As America Ages, New National Poll Will Track Key Health Issues for Those Over 50

National Poll on Healthy Aging will release first results June 29

Newswise, June 29, 2017— Nearly a third of U.S. adults have celebrated their 50^th birthday – a sign of an aging nation. Now, a new poll based at the University of Michigan will take the pulse of this population on a wide range of health issues, and provide data and insights to inform healthcare policy, clinical practice, and future research. 

Later this month, the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation (IHPI) will release the first results from the National Poll on Healthy Aging (NPHA), with data on prescription drug use for people between the ages of 50 and 80.

Directed by IHPI and sponsored by AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M’s academic medical center, the poll will issue new data 10 times a year focusing on key health-related issues facing older Americans.

IHPI’s poll team, led by Preeti Malani, M.D., will tap into the perspectives of older adults and their caregivers using a national sample. The overall goal of the poll is to inform the public, health care providers, policymakers, and aging advocates on issues related to health, health care and health policy.

“In medicine, sometimes we focus so much on the latest research findings that we lose the individual patient voice. Yet there are gaps in our understanding of health that cannot be filled with traditional medical research,” says Malani, a professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School who specializes in infectious disease and geriatric medicine.

“Some research studies can take years to complete. One of the most valuable aspects of this poll is that the results are available quickly and can provide timely insight into current issues.”

Adds Alison Bryant, AARP Senior Vice President of Research, “We know research drives insights that affect our ability to impact behavior change. Our hope is that these polls will provide new information that will ultimately help older Americans adopt and maintain healthy behaviors.”

The poll grew out of a strong interest in aging-related issues and policies among IHPI researchers, who include 510 members of the U-M faculty from a wide range of fields. The poll is modeled on U-M’s highly successful C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health, which for 10 years has provided new data every month on issues facing children, teens and parents.

For more information about the poll methodology or to sign up for monthly emails, visit www.healthyagingpoll.org. Anyone interested in receiving the latest poll findings may join the NPHA mailing list. To learn more about IHPI, visit www.ihpi.umich.edu.

AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, social welfare organization focused on a wide range of issues affecting older adults. Poll results will appear regularly in the AARP Bulletin, which goes to more than 22 million households, starting in the July-August issue. For more information, visit www.aarp.org.

Why the ‘Peculiar’ Stands Out in Our Memory Ohio State professor speaks on the neuroscience of remembering

Newswise, June 27, 2017 – Memories that stick with us for a lifetime are those that fit in with a lot of other things we remember – but have a slightly weird twist.

 It’s this notion of ‘peculiarity’ that can help us understand what makes lasting memories, according to Per Sederberg, a professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.

 “You have to build a memory on the scaffolding of what you already know, but then you have to violate the expectations somewhat. It has to be a little bit weird,” Sederberg said.

 Sederberg talked about the neuroscience of memory as an invited speaker at the prestigious Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity in France on June 19. He spoke at the session “What are memories made of? Stirring emotions and last impressions” along with several advertising professionals and artists.

 Sederberg has spent his career studying memory. In one of his most notable studies, he had college students wear a smartphone around their neck with an app that took random photos for a month. Later, the participants relived memories related to those photos in an fMRI scanner so that Sederberg and his colleagues could see where and how the brain stored the time and place of those memories.

 From his own research and that of others, Sederberg has ideas on which memories stick with us and which ones fade over time.

 The way to create a long-lasting memory is to form an association with other memories, he said.

 “If we want to be able to retrieve a memory later, you want to build a rich web.  It should connect to other memories in multiple ways, so there are many ways for our mind to get back to it.”

 A memory of a lifetime is like a big city, with many roads that lead there.  We forget memories that are desert towns, with only one road in. “You want to have a lot of different ways to get to any individual memory,” Sederberg said.

 The difficulty is how to best navigate the push and pull between novelty and familiarity. Novelty tells us what is important to remember. On the other hand, familiarity tells us what we can ignore, but helps us retrieve information later, Sederberg said.

 Too much novelty, and you have no way to place it in your cognitive map, but too much familiarity and the information is similarly lost.

 What that means is that context and prediction play critical roles in shaping our perception and memory. The most memorable experiences are those that arise in a familiar and stable context, yet violate some aspect of what we predict would occur in that context, he said.

 “Those peculiar experiences are the things that stand out, that make a more lasting memory.”

 Sederberg’s co-presenters, all based in London, are Dominique Bonnafoux, a senior strategist at FITCH; Mike Reed, founder and creative director of Reed Words; and Jason Bruges, a multidisciplinary artist and designer.

Study by Nation's Leading Senior Care Provider Explores Sandwich Generation's Growing Concerns

June 6, 2017--PRNewswire/ -- With nearly 75 million Americans ages 51-69¹, Baby Boomers are currently the second largest living generation in the United States.

 According to a recent survey of 1,000 adult children ages 45-64 issued by Senior Helpers^®, the nation's premier provider of in-home senior care, nearly 60 percent of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers are concerned about juggling the responsibility of caring for their families alongside of also providing for the wellbeing of their aging parents.

Many find it is nearly impossible to maintain a full-time job and care for children at home or in college, while assuming the additional role of a full-time caretaker for an aging loved one. The added duty of elderly care can create added emotional, financial and physical stress, the study finds

"While caring for an aging loved one is a noble act, this should not come at the expense of one's own physical and mental health," said Chris Buitron, chief marketing officer, Senior Helpers.

"Above all, it's important to be realistic and determine what care you can or cannot provide, and then know when to seek assistance. In-home senior care companies like Senior Helpers help relieve the burden that family members experience when caring for an elderly loved one."

Key insights uncovered by Senior Helpers' survey include:

• A majority of respondents (34 percent) indicated they would prefer someone with prior caregiving experience to care for their loved one's daily needs, but do not require a professional care facility.
• Nearly 85 percent of adult children would prefer for their loved ones to age at home.
• A surprising 67 percent of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers are comfortable talking to aging loved ones about long-term care options.
• When asked why their aging parents still live at home, 58 percent of respondents said it was because of the comfort and dignity associated with living independently.
• Nearly 60 percent of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers feel that when the elderly are cared for in their own homes their experience is more positive than in an assisted living facility.
• When asked hypothetically who would make the ideal caregiver of choice, 37 percent of respondents chose Jill Taylor of "Home Improvement" to care for their aging loved ones. Others cited include Fran Fine of "The Nanny" at 25 percent, Tony Micelli of "Who's The Boss" at 24 percent and "Uncle Phil" of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" at 13 percent, respectively.

Founded in 2001 with a vision to help seniors who wish to remain in their homes – despite age-related illnesses and mobility challenges – Senior Helpers serves elderly individuals and their families around the world. Senior Helpers differentiates itself with its proprietary, specialized programs that have been developed in collaboration with leading medical experts. The company was the first provider in the industry to offer specialized care services for individuals with Alzheimer's, dementia and Parkinson's disease.

For more information about Senior Helpers, visit http://www.seniorhelpers.com.

¹ According to the Pew Research Center

The nation’s acute shortage of home health aides is jeopardizing care for vulnerable older adults

By  JUDITH GRAHAM, KAISER HEALTH NEWS

Acute shortages of home health aides and nursing assistants are cropping up across the country, threatening care for people with serious disabilities and vulnerable older adults.

In Minnesota and Wisconsin, nursing homes have denied admission to thousands of patients over the past year because they lack essential staff, according to local long-term care associations

In New York, patients living in rural areas have been injured, soiled themselves and gone without meals because paid caregivers aren’t available, according to testimony provided to the state Assembly’s health

In Illinois, the independence of people with severe developmental disabilities is being compromised, as agencies experience staff shortages of up to 30 percent, according to a court monitor overseeing a federal consent decree.

The emerging crisis is driven by low wages — around $10 an hour, mostly funded by state Medicaid programs — and a shrinking pool of workers willing to perform this physically and emotionally demanding work: helping people get in and out of bed, go to the bathroom, shower, eat, participate in activities, and often dealing with challenging behaviors.

It portends even worse difficulties to come, as America’s senior citizen population swells to 88 million people in 2050, up from 48 million currently, and requires more assistance with chronic health conditions and disabilities, experts warn.

“If we don’t turn this around, things are only going to get worse” said Dr. David Gifford, senior vice president of quality and regulatory affairs for the American Health Care Association, which represents nursing homes across the U.S.

“For me, as a parent, the instability of this system is terrifying,” said Cheryl Dougan of Bethlehem, Pa., whose profoundly disabled son, Renzo, suffered cardiac arrest nearly 19 years ago at age 14 and receives round-the-clock care from paid caregivers.

Rising demand, stagnant wages

For years, experts have predicted that demand for services from a rapidly aging population would outstrip the capacity of the “direct care” workforce: personal care aides, home health aides and nursing assistants.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates an additional 1.1 million workers of this kind will be needed by 2024 — a 26 percent increase over 2014. Yet, the population of potential workers who tend to fill these jobs, overwhelmingly women ages 25 to 64, will increase at a much slower rate.

After the recession of 2008-09, positions in Medicaid-funded home health agencies, nursing homes and community service agencies were relatively easy to fill for several years. But the improving economy has led workers to pursue other higher-paying alternatives, in retail services for example, and turnover rates have soared.

At the same time, wages for nursing assistants, home health aides and personal care aides have stagnated, making recruitment difficult. The average hourly rate nationally is $10.11 — a few cents lower than a decade ago, according to PHI, an organization that studies the direct-care workforce. There is a push on now in a handful of states to raise the minimum to $15 an hour.

Even for-profit franchises that offer services such as light housekeeping and companionship to seniors who pay out-of-pocket are having problems with staffing.

“All the experienced workers are already placed with families. They’re off the market,” said Carrie Bianco, owner of Always Best Care Senior Services, which is based in Torrance, Calif., with franchises in 30 states.

Finding new employees was so difficult that Bianco started her own 14-week training program for caregivers nine months ago. To attract recruits, she ran ads targeting women who had left the workforce or been close to their grandparents. In exchange for free tuition, graduates must agree to start working for her agency.

“There’s much more competition now — a lot of franchises have opened and people will approach our workers outside our building or in the lobby and ask if they want to come work for them,” said Karen Kulp, president of Home Care Associates of Philadelphia.

Hardest to cover in Kulp’s area are people with disabilities or older adults who live at some distance from the city center and need only one to two hours of help a day.  Workers prefer longer shifts and less time traveling between clients, so they gravitate to other opportunities and “these people are not necessarily getting service,” she said.

It isn’t possible to document exactly how common these problems are nationally. Neither states nor the federal government routinely collect information about staff vacancy rates in home care agencies or nursing homes, turnover rates or people going without services.

“If we really want to understand what’s needed to address workforce shortages, we need better data,” said Robert Espinoza, vice president of policy at PHI.

Hard times in Wisconsin

Some of the best data available come from Wisconsin, where long-term care facilities and agencies serving seniors and people with disabilities have surveyed their members over the past year.

The findings are startling. One of seven caregiving positions in Wisconsin nursing homes and group homes remained unfilled, one survey discovered; 70 percent of administrators reported a lack of qualified job applicants. As a result, 18 percent of long-term facilities in Wisconsin have had to limit resident admissions, declining care for more than 5,300 vulnerable residents.

“The words ‘unprecedented’ and ‘desperate’ come to mind,” said John Sauer, president and chief executive of LeadingAge Wisconsin, which represents not-for-profit long-term care institutions. “In my 28 years in the business, this is the most challenging workforce situation I’ve seen.”

Sauer and others blame inadequate payments from Medicaid — which funds about two-thirds of nursing homes’ business — for the bind. In rural areas, especially, operators are at the breaking point.

“We are very seriously considering closing our nursing facility so it doesn’t drive the whole corporation out of business,” said Greg Loeser, chief executive of Iola Living Assistance, which offers skilled nursing, assisted living and independent living services in a rural area about 70 miles west of Green Bay.

Like other short-staffed operators, he’s had to ask employees to work overtime and use agency staff, increasing labor costs substantially. A nearby state veterans home, the largest in Wisconsin, pays higher wages, making it hard for him to find employees. Last year, Iola’s losses on Medicaid-funded residents skyrocketed to $631,000 — an “unsustainable amount,” Loeser said.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has proposed a 2 percent Medicaid increase for long-term care facilities and personal care agencies for each of the next two years, but that won’t be enough to make a substantial difference, Loeser and other experts say.

The situation is equally grim for Wisconsin agencies that send personal care workers into people’s homes. According to a separate survey in 2016, 85 percent of agencies said they didn’t have enough staff to cover all shifts, and 43 percent reported not filling shifts at least seven times a month.

Barbara Vedder, 67, of Madison, paralyzed from her chest down since a spinal cord injury in 1981, has witnessed the impact firsthand. Currently, she qualifies for 8.75 hours of help a day, while her husband tends to her in the evening.

“It’s getting much, much, much more difficult to find willing, capable people to help me,” she said. “It’s a revolving door: People come for a couple of months, maybe, then they find a better job or they get pregnant or they move out of state. It’s an endless state of not knowing what’s going to happen next — will somebody be around to help me tomorrow? Next month?”

When caregivers don’t show up or shifts are cut back or canceled, “I don’t get proper cleaning around my catheter or in my groin area,” Vedder continued. “I’ll skip a meal or wait later several hours to take a pill. I won’t get my range-of-motion exercises, or my wheelchair cushion might slip out of place and I’ll start getting sore. Basically, I start losing my health.”

Debra Ramacher and her husband have been unable to find paid caregivers since June 2015 for daughter Maya, 20, and son Michael, 19, both of whom have cerebral palsy, epilepsy and other significant disabilities. The family lives in New Richmond in western Wisconsin, about 45 minutes from the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area.

“At least three agencies told me they’ve stopped trying to hire personal care aides. They can’t find anybody and it costs them money to advertise,” said Ramacher, executive director of Wisconsin Family Ties, an organization for families with children with emotional, behavioral and mental disorders.

“It’s incredibly stressful on all of us, living with this kind of uncertainty,” she said.

Every few months, Ramacher tries to find caregivers on her own by putting ads up on Craigslist, in local newspapers and on job boards.

“We get a few bites,” she said. “Most recently, two people came and interviewed. One never got back to us; the other got a better job that paid more.”

In the meantime, she and her husband are being paid by Medicaid to look after Maya and Michael.

“We don’t want to be the caregivers; we want to have our own life,” Ramacher said. “But we don’t have any option.”

KHN’s coverage related to aging & improving care of older adults is supported by The John A. Hartford Foundation.

Caring for the Caregiver

Newswise, March 13, 2017 - During cancer treatment, the main focus is on the patient. However, a cancer diagnosis affects the entire family, including caregivers.

A caregiver is any person who supports a patient during treatment; this can be a spouse, partner, sibling, son, daughter, or friend. Taking on the role of a caregiver can change the dynamic in a relationship. Partners who were once equals can now have an imbalance and a child can often need to take on a parental role. Often the caregiver’s needs can be overlooked.

It is important for the caregiver to keep their body and mind healthy in order to provide the best care to the patient. While this seems easier to say than do, working in some self-care does not have to take a lot of time or money.

Ways to put yourself first:

Let go of guilt. It is natural to feel guilty for taking time for yourself when your loved one needs so much. Try to remember why all airlines instruct passengers to put their own oxygen mask on first before helping others. The reason behind this is simple: You cannot care for someone else when you are depleted. It is important to acknowledge guilty feelings and find a safe place to share them, but do not allow them to stop you from caring for yourself.

Build in fun. Create a list of activities that make you happy. Playing your favorite song, taking a bubble bath, or going for a walk are just some of the possibilities.

Relax. Simple breathing exercises, guided imagery, meditation, and proper sleep habits. There’s even an app for that! You can download apps like Headspace and Calm to help guide you in relaxation practice.

Self-compassion. Cut yourself some slack! When you care for yourself and a loved one, it is normal to experience stress. Recognizing this stress in a non-judgmental way and taking small steps to combat it is the first step in self-care.

Your oncology social worker is there to help patients and caregivers and can help you make a personalized plan to cope with the burden of being a caregiver.

No Spoilers! Most People Don't Want to Know Their Future

Learning what the future holds, good or bad, not appealing to most, study says

Newswise, March 9, 2017-- Given the chance to see into the future, most people would rather not know what life has in store for them, even if they think those events could make them happy, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

“In Greek mythology, Cassandra, daughter of the king of Troy, had the power to foresee the future. But, she was also cursed and no one believed her prophecies,” said the study’s lead author, Gerd Gigerenzer, PhD, of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. “In our study, we’ve found that people would rather decline the powers that made Cassandra famous, in an effort to forgo the suffering that knowing the future may cause, avoid regret and also maintain the enjoyment of suspense that pleasurable events provide.”

Two nationally representative studies involving more than 2,000 adults in Germany and Spain found that 85 to 90 percent of people would not want to know about upcoming negative events, and 40 to 70 percent preferred to remain ignorant of upcoming positive events.

Only 1 percent of participants consistently wanted to know what the future held. The findings are published in the APA journal Psychological Review.

The researchers also found that people who prefer not to know the future are more risk averse and more frequently buy life and legal insurance than those who want to know the future.

This suggests that those who choose to be ignorant anticipate regret, Gigerenzer said. The length of time until an event would occur also played a role: Deliberate ignorance was more likely the nearer the event.

For example, older adults were less likely than younger adults to want to know when they or their partner would die, and the cause of death.

Participants were asked about a large range of potential events, both positive and negative.

For example, they were asked if they wanted to know who won a soccer game they had planned to watch later, what they were getting for Christmas, whether there is life after death and if their marriage would eventually end in divorce.

Finding out the sex of their unborn child was the only item in the survey where more people wanted to know than didn’t, with only 37 percent of participants saying they wouldn’t want to know.

Although people living in Germany and Spain vary in age, education and other important aspects, the pattern of deliberate ignorance was highly consistent across the two countries, according to the article, including its prevalence and predictability.

“Wanting to know appears to be the natural condition of humankind, and in no need of justification. People are not just invited but also often expected to participate in early detection for cancer screening or in regular health check-ups, to subject their unborn babies to dozens of prenatal genetic tests, or to use self-tracking health devices,” said Gigerenzer .

 “Not wanting to know appears counterintuitive and may raise eyebrows, but deliberate ignorance, as we’ve shown here, doesn’t just exist; it is a widespread state of mind.”

________________________________________
Article: “Cassandra’s Regret: The Psychology of Not Wanting to Know,” by Gerd Gigerenzer, PhD, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, and Rocio Garcia-Retamero, PhD, University of Granada, Spain. Psychological Review, March, Vol. 124, No. 2.

Worker-Owned Cooperatives May Help Address Elder Care Deficit

 Model popular in other parts of the world

Newswise, February 2, 2017 – A growing elder care shortage could be eased by worker-owned cooperatives, a little-used business model that also improves the working conditions and the quality of life for caregivers.

That’s the conclusion reached by University of Georgia faculty member Rebecca Matthew and Vanessa Bransburg, a cooperative development specialist, in a recent, award-winning case study.

Matthew, an assistant professor at the UGA School of Social Work, and Bransburg, a staff member at Democracy at Work Institute in San Diego, California, looked for a successful system of home-based caring labor that puts equal emphasis on the well-being of both the care recipient and the provider.

They examined the most popular forms of paid child care—for-profit and nonprofit services—alongside worker-owned child care cooperatives.

The latter system is popular in other parts of the world, but represents a fraction of the caregiving services available in the U.S.

The cooperatives, which give employees greater control over their working conditions and a share in profits, improved the quality of life of both care recipients and providers.

As an example, they cited a case study of the Beyond Care Childcare Cooperative, an organization that provides home-based child care services to the Sunset Park community in Brooklyn, New York.

Women who joined the BCCC as worker-owners reported a 58 percent increase in hourly wages. As wages grew, more than half of the employee-owners—primarily immigrant women—were able to reduce their work hours, enabling them to spend more time with their own children and families.

The model could also be applied to the provision of elder care, said Matthew and Bransburg, pointing out that nearly half of people employed in that job sector rely on public benefits such as Medicaid to support themselves and their families.

Since home care for the elderly is expected to grow from nearly 40 million jobs now to 73 million by 2030, the potential impact of worker-owned cooperatives could be huge.

“Worker-owned cooperatives provide a truly promising alternative through which to provide quality jobs and care,” said Matthew.

The study, “Democratizing Caring Labor: The Promise Of Community-Based, Worker-Owned Childcare Cooperatives,” won the Council for Social Work Education’s 2016 Feminist Manuscript Award. It was published online before print in Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work.

UGA School of Social Work
Founded in 1964, the University of Georgia School of Social Work provides instruction, research and hands-on training in social work practice while emphasizing the integration of social work with social justice. For more information, see http://ssw.uga.edu/. 

Sociology Professor Addresses Caregiving Burden From Personal Perspective

Newswise, February 2, 2017— It’s not every day a researcher draws from their own experiences as the basis for a published study but that’s exactly what Miles Taylor, associate professor of sociology at Florida State University, has done in her latest paper addressing what she calls the structural burden of caregiving.

The study, “The Structural Burden of Caregiving: Shared Challenges in the United States and Canada,” published in the January edition of The Gerontologist, examines the caregiving stress associated with navigating the health care system in the United States and the social care system in Canada.

A call for papers from The Gerontologist prompted Taylor and her colleague Amélie Quesnel-Vallée, sociology professor at McGill University in Quebec, to consider their own experiences caring for aging parents and to see if those experiences exposed gaps in aging literature.

For Taylor and Quesnel-Vallée, the most noticeable void lay in the area of emphasis and quantifiable data on the amount of time caregivers spend negotiating treatment and services for their care recipients.

“Research up until now has really defined caregiving burden in terms of the amount of time and stress it takes to actually provide care to another person — helping with daily tasks and how especially difficult it can be when they need help with things that are very personal, like bathing,” Taylor said.

Taylor said previous models of caregiving burden have done a good job of notating interpersonal stresses, such as strained relationships and the demands in the caregiver’s life.

But what about the time spent negotiating health care systems, getting the care, getting treatments, figuring out when treatments will be covered and under which circumstances? That part of the caregiving burden, Taylor and Quesnel-Vallée say, isn’t well-articulated or measured.

It was 2010 when Taylor began caring for her grandmother, her only living parent, off and on for about 5 years. That was about the same time Quesnel-Vallée began caring for her mother in Canada. The two found their caregiving trajectories and experiences lined up so much, they decided to put their experiences in this paper.

Although they knew providing the direct care would be difficult, they were not prepared for how much time and stress they would spend trying to understand, negotiate and manage medical and related care for their loved ones. They contrasted the two care settings. Ultimately, they concluded that Canada offers more services for older adults and there is more transparency about what is and what is not covered.

However, there were some common themes among the Canadian and American systems. In both systems the researchers found that a great deal of time was spent negotiating and managing care and services but the burden often went unrecognized. They also found in their experience as caregivers that the systems were characterized by discontinuous and fragmented care.

The final common theme researchers noted was the gross potential for inequity for both the caregivers and care recipients.

“We kept telling each other over the course of the past six years, if we felt like this was so difficult and if we had such a hard time, how in the world would other folks begin to deal with this? It must be so much more burdensome,” Taylor said.

Taylor and Quesnel-Vallée felt their education, income and even their race gave them more social currency and health care literacy to help them gain information and access services.

The pair want the paper to not only inform health care professionals and policymakers about the aforementioned issues with the two care systems, but also the caregivers themselves.

“We hope caregivers will understand this part of caregiving, the stress involved in managing care and negotiating services, constitutes caregiving time and stress,” Taylor said. “Often, we felt it wasn’t counted in terms of how much time is spent caring for someone else.”

Through their testimony, Taylor and Quesnel-Vallée also hope other scholars will move forward and try to measure this time and stress related to managing care better. Right now, most surveys only question how much time caregivers take feeding or bathing their care recipient or providing other daily tasks such as taking out the trash.

“I think that now we should increasingly ask how much time and stress did you spend negotiating with medical care, and Medicare, and trying to figure out which services were available and when,” Taylor said.

Taylor says a number of people are experiencing the structural burden of caregiving even though it’s not clearly in the literature yet. They hope caregiving theory can broaden and consider this structural burden, especially considering advanced medical practices are causing people to live longer.

“There was a very recent caregiving report that said over half of caregivers are actually engaged in these kinds of tasks, yet we don’t quantify that,” Taylor said. “We don’t say how much time is this taking up? So that’s what we’re hoping to do, shed more light on it — and I think when you give something a name and a clear theme and definition — that’s when you can get the ball rolling to help people to talk about it more.”

Centenarians Can Still Improve Fitness Levels, Study Finds

Fit after 100: Training Helps French Bicyclist Beat His Own World Record at 103

Newswise — January 14, 2017—Adults over 100 years old can still increase their athletic performance and physical fitness with regular training, researchers have found. 

The case study of Robert Marchand, the now 105-year-old who recently broke the 100+ cycling record—again—is published ahead of print in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

French researchers followed the cycling training routine of Marchand, a retired gardener and wine dealer who was born in 1911. Marchand cycled regularly between the ages of 15 and 25 but stopped cycling during his working years before starting again at age 70.

For the two years before he attempted a world record for cycling in the 100 and over age group, Marchard cycled more than 3,000 miles each year (5,000 km).

The research team administered exercise tests before and after this two-year training period to measure his cardiovascular fitness, including exertion rate, breathing rate and maximum oxygen consumption. Body weight and muscle mass was also assessed.

Marchand set a world record for cycling 14 miles (24.25 km) in one hour at the age of 101 and broke his own record at age 103, completing 16 miles (26.92 km) in the same time frame.

In the two-year span between these records, his revolution-per-minute (rpm) rate increased from 69 to 90. Maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max) also increased over the two-year period.

“Indeed, his VO2max was in the same range as those of a sedentary 50-year-old man or those of an active 65-year-old man and an endurance trained 80-year-old man,” the researchers wrote.

“This study shows for the first time that it is still possible to improve performance after one’s 100th birthday by using polarizing training monitored with [rate of perceived exertion] and by focusing on a high pedaling cadence.”

Read the full article, “Case Studies in Physiology: Maximal Oxygen Consumption and Performance in a Centenarian Cyclist,” published ahead of print in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

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Physiology is the study of how molecules, cells, tissues and organs function in health and disease. Established in 1887, the American Physiological Society (APS) was the first U.S. society in the biomedical sciences field. The Society represents more than 11,000 members and publishes 14 peer-reviewed journals with a worldwide readership.

Scripps Florida Scientists Uncover Cellular Process Behind Premature Aging

Newswise, January 3, 2017– December 21, 2016 – In a new study, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have shown how two genes “balance” each other to maintain normal cell function. A disruption in one of the genes, called spns1, can induce degradation and premature “senescence”—or aging—while the other gene, called atp6v0ca, can jump in to suppress that degradation.

Their experiments in zebrafish suggest that these combined genetic disruptions can counteract premature aging and extend developmental lifespan.

“We found that the dual defects did indeed counteract senescence during development and extended the animal’s survival and life span,” said TSRI Associate Professor Shuji Kishi.

The findings, published recently in the journal Autophagy, could also guide future treatments for diseases that involve the body’s inability to degrade unwanted or harmful compounds.

A Closer Look at Lifespan

Cellular senescence is when cells stop dividing and is a normal part of aging. Interestingly, senescence is not only observed in later aging stages but is also detectable during embryonic development in vertebrates.

In the new study, the researchers took a closer look at the gene spns1. In vertebrates, such as zebrafish and humans, the protein encoded by spns1 is important in a cellular process called autophagy, when the cell moves unwanted material to a cellular structure called the lysosome.

Previous research had shown that defects in this gene can also cause senescence in the embryonic stage and premature aging symptoms in adulthood.

However, Kishi and his colleagues found that a concurrent disruption of another gene— atp6v0ca, whose sole defect still causes senescence—led to suppression of the process induced by the defective spns1 gene.

“Our findings suggest that these two defects actually function at a balance point that is critically involved in the regulation of developmental senescence—and that balance allows for normal cell function,” said Kishi.

Restoring the Balance

The scientists are now considering ways to influence the balance between these genes as a strategy to treat lysosomal storage diseases such as Pompe disease, where the excessive buildup of a substance called glycogen results in severe muscle weakness.

They believe there may also be applications in treating age-associated degenerative diseases linked to late-stage autophagy disruption.

“The use of appropriate inhibitors, selective for key steps in the biosynthesis of cellular macromolecules in general, may restore normal dynamics in the autolysosomal compartment and correct the pathological storage that is the ultimate cause of these types of disease,” said TSRI Research Associate Shanshan Lian, the co-first author of the study.

The findings may also lead to the development of tools to help identify new genes that affect the aging process without the need for performing lengthy adult lifespan analyses.

This approach could be applied to the high-throughput identification of pharmacological agents that control aging and lifespan through enhanced resistance to various stressors, including oxygen radicals.

In addition to Kishi and Lian, other authors of the study, “Autolysosome Biogenesis and Developmental Senescence Are Regulated by Both Spns1 and V-Atpase,” include TSRI’s Tomoyuki Sasaki, a co-first author and Alam Khan; Jesse R. Llop, Andrew V. Samuelson of the University of Rochester; Wenbiao Chen of the Vanderbilt University; and Daniel J. Klionsky of the University of Michigan.

This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants GM101508 and GM053396).

About The Scripps Research Institute

The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) is one of the world's largest independent, not-for-profit organizations focusing on research in the biomedical sciences. TSRI is internationally recognized for its contributions to science and health, including its role in laying the foundation for new treatments for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, and other diseases. An institution that evolved from the Scripps Metabolic Clinic founded by philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps in 1924, the institute now employs more than 2,500 people on its campuses in La Jolla, CA, and Jupiter, FL, where its renowned scientists—including two Nobel laureates and 20 members of the National Academy of Science, Engineering or Medicine—work toward their next discoveries. The institute's graduate program, which awards PhD degrees in biology and chemistry, ranks among the top ten of its kind in the nation. For more information, see www.scripps.edu.

Do Thoughts of Death Change Our Shopping Habits?

A new study from Concordia and HEC explores how mortality affects consumerism

Newswise, December 26, 2016-- It's been that time of year again: when festive ads command consumers to BUY! BUY! BUY! for their friends and family. But despite this holiday cheer, negative news marches on.

Reports of plane crashes, terrorist attacks, fatal car accidents and deadly fires may lead shoppers to think more about their own mortality than buying that new holiday sweater for Uncle Dave.

But new research from the John Molson School of Business (JMSB) and HEC Montréal shows that, for people with certain world views, thoughts of death can actually trigger the buying impulse.

In a study recently published in The Journal of Consumer Affairs, marketing professors Michel Laroche and Marcelo Nepomuceno found that the habits of spendthrifts don't change after contemplating their own mortality.

Compulsive shoppers, on the other hand, go out and buy more.

"Previous research shows that thoughts of death lead individuals to strongly defend world views that maintain their self-esteem," Laroche says.

"In other words, thinking about death will likely make people cling even more strongly to their beliefs because it's a way to cope with mortality."

Laroche and Nepomuceno wanted to test this assumption with anti-consumers -- people who voluntarily resist consumption out of a sense of frugality or desire to live simply, and with over-consumers -- folks who shop till they drop, no matter the season.

The researchers ran two experiments with 503 North American university students. The respondents were first asked to answer questionnaires identifying their tendency to resist consumption. They were then randomly assigned to one of two groups:

1.     In the "death thoughts" group, participants were asked to describe what they would feel if they were dying.
2. In the control group, participants were asked to report what they would feel if they were submitted to a painful dental procedure.

2.     

'Anti-consumers seem to care less about consumption than over-consumers!'

Afterwards, participants indicated their inclination to purchase a series of products. By comparing the participants in each condition, the researchers were able to identify individual tendencies to increase or reduce consumption due to thoughts of death.

"Our expectation was that the anti-consumption individuals would become even more inclined to resist consumption. This would indicate that for them, resistance was an important source of self-esteem," Nepomuceno says.

"In fact, we found that anti-consumers were not influenced by thoughts of death, which suggests that they do not believe that resistance to consumption is a source of self-esteem. In other words, anti-consumers seem to care less about consumption than over-consumers!"

Interestingly, among consumers inclined to over-consume, the researchers found that thinking about death made them even more likely to buy.

"This indicates that such consumers see purchasing and having goods and services as an important source of self-esteem. When they think about death, they become more inclined to buy because this helps them feel better about themselves," Nepomuceno explains.

He and Laroche, who was recently named editor-in-chief of the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, hope that the results of this study will arm the general public -- especially those inclined toward retail therapy -- with a better understanding of how consumption is influenced by situational factors. They also aim to show the occurrence of such influences without the full knowledge of the consumer.

Brain Structure Best Explains Our Dwindling Tolerance of Risk

Newswise, December 19, 2016 — Our brain’s changing structure, not simply getting older and wiser, most affects our attitudes to risk, according to new research.

The University of Sydney’s Dr Agnieszka Tymula has for years been studying the factors that influence human decision-making. Until now, researchers could not say whether our tendency to make fewer risky decisions as we age was due to the wisdom of growing older, or our brain structures.

Published in Nature Communications this week, Dr Tymula and her co-authors from New York University, Yale University, University College London and Trinity College show risk aversion is better explained by changes in grey matter volume in an area in the brain’s right posterior parietal cortex, rather than by age itself.

“We know that as people age, they tend to become more averse to taking risks,” said Dr Tymula. “Yet, it seems there is something to the saying that everybody ages at a different pace. Our research suggests the speed at which our brain’s structure changes has a greater impact on our tolerance of risk than chronological age.”

In an experiment, the researchers asked more than 50 adults aged 18 to 88 to make choices between a guaranteed gain of $5 or ambiguous and risky lotteries with a payout of up to $120. Older participants preferred the guaranteed option, compared to younger participants.

Surprisingly, when researchers put these data into a model to determine what best predicted this change in preference, they found it was primarily driven by the neuronal density – the thickness and thinness of grey matter – in this brain region, rather than by age.

The results are published on December 14 in the high-impact journal, Nature Communications.

“Globally, we are experiencing an unprecedented demographic shift with people over 60 expected to outnumber children in only 30 years. Understanding how such a shift will affect decisions made in our societies on a political and economic level will be hugely important,” said Dr Tymula.

“When we choose our life partners, make a bet with a colleague, invest in a stock or vote in presidential elections, we cannot predict with certainty how these decisions will affect us and others. Understanding the brain’s structure can help us predict how our own and others’ decisions will change as our brain ages.”

The paper, Neuroanatomy Accounts for Age-Related Changes in Risk Preferences, will be available online in Nature Communications from 14 December 2016 Sydney 3am (AET) / 13 December 2016 London 4pm (GMT) at this link.