Participants with the most positive views of aging were living, on average, 7.5 years longer than those with the most negative views. 90%: the percentage of centenarians who were functionally independent in their 90’s.
People who live long lives can teach us how to live healthy lives.
The source article is an interview with two Yale alumni who are still working at the age of 82. Both are youngsters when compared to…Willie who just turned 90 and still working.
A study led by the UNIGE, HES-SO Geneva, and EPFL revealed that music practice and active listening could prevent working memory decline. Such activities promoted brain plasticity, they were associated with grey matter volume increase. Positive impacts have also been measured on working memory. This study was conducted among 132 healthy retirees from 62 to 78 years of age. One of the conditions for participation was that they had not taken any music lessons for more than six months in their lives…The participants were randomly assigned to two groups, regardless of their motivation to play an instrument. The second group had active listening lessons, which focused on instrument recognition and analysis of musical properties in a wide range of musical styles. The classes lasted one hour. Participants in both groups were required to do homework for half an hour a day.”
After six months, we found common effects for both interventions. Neuroimaging revealed an increase in grey matter in four brain regions involved in high-level cognitive functioning in all participants, including cerebellum areas involved in working memory. Their performance increased by 6% and this result was directly correlated to the plasticity of the cerebellum,” says Clara James, last author of the study, a privat-docent at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of UNIGE, and full professor at the Geneva School of Health Sciences
Journal Reference – Damien Marie, Cécile A.H. Müller, Eckart Altenmüller, Dimitri Van De Ville, Kristin Jünemann, Daniel S. Scholz, Tillmann H.C. Krüger, Florian Worschech, Matthias Kliegel, Christopher Sinke, Clara E. James. Music interventions in 132 healthy older adults enhance cerebellar grey matter and auditory working memory, despite general brain atrophy. Neuroimage: Reports, 2023; 3 (2): 100166 DOI: 10.1016/j.ynirp.2023.100166
I could feel my brain grey matter volume increasing when listening to this album.
A new study has found that older persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a common type of memory loss, were 30% more likely to regain normal cognition if they had taken in positive beliefs about aging from their culture, compared to those who had taken in negative beliefs.
Journal Reference – Becca R. Levy, Martin D. Slade. Role of Positive Age Beliefs in Recovery From Mild Cognitive Impairment Among Older Persons. JAMA Network Open, 2023; 6 (4): e237707 DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.7707
I cannot believe how wonderful the aging process is said no one ever.
The researchers used data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to calculate annual overdose deaths from 2002 to 2021 among people aged 65 and older.
Overall, they found that fatal overdoses quadrupled from 1060 in 2002 (three per 100,000) to 6702 (12 per 100,000) in 2021, with the highest rates in Blacks (30.9 per 100,000).
In 2021, about 13% of overdoses were intentional, 83% were unintentional, 4% were undetermined, and less than 1% were homicide. Older women accounted for 57% of intentional overdoses and 29% of accidental overdoses.
“These patients show evidence of accelerated biological aging, and poor physical and brain health,” which are the main drivers of this association, says Breno Diniz, a UConn School of Medicine geriatric psychiatrist and author of the study, which appears in Nature Mental Health on March 22.
Diniz and colleagues from several other institutions looked at 426 people with late-in-life depression. They measured the levels of proteins associated with aging in each person’s blood. When a cell gets old, it begins to function differently, less efficiently, than a “young” cell. It often produces proteins that promote inflammation or other unhealthy conditions, and those proteins can be measured in the blood. Diniz and the other researchers compared the levels of these proteins with measures of the participants’ physical health, medical problems, brain function, and the severity of their depression.
University of Connecticut. “Depressed, and aging fast: Older adults with late-in-life-depression age biologically older than their chronological peers..” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230322190947.htm (accessed March 25, 2023).
Journal Reference:
Johanna Seitz-Holland, Benoit H. Mulsant, Charles F. Reynolds III, Daniel M. Blumberger, Jordan F. Karp, Meryl A. Butters, Ana Paula Mendes-Silva, Erica L. Vieira, George Tseng, Eric J. Lenze, Breno S. Diniz. Major depression, physical health and molecular senescence markers abnormalities. Nature Mental Health, 2023; 1 (3): 200 DOI: 10.1038/s44220-023-00033-z
Social frailty is a corollary to physical frailty, a set of vulnerabilities (including weakness, exhaustion, unintentional weight loss, slowness, and low physical activity) shown to increase the risk of falls, disability, hospitalization, poor surgical outcomes, admission to a nursing home, and earlier death in older adults.
For seniors who want to think about their own social vulnerability, consider this five-item index, developed by researchers in Japan.
(1) Do you go out less frequently now than last year?
(2) Do you sometimes visit your friends?
(3) Do you feel you are helpful to friends or family?
At 30 years and 266 days old, a Portuguese dog named Bobi was crowned the world’s oldest dog ever on February 1, breaking an almost century-old record, per Guinness World Records (GWR). The previous titleholder, an Australian cattle dog named Bluey, was born in 1910 and lived for 29 years and 5 months.
The picture above is a normal size slice at Benny’s. The tall beer can was strictly in the picture to provide perspective. For more about Benny’s see https://garyskitchen.net/worship-the-whale/.
A study by Huang and colleagues is the first nationally representative cohort study examining the association between social isolation and incident dementia for older adults in community dwelling settings. A cohort of 5,022 older adults participating in the National Health and Aging Trends Study was followed from 2011 to 2020. When adjusting for demographic and health factors, including race, level of education, and number of chronic health conditions, socially isolated adults had a greater risk of developing dementia, compared with adults who were not socially isolated (hazard ratio, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.08 – 1.49). Potential mechanisms to explain this association include the increased risk of cardiovascular disease and depression in older adults who are socially isolated, thereby increasing dementia risk.
One week ago we had our older adult friends over for dinner. Midweek my wife went out with her friends while I gathered with my friends. Last night was date night and we got out of the house. This evening we’re having dinner at a friend’s house.
lifeunderwriter.net 
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