four percent of the population. The "oldest old" have the greatest impact on the nation’s health care system and are at the greatest risk for needing long term care.
"The Aging Factor in Health and Disease" report explains that answers to important questions require both an investigation of general processes such as oxidative damage and repair, glycation, changes in gene expression, and an investigation of these processes on a tissue by tissue basis. "...we are on the brink of new biological interventions that will postpone the onset of disease and reduce disability rates even further than the 2.1 % decline that we have already achieved," said Dr. Butler. "These are opportunities that we can not afford to miss."
The report is also available on the ILC-USA’s web site at www.ilcusa.org.
The "Aging Factor in Health and Disease" interdisciplinary workshop was sponsored by the International Longevity Center-USA, with support from The Brookdale Foundation Group, the Institute for the Study of Aging, and an educational grant from Pfizer, Inc.
See related articles in the AgeVenture archives.
Aging of Circadian Clock No Cause for Alarm
Aging Boomers Focus of New AGS Foundation
Global Aging Presents Diverse Case Scenario
Science Helps Boomers Battle Premature Aging
Aging? Boomers say "Hell no, we won't go"
AgeVenture News Service, www.demko.com
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America's New Boomerang Parents: Grandma & Grandpa
The good old days of retirement are over. The golden years when you had the time, the resources, and still enough life left in you to pamper yourself ... are over my friend. This is the age of what I call the "boomerang grandparent". Life no longer begins when "the dog dies and the kids finally leave home". Those days are gone, and along with them go the best part of grandparenting. What best part, you say? The part where you can just ship the grandkids back home whenever they get unruly or cranky. That's the "best part" that's gone, because where the grandkids live is now fast-becoming the same place you live.
Over five million children now call grandma's house their home. That's right. 5,435,000 children, or nearly 1-in-8 children in the United
States, live in homes with a grandparent, according to the U.S. the Census Bureau. The findings are part of the Census Bureau's first report on households where grandparents and grandchildren live together.
"A grandparent maintains the household in three-fourths of families that
have both grandparents and grandchildren," said Ken Bryson, co-author with
Lynne M. Casper of Co-resident Grandparents and Grandchildren, P23-198.
In the remaining one-fourth, parents maintain homes in which grandparents
and grandchildren live together. Householders are defined as those in whose name the housing unit is owned or rented.
Casper said that grandchildren in certain types of families are more
prone to economic hardship. "For example, about two-thirds of grandchildren in homes maintained by a grandmother with no spouse or parents of the grandchildren present are in poverty," Casper said.
Grandparent-maintained households differ from parent-maintained households in many other ways. The report contrasts "grandparent-maintained" (GM family) and "parent-maintained" (PM family) families where grandchildren live with grandparents. Here's how these two types of families stack up.
- NUMBER OF GRANDPARENTS
GM families: 50% consist of both grandparents.
PM families: 13% consist of both grandparents.
- AGE OF GRANDPARENTS
GM: 15% of grandmothers, 21% grandfathers are 65 or older.
PM: 50% of grandmothers, 56% grandfathers are 65 or older.
- EMPLOYMENT
GM: majority of both grandparents employed.
PM: one-third of grandfathers, one-fourth of grandmothers employed.
- AGE OF GRANDKIDS
GM: 50% of grandchildren are under age 6.
PM: 33% of grandchildren are under age 6.
- POVERTY
GM: 27% of grandchildren are poor.
PM: 17% of grandchildren are poor.
- HEALTH COVERAGE
GM: 33% have no health insurance.
PM: 19% have no health insurance.
The "boomerang grandparent" trend is so impressive, that the report notes that Census 2000 will include a multi-part question addressing the issue of grandparents as caregivers. That's right, all you exhausted "boomerang grandparents" can expect a visit from the census-taker. If you're smart, you'll find a way to get that census-taker to watch the grandkids for a spell so you can take a much needed nap.
See related articles in the AgeVenture archives.
Not Every Race A Winner in Grandparenting
Help for Grandparents Who Raise Grandkids
Grandparenthood Growing on a Grand Scale
Faith Is Tie That Binds Elders to Grandkids
Boomerang Grandparents
AgeVenture News Service, www.demko.com
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Social Security: If You Rebuild It, They Will Succumb
Social Security. If you rebuild it, they will succumb. That's the gist of a new report on the devastating effects that changes in the Social Security system may reap upon society's most vulnerable elders, older women who live alone.
Older women are as liable to be poor in 2020 as today's older women unless Social Security reformers focus more attention on protecting women's interests, warns a new study released by The Gerontological Society of America.
"Social Security Reform and Older Women: Improving the System" explains why many of the reform proposals put women in jeopardy, and lays the groundwork for a reform package that assures the most vulnerable have enough to live on. The study illustrates how indispensable the national retirement system is for millions of older women.
"More than any other constituency, women rely on Social Security for the lion's share of their retirement income," said Syracuse University economist Timothy M. Smeeding, the report's lead author. "And as a result women have the most to gain or lose from impending reform. Older women living alone are at greatest risk."
Currently, an estimated three of every four poor older Americans are women, and the early forecasts are that poverty and insecurity will be as much of a problem for older women in the 21st century as today, the report says. For many divorced and never married women, as well as women over 85 who live alone, the risk of poverty looms large.
The study acknowledges Social Security reform must include benefit cuts and tax increases, but at the same time, calls for a harder look at reform proposals' impacts on women. "As a society, easing women's economic burden in old age is a national imperative," Smeeding said, adding "Women are not
a sideshow to the national Social Security reform effort; they are the main event."
The study urges policymakers and reformers to be cautious about trading the system's basic insurance protections and benefits for a risky, insecure privatized system, saying the rewards of privatization are questionable and probably not a good deal for most women.
The challenge and opportunity facing policymakers is to explore ways to strengthen, not weaken the national retirement system, according to University of California, San Francisco sociology professor Carroll Estes, a co-investigator for this study. This study was made possible through funding from the Retirement Research Foundation.
See related articles in the AgeVenture archives.
Social Security Makes Every Race a Winner
Individual Social Security Accounts Feasible
Older Women, Pensions, and Marital Demise
Insurer Targets Needs Of Mature Women
AgeVenture News Service, www.demko.com
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Doctors Take 180 Turn on Brain Disorder Treatment
A ten-year-old error in the medical literature continues to cause doctors to improperly treat a potentially life-threatening condition affecting tens of thousands of hospital patients a year, a new study has shown.
The condition, called hyponatremic encephalopathy, involves brain swelling and other symptoms, killing a fourth of all patients who develop it if not treated properly. Its cause is low salt concentrations in the blood, a condition which can be quickly and easily remedied, leading almost always to
a full recovery if treated properly, a medical team reports.
The study estimates that the condition is incorrectly treated almost half of the time. The correct treatment is the simple procedure of increasing patients’ salt concentration intravenously within recommended guidelines, usually only for about two days.
But about half of medical professionals nationwide mistakenly believe that such a sodium chloride IV infusion may cause brain damage. Instead, say the researchers, it is withholding salt IV that actually causes the patients to suffer brain seizures.
People suffering from hyponatremic encephalopathy show lower-than- normal blood levels of sodium chloride, along with early symptoms of nerve system damage: headache, nausea, vomiting and weakness. If salt levels continue to drop, patients can develop swelling of the brain, seizures, respiratory failure and death.
Interestingly, a number of the women in the study had been hospitalized following brain seizures and hip fractures. The researchers suggest that they may have suffered their seizures precisely because low salt concentrations in the blood had caused brain swelling. Further, he says, their hip fractures may well have been the result of falls following the
seizures.
The study was funded by the National Institute of Aging. The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The authors are J. Carlos Ayus, MD, professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and Allen I. Arieff, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
See related articles in the AgeVenture archives.
Hospitalized Elders Dying to be Treated
One-in-Four Hospital Operations Unnecessary
Hospital Stay Longer for Female Heart Patients
Doctors and Hospitals Are Enough to Make You Sick
AgeVenture News Service, www.demko.com
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Women Woe Men, Not Selves, On Health Concerns
Women understand health risks for males better than for females. According to a study by Stanford University School of Medicine, women show greater knowledge of what diseases kill men. However, regarding women’s mortality, they revealed an exaggerated fear of breast cancer, but underestimated heart disease and lung and colon cancers. Such lack of knowledge itself could prove lethal.
"Accurate knowledge and perceived risk of coronary heart disease might impact whether women undergo regular cholesterol and blood pressure screening and whether women engage in health behaviors such as increasing leisure-time physical activity, improving diet, and engaging in regular stress management techniques," said Sara Wilcox, PhD, head of the study.
The study group consisted of women age 41 to 95, with an average of 66. Most were white (86 percent) and fairly well-educated.
Seventy-six percent of the women correctly identified coronary heart disease as the leading cause of death among middle-aged men. Just 67 percent knew that cancer kills the most women in that age group. Participants knew even less about older people, though they still knew more about men. Fifty-nine percent correctly chose heart disease as the leading killer of older men.
Older women in the study knew far less about what kills women in their own age group compared to other age groups. Only one in three women knew that heart disease is the leading killer of older women. Breast cancer is not the leading cause of cancer death in women older than 54, yet more than half the group named it number one in women ages 55 to 64. In reality, lung
cancer is the deadliest cancer in women ages 55 to 74. Colon cancer ranks as the most lethal in the oldest women, something most respondents did not realize. The research was supported by a training grant from the National Institutes of Health.
See related articles in the AgeVenture archives.
Gillette Launches Women's Cancer Resource
Sources of Stress Vary for Men and Women
Hospital Stay Longer for Female Heart Patients
Health-related Depression Higher for Men
AgeVenture News Service, www.demko.com
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