Aging - Anti-Aging
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InfoMedSearch: Aging and Anti-Aging
PREVENT:
FALLS,
NUTRITIONAL DEFICIENCIES,
DEHYDRATION, HEAT STROKE
PROMOTE:
MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
Falls
NIH - Falls “A fall can change your life. If you're elderly, it can lead to disability and a loss of independence. If your bones are fragile from osteoporosis, you could break a bone, often a hip. But aging alone doesn't make people fall. Diabetes and heart disease affect balance. So do problems with circulation, thyroid or nervous systems. Some medicines make people dizzy. Eye problems or alcohol can be factors. Any of these things can make a fall more likely. … Falls and accidents seldom "just happen." Taking care of your health by exercising and getting regular eye exams and physicals may help reduce your chance of falling. Getting rid of tripping hazards in your home and wearing nonskid shoes may also help. To reduce the chances of breaking a bone if you do fall, make sure that you get enough calcium and vitamin D. “
NIH - Falls and Older Adults “More than one in three people age 65 years or older falls each year. The risk of falling -- and fall-related problems -- rises with age.”
Highlighted Articles
The functional effects of physical exercise training in frail older people : a systematic review. (Sports Med. 2008) “This systematic review suggests that older adults with different levels of abilities can improve their functional performance by regular exercise training.”
Astronaut Technology Could Prevent Elderly Falls “The National Osteoporosis Foundation estimates 300,000 people annually suffer hip fractures, which are often caused by falls. An average of 24 percent of hip fracture patients age 50 and over die within a year of the fracture. Many fall victims who don't die within a year end up being disabled the rest of their lives. "It's a huge issue," said Elinor Ginzler of the AARP. "It significantly impairs your ability to stay independent, which is what people want." “
Brain injuries from falls a deadly risk for seniors “Arias said that as the numerous baby boom generation hits retirement age, more people will fall and either die or require expensive hospital care. "CDC has developed tips and suggestions for older adults, their caregivers, health care providers, and communities to help prevent falls," Arias said. These include reducing floor clutter and providing better lighting as well as regular exercise to maintain strength and balance. More information is available at http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/preventingfalls/.“
A typology of oral hydration problems exhibited by frail nursing home residents. (J Gerontol Nurs. 2006) "Dehydration remains a substantial problem for nursing home residents, often with poor health outcomes. … Dehydration events occurred in 31% (11 of 35) of residents during the 6-month period."
Strategies for ensuring good hydration in the elderly. (Nutr Rev. 2005) "Dehydration is a frequent etiology of morbidity and mortality in elderly people. It causes the hospitalization of many patients and its outcome may be fatal. Indeed, dehydration is often linked to infection, and if it is overlooked, mortality may be over 50%. Older individuals have been shown to have a higher risk of developing dehydration than younger adults. Modifications in water metabolism with aging and fluid imbalance in the frail elderly are the main factors to consider in the prevention of dehydration. Particularly, a decrease in the fat free mass, which is hydrated and contains 73% water, is observed in the elderly due to losses in muscular mass, total body water, and bone mass. Since water intake is mainly stimulated by thirst, and since the thirst sensation decreases with aging, risk factors for dehydration are those that lead to a loss of autonomy or a loss of cognitive function that limit the access to beverages."
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Aging and Anti-Aging
Anti-Aging
NEWS:
4 Steps to Living 14 Years Longer
10 Healthy Aging Tips From Centenarians
Active Social Life Helps Keep Aging Mind Sharp “Being socially active may increase feelings of self-worth and emotional validation that could end up helping maintain memory, researchers say. Social interaction may also present older minds with new challenges, keeping the brain more agile.”
Aerobic exercise may shield aging brain “Keeping the heart fit with aerobic exercise may also boost older adults' brainpower, a research review suggests. In an analysis of pooled data from previous clinical trials, researchers in the Netherlands found that when healthy adults older than 55 improved their fitness through aerobic exercise, there was also often an improvement in memory, attention or other mental abilities. … "Improvements in cognition as a result of improvements in cardiovascular fitness are being explained by improvements in cerebral blood flow, leading to increased brain metabolism which, in turn, stimulates the production of neurotransmitters and formation of new synapses," Angevaren explained.”
Become an Optimist -- Live Longer “The Yale study claims that a good attitude helps keep your heart pumping and your feet tapping an additional 7.6 years on average. An optimistic outlook adds more years to your life than low blood pressure (4 years or less), low cholesterol (4 years or less), a healthy weight (1 to 3 years) and regular exercise (1 to 3 years).”
Boomers Should Add Muscle Before It's Too Late “Strength training can help people build muscle mass to assist in the fight against the debilitating effects of old age until they reach 80, a new study says. After that, not so much, according to the authors. The Ball State University study, sponsored by a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, found that while six men in their 80s did get somewhat stronger, their whole muscle size and fiber size did not grow during a 12-week training regime. "We know that there is accelerated muscle loss as we get older," Scott Trappe, director of Ball State's Human Performance Laboratory, said in a university news release. "The best way to keep our muscles from shrinking is through resistance training, which allows our body to maintain muscle size and strength as we go through our 60s and 70s." “
Drinking Tea May Slow Bone Loss: Study Shows Elderly Tea Drinkers Have Higher Bone Density
Exercise Can Reverse the Aging Process
Exercise Keeps You Younger, Study Finds “It all appears to boil down to the length of structures called telomeres -- which protect the DNA on the chromosomes, the researchers from King's College London wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Many studies have shown telomeres get shorter over time, suggesting the cells are ageing or dying. The study, which extracted a DNA sample from their volunteers, found people who exercised more each week had longer telomeres. Exercise lowers the risk of a range of problems such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer, the researchers said. "It is not just walking around the block. It is really working up a sweat," said Tim Spector, a genetic epidemiologist who led the study, in a telephone interview. The study found people who exercised vigorously 3 hours each week had longer telomeres and were biologically 9 years younger than people who did under 15 minutes. “
Exercise Plus Healthy Diet May Help Preserve Muscle Mass in Frail, Obese Elderly Patients
How To Live To 100: Remain Independent, Avoid Disability, Research Suggests
Is regular exercise a friend or foe of the aging immune system? A systematic review. (Clin J Sport Med. 2008) “CONCLUSIONS: Overall, in healthy older adults, regular, particularly aerobic, exercise appears to be a friend of the immune system, helping to offset diminished adaptive responses and chronic inflammation. The possibility exists that particularly strenuous exercise may cause acute immunologic changes, such as diminished NK cell activity, which could predispose to infection in certain individuals. However, given the possible benefits of regular exercise on the immune system and the many definite benefits on other systems, the evidence presented here should not dissuade practitioners from suggesting regular exercise to otherwise healthy older adults.”
Looking For The Founatain Of Youth? Cut Your Calories, Research Suggests “Calorie restriction has long been shown to slow the aging process in rats and mice. While scientists do not know how calorie restriction affects the aging process in rodents, one popular hypothesis is that it slows aging by decreasing a thyroid hormone, triiodothyronine (T3), which then slows metabolism and tissue aging. A new study in the June 2008 issue of Rejuvenation Research, found that calorie restriction - cutting approximately 300 to 500 calories per day - had a similar biological effect in humans and, therefore, may slow the aging process.“
Personality Predictors of Longevity: Activity, Emotional Stability, and Conscientiousness (Psychosomatic Medicine 2008) “Conclusions: In a large sample of generally healthy individuals followed for almost five decades, longevity was associated with being conscientious, emotionally stable, and active.”
Plant Foods For Preserving Muscle Mass
Regular Exercise Through Middle Age May Delay Biological Aging “"Regular exercise substantially reduces the risks of obesity, maturity onset diabetes mellitus, hypertension, myocardial infarction, some forms of stroke, several forms of cancer and osteoporosis, not only in middle age but also during the retirement years," Dr. Shephard concludes. "It is also helpful in rehabilitation following such critical incidents as a myocardial infarction or congestive heart failure. Regular aerobic exercise may have some impact on the likelihood of becoming blind because of a reduced risk of maturity onset diabetes mellitus, and catastrophic falls are less likely if regular aerobic exercise maintains muscle power, balance and coordination." “
Regular Walking Nearly Halves Elderly Disability Risk “Older adults can decrease their risk of disability and increase their likelihood of maintaining independence by 41 percent by participating in a walking exercise program, according to a new University of Georgia study.”
Running Slows the Effects of Aging: Study Shows Older Runners Have Fewer Disabilities Than Non-Runners “"If you had to pick one thing to make people healthier as they age, it would be aerobic exercise," James Fries, MD, an emeritus professor of medicine at the medical school and the study's senior author, says in a news release.”
Strength training good for the aging brain: study “Results of a new study converge with recent evidence that certain types of non-aerobic exercise, such as strength training, benefit cognitive function in older adults. In the study, researchers found an improvement in higher-order thinking skills among elderly men and women with a history of falling who participated in a falls-prevention exercise program. "In older adults, impaired central executive functioning is associated with falls," Dr. Teresa Liu-Ambrose, of University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, told Reuters Health. The older men and women who did the strength and balance training showed a 13 percent improvement in an executive function task after 6 months. This group of elders, for example, was better able to name the ink color of the word "blue" printed in red ink. By contrast, non-participants' skills deteriorated 10 percent, the investigators report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. After one year, 43 percent of participants, compared with 67 percent of non-participants, had repeat falls, Liu-Ambrose and colleagues report.“
The very old may benefit from L-carnitine: study “The dietary supplement L-carnitine can lessen fatigue and boost mental function in very old people, Italian researchers report. Study participants given L-carnitine also experienced significant increases in muscle mass and reductions in fat mass, Dr. Mariano Malaguarnera and colleagues from the University of Catania report in the December issue of the American Journal of Clinical nutrition. L-carnitine helps cells to produce energy from fat.“
Vigorous Exercise Can Help Seniors Avoid Disability “Healthy seniors who are physically active and exercise for more than 60 minutes each week can lessen their chances of disability as they age, finds a new long-term study.”
Vitamin B12 Boasts Brain Benefits: Simple Dietary Changes May Help Ward Off Brain Volume Loss in Old Age “When the researchers compared the results, they found that people who had higher vitamin B12 levels were six times less likely to experience brain shrinkage compared with those who had lower levels of the vitamin in their blood. The researchers write that they were unable to investigate whether lower vitamin B12 could cause cognitive impairment by its effect on brain size. … Since the researchers did not look at whether taking vitamin B12 supplements would have an effect, it remains unknown whether they could make a difference in elderly persons at risk for brain shrinkage. "Without carrying out a clinical trial, we acknowledge that it is still not known whether B12 supplementation would actually make a difference in elderly persons at risk for brain shrinkage," Vogiatzoglou says.“
Vitamin C Intake May Reduce Fracture Risk “Total and supplemental use of vitamin C — but not dietary vitamin C intake — are associated with a reduced risk for hip and nonvertebral fracture, according to research presented here on September 14 at the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research 30th Annual Meeting. "We want to look at modifiable risk factors [for osteoporosis], and diet is so modifiable," coauthor and presenter Marian T. Hannan, DSc, MPH, told Medscape Diabetes & Endocrinology. "Vitamin C [intake] is highly modifiable. It's a water-soluble vitamin that's easily digested and easily absorbed.... [In addition,] there's a pathway for antioxidants inhibiting bone resorption.... There's [also] a collagen effect that's directly related to vitamin C." “
Vitamin E 'may ward off decline' “Researchers found people aged over 65 who had lower levels of vitamin E performed worse on tests of basic physical ability. The key may be that vitamin E is an antioxidant, protecting the body's tissues from damage caused by charged particles called free radicals.“
ARTICLES:
The Vitamin That Could Add Years to Your Life “D seems to be particularly relevant to a cellular yardstick of aging called a telomere. These "end caps" on your chromosomes get shorter and shorter with age, but having high blood levels of vitamin D seems to help ensure longer telomeres. That's a good thing, because when telomeres get really short and disappear, cells stop dividing and start to die. Translation: You age and become more vulnerable to disease.”
JOURNAL ARTICLES:
Changes in cognition and mortality in relation to exercise in late life: a population based study. (PLoS ONE. 2008) “Exercise is strongly associated with improving cognition. As the majority of mortality benefit of exercise is at the highest level of cognition, and declines as cognition declines, the net effect of exercise should be to improve cognition at the population level, even with more people living longer.”
Effect of Physical Activity on Cognitive Function in Older Adults at Risk for Alzheimer Disease (JAMA. 2008) “Conclusions In this study of adults with subjective memory impairment, a 6-month program of physical activity provided a modest improvement in cognition over an 18-month follow-up period. “
Effectiveness of the Mediterranean diet in the elderly. (Clin Interv Aging. 2008)
Effects of Physical Exercise on Myocardial Telomere-Regulating Proteins, Survival Pathways, and Apoptosis (J Am Coll Cardiol, 2008) “Conclusions: Long- and short-term voluntary physical exercise up-regulates cardiac telomere-stabilizing proteins and thereby induces antisenescent and protective effects, for example, to prevent doxorubicin-induced cardiomyopathy.”
Endurance Exercise as a Countermeasure for Aging. (Diabetes. 2008)
European Symposium on Healthy Ageing: The Role of Food, Nutrition and Lifestyle (with Outcomes of the Nutri-Senex Project) (Ann Nutr Metab 2007)
Fish consumption and risk of subclinical brain abnormalities on MRI in older adults (Neurology 2008) “Conclusions: Among older adults, modest consumption of tuna/other fish, but not fried fish, was associated with lower prevalence of subclinical infarcts and white matter abnormalities on MRI examinations. Our results add to prior evidence that suggest that dietary intake of fish with higher eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid content, and not fried fish intake, may have clinically important health benefits.”
Greater intake of vitamins B6 and B12 spares gray matter in healthy elderly: A voxel-based morphometry study. (Brain Res. 2008) “In the VBM analysis, we found that adults with greater vitamin B6 intake had greater gray matter volume along the medial wall, anterior cingulate cortex, medial parietal cortex, middle temporal gyrus, and superior frontal gyrus, whereas people with greater B12 intake had greater volume in the left and right superior parietal sulcus. These effects were driven by vitamin supplementation and were negated when only examining vitamin intake from diet. Folate had no effect on brain volume. Furthermore, there was no relationship between vitamins B6, B12, or folate intake on global brain volume measures, indicating that VBM methods are more sensitive for detecting localized differences in gray matter volume than global measures. These results are discussed in relation to a growing literature on vitamin intake on age-related neurocognitive deterioration.”
Habitual Exercise and Arterial Aging. (J Appl Physiol. 2008) “A short-term, moderate-intensity aerobic exercise intervention (brisk daily walking for 12 weeks) improves carotid artery compliance and can restore vascular endothelial function in previously sedentary middle-aged and older adults. Reduced oxidative stress may be an important mechanism contributing to these effects. Habitual resistance exercise increases (high-intensity) or does not affect (moderate-intensity) large elastic artery stiffness, and prevents/restores the age-associated reduction in basal leg blood flow independent of changes in leg fat-free mass. Habitual exercise favorably modulates several expressions of arterial aging, thus preserving vascular function and possibly reducing the risk of CVD.”
High vitamin C intake is associated with lower 4-year bone loss in elderly men. (J Nutr. 2008) “These results suggest a possible protective role of vitamin C for bone health in older men.”
Influence of very long-chain n-3 fatty acids on plasma markers of inflammation in middle-aged men. (Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids. 2008)
Lifestyle and Memory in the Elderly. (Neuroepidemiology. 2008) “The healthiest behavior was defined as: a BMI <22; a diet high in fruits, vegetables, wholemeal/low-fat foods and unsaturated fatty acids; energy expenditure through physical activity >13,000 kcal/week; a history of never smoking; an alcohol consumption of 4-10 drinks per week. Results: Linear regression analysis revealed that a high lifestyle index score was associated with a better memory score (after adjusting for age, sex, education and blood pressure). The composite index had a stronger relationship with memory scores than single factors. Conclusions: This cross-sectional study revealed that a healthy lifestyle, assessed by a simple composite index, is related to better memory performance in healthy elderly individuals. Our findings point to the importance of a comprehensive modulation of lifestyle factors when finding ways to preserve memory functions in the elderly.”
Lifestyle-related factors in predementia and dementia syndromes. (Expert Rev Neurother. 2008) “At present, in older subjects, healthy diets, antioxidant supplements, the prevention of nutritional deficiencies, and moderate physical activity could be considered the first line of defense against the development and progression of predementia and dementia syndromes. However, in most cases, these were only observational studies, and results are awaited from large multicenter randomized clinical trials in older persons that may clarify the possible synergy, for example, between moderate exercise, physical activity and healthy Mediterranean diet on cognition in the elderly.”
Mall walking as a physical activity option: results of a pilot project. (Can J Aging. 2008)
Movement in mind: The relationship of exercise with cognitive status for older adults in the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care (SNAC). (Aging Ment Health. 2008)
Physical activity and dementia risk in the elderly: Findings from a prospective Italian study (NEUROLOGY 2008) “Conclusions: In this cohort, physical activity is associated with a lower risk of vascular dementia but not of Alzheimer disease. Further research is needed about the biologic mechanisms operating between physical activity and cognition.”
Physical Activity Is Associated with Risk Factors for Chronic Disease across Adult Women's Life Cycle. (J Am Diet Assoc. 2008) “CONCLUSIONS: Overall, these results indicate that younger age and greater physical activity, despite age, are associated with fewer risk factors for chronic disease, such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.”
Physical exercise at midlife and risk of dementia three decades later: a population-based study of Swedish twins. (J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2008) “Conclusions. Exercise at midlife may reduce the odds of dementia in older adulthood, suggesting that exercise interventions should be explored as a potential strategy for delaying disease onset.”
Plasma Omega-3 Fatty Acid Response to a Fish Oil Supplement in the Healthy Elderly. (Lipids. 2008)
Protective role of tea catechins on erythrocytes subjected to oxidative stress during human aging. (Nat Prod Res. 2008)
Reduced Disability and Mortality Among Aging Runners (Arch Intern Med. 2008) “Conclusion Vigorous exercise (running) at middle and older ages is associated with reduced disability in later life and a notable survival advantage. “
The functional effects of physical exercise training in frail older people : a systematic review. (Sports Med. 2008) “This systematic review suggests that older adults with different levels of abilities can improve their functional performance by regular exercise training.”
Walking one hour or more per day prevented mortality among older persons: Results from ilSIRENTE study. (Prev Med. 2008) “CONCLUSIONS: Our results obtained from a representative sample of very old and frail elderly subjects expand the knowledge that high levels of walking activity are associated with better survival.”
Year-long physical activity and metabolic syndrome in older Japanese adults: cross-sectional data from the Nakanojo Study. (J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2008) “CONCLUSIONS: The metabolic syndrome is less likely in elderly people taking > 8000-10,000 steps/d, and reaching an intensity > 3 METs for > 20-30 min/d, relative to their sedentary peers.”
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