This Grandma is compulsive about much, and reading as many articles about studies on aging is one of those compulsions that seems to grow stronger as I near age seventy. Sometimes, it is easy to see where the studies are going, and they tend to be good for us Boomers in most ways.
The New York Times has a recurring section on “The New Old Age,” which fits right into this Grandma’s distinctions between being “young old,” until 90, and then “old old,” when limitations on our activities can be expected to begin.
In “On New Measurements of Aging,” by Judith Graham, in the New York Times (in “The New Old Age” series), September 16, 2016, she quotes, Warren Sanderson, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at Stony Brook University, who is working on ways to define aging other than the passing of years as saying, “Everything is changing about 65-year-olds.” Of course, this Grandma was interested. Warren Sanderson says we should not look at years, but look at characteristics of aging and how they apply to us.
His “characteristics” approach to evaluating aging entails the following in his interview by Judith Graham:
“We think age has much more to do with how people function than how many birthdays they’ve had, so measuring function is the crucial thing. Our research agenda calls for looking at different measures of functioning because aging is multidimensional. We started with hand-grip strength, a measure of upper-body strength.”
“Hand-grip strength is an amazingly good predictor of future rates of mortality and morbidity, or sickness. It’s been measured for individuals in surveys across the world. We now have comparable data on about 50,000 people from the U.S., many European countries, Japan, South Korea, China. A substantial body of research suggests that this can be used as a reliable predictor of aging.”
So what should we Boomers do about his study? He says we should be monitored by our doctors for upper and lower body strength. For upper body strength, we should ask our primary doctors to have a dynamometer in their office, and “[A]t every visit, the doctor could check grip strength for older patients. If someone was in the 45th percentile for their age and the measurements were stable, great. But if that person suddenly dropped to the 25th percentile, then that’s a sign that the doctor should look seriously at what might be going on.”
For lower body strength, a good measure is “how long it takes someone to rise from a chair.”
For both, “[T]hen, we will have an upper-body measure and a lower-body measure, and we can compare the two in terms of how aging goes. We envision one day that physicians will have standard age-related tables for these measures and chart their patients’ progress, just as they do with height and weight for children.”
This Grandma recommends switching to a primary doctor who is a gerontologist, and giving him this information. This is not invasive and an easy measure to see how we are doing. This Grandma is all about getting baselines, as Dr. Sanderson recommends. In the meantime, we can work on our own upper and lower body strength to increase our longevity.
Speaking of longevity, another study, in Nature, as reported in the New York Times, Science Section, October 15, 2016, suggests that humans “will never get older than 115, but critics of the study think we can grow much older.” In “What’s the Longest Humans Can Live? 115 Years, New Study Says,” the author, Carl Zimmer, writes about longest living woman, a Frenchwoman, Jeanne Calment, who died at age 122, on Aug. 4, 1997. Hers is the record for human longevity.
Dr. Vijg, an expert on aging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and his graduate students Xiao Dong and Brandon Milholland published a study that provides evidence that . “[F]rom now on, this is it. Humans will never get older than 115.” You can read the entire article and how he reaches his conclusions.
This Grandma likes his conclusion in the article. We are at the point of living longer lives and have the possibility of living to that ceiling of age 115 that Dr. Vijg proposes. However, it is the quality of life that is more important, which is what he calls “health span.”
That is what we Boomers want. We want to be as healthy for as long as we can be in our aging process. Here is what Dr. Vijg says;
“Based on his own experimental research, Dr. Vijg describes aging as the accumulation of damage to DNA and other molecules. Our bodies can slow the process by repairing some of this damage. But in the end it’s too much to fix. “At some point everything goes wrong, and you collapse,” Dr. Vijg said. The best hope for our species is not to extend our life spans, Dr. Vijg argues, but to lengthen our years of healthy living – with healthy habits and perhaps drugs that can repair some of the cellular damage that comes with time. “There’s a good chance to improve health span – that’s the most important thing,” Dr. Vijg said.
When you read both articles together, they actually have the same conclusion. We are no longer going to concentrate on the years of life, but the quality of the years of life. We Boomers are the perfect generation to push the limits, not only of longevity, but the quality of that longevity.
Just take a long at past posts on different ways to improve health span:
Part TWO of Exercise for Boomer Grandmas in 2016 is About Movement and Strength and Slowing the Aging Process.
Part THREE of Exercise for Boomer Grandmas in 2016 is About Exercise With and For Our Grandchildren.
Or you can just take the advice in this last post I will remind you of:
It does seem by looking at the blog postings in archives that I am paying more attention to longevity now that I am hitting seventy. (It is much better to see the number written out than in numerals!). Yes, this Grandma will continue to exercise for that “healthy span” but forget about limitations on longevity. As I quote myself in the “State of Mind Over Body: Denial is Joy” post about a new book to plan for our aging future and denial:
“Will I read this book as I enter my eighth decade? I hate that the article and book say only “a quarter of American women age 65 [are] expected to live into their 90s,” but love that “there could be quite a few years to think about.” This Grandma perceives, or at least wants to perceive, that the seventies are just the beginning of young-old, as GG ( my mother-in-law) coined. Yes, I and each of my friends now discuss aches and pains and ailments as never before, but we do not accept any limitations that may come upon us. The book and article talk about planning and coping for a possibly, and more probably, different and limited future.”
“No, I will not read the book. . . .in this next decade, but remember it exists in this blog post. Forever young is this Grandma’s mantra! Denial spurns activity, action, and youthfulness. Denial is
Joy,
Mema
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