Meet CSA, Pati Rader

http://www.csa.us/email/spirit/ssarticles/0713CSASpotlight.html

“My journey through the senior care industry began with the abrupt need for intervention on my mother’s behalf. In her effort to remain independent along with her self-destructive personal choices, she had literally set herself up for being at the mercy of those who had taken advantage of her.” Read more of Pati’s story!

My journey through the senior care and living industry began with the abrupt need for intervention on my mother’s behalf. In her effort to remain independent along with her self-destructive personal choices, she had literally set herself up for being at the mercy of those who had taken advantage of her. It was not until she had lost everything and could no longer live on her own that she allowed me to help her. And sadly it was then too late for her to regain the independence she desired. She had made too many bad choices, refused to recognize her need for help, and was literally wasting away from alcohol abuse, smoking and disease. The journey of intervention and care for her was a very difficult, time consuming, stressful, frustrating, and overwhelming process that took me through nearly every level of care for my mother and with it exposure to numerous agencies, and resources for seniors.

At only 72, my mother had not filed for Social Security or Medicare, had no health care provider, stopped receiving pension and retirement income, had either lost or destroyed legal documentation, and had no money or assets. Although clearly in distress with breathing difficulties, contusions, and many other problems, she refused to go to the doctor. After a few ER visits and a hospital admission, she was provided RX and recommendations for LTC after being diagnosed with COPD, Parkinson’s, and significant cognitive impairment, a.k.a., Dementia. Looking at her brain scans revealed a brain much smaller than her skull – no wonder she wasn’t thinking clearly and falling all the time. At this time her Durable Power of Attorney was enacted and I was thrust into the role of my mother’s care manager. Within a few months her funds were re-instated, on Medicare, and she was moving through various levels of care as her needs increased.

While managing my mother’s care I enjoyed volunteering in her community, singing for the residents and helping with activities. I soon found that my experience as a Recreation Supervisor, Instructor, Entertainer, Event Coordinator, and Program Director, along with a lifelong passion for the elderly, culminated in my becoming a Certified Activity Leader “CAL”. Becoming a CAL not only provided me with education regarding the care for seniors, the aging process, and the diseases that afflict them, but also the significant importance in providing opportunities and activities that treat the whole person and not just the condition or disease they have.

In the midst of my mother’s journey I drew on my experience as a professional singer to develop a musical program that not only entertains, but also provides opportunities for interaction and music therapy. During these visits I go on a journey with listeners where we can enjoy smiles, laughter, memories and moments of peace. Throughout the year I enjoy presenting Broadway Tunes, Romantic Melodies, Patriotic Celebrations, Christmas Memories and Inspirational selections.

When my mother’s journey was ending, I was better prepared due in part to the education and exposure I had gained from the “End of Life Spiritual Care” program through the Hospice Foundation of America along with the Hospice team and the SNF staff that cared for her. Being there for my mother, near her end of life, was an honor to be shared and if I were able to be there for others, to sit at their bedside, comfort them, or sing to them, I would. However in my absence, I offer my CD “Hope for the Journey” which was produced in memory of my own father who asked to ‘keep on singing’ before he passed. My hope is to provide a peace, comfort and encouragement to others through the CD.

After my mother passed, I was ready to start a new journey, one that would no doubt include much of what I had learned and gained from the years of managing my mother’s care. In addition, my experience as a Marketing Director in the Healthcare Industry along with being a Certified Activity Leader had provided me with insight that was shaping my thoughts about this new journey. I had seen the value and importance for seniors to not only have something to look forward to in the way of activities, food and entertainment, but to also remain as mentally and physically active as possible. Living in a senior community there is ample opportunity for activity. But at home a senior can become isolated, sedentary, weak, and lonely. All of which can lead to fall risk, failure to thrive, lack of desire and depression. Living at home is where they want to be and in many cases their only choice. So how could one remain home safe and secure while enjoying meaningful moments and enriching activities? My journey had begun!

I set out to develop a plan where seniors could enjoy a professionally run activity program that could be personalized and managed from their own homes. And in January 2013 my plan became reality with the launching of The Life Enrichment Activity Program “LEAP” for The HomeCare Source in Sacramento and Placer Counties of California. Each client has access to a monthly thematic calendar of activities designed for the home setting, as well as a personalized assessment and program. With the purpose of LEAP to encourage, inspire, motivate, energize, soothe, and simply ‘help seniors enjoy life in their own home’, we are meeting the desires of the senior, as well as the family. As a son recently said, “I wanted more than basic care of my mom” and more is what LEAP is all about.

While building the LEAP program I was also considering where and how to expand my education in the Senior Care Industry. I asked other professionals what they saw as beneficial and discovered that the Society of Certified Senior Advisors was a well-respected and honorable designation. With my experience and exposure in the industry, combined with the abundance of information and training materials provided by SCSA, I determined that I would be better equipped to move forward in my career.

Becoming a CSA has provided me with valuable resources, tools, and opportunities for continuing education. Through the network of fellow CSAs on LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogs, Senior Spirit Newsletter and the CSA Journal, I have gained access to valuable insight, information, and connections throughout the country. As a CSA, I confidently guide clients and friends through their own journeys to reliable resources, as well as to other CSAs for help and assistance.

This recommendation sums up in part how my being a CSA has benefited me: “Pati demonstrates to our clients, prospective clients, and referral sources, the knowledge, professionalism, and ethics that are fundamental to her CSA designation. Her excellent reputation precedes her and the credibility she has earned as a Certified Senior Advisor is very valuable to our organization.” Sheila Abbasi; Owner, The HomeCare Source, Granite Bay California.

I am extremely thankful to the SCSA for providing the designation opportunity for professionals to expand their knowledge, continue their education, and provide resources for seniors and their loved ones. It is an honor to be a part of the SCSA.

Pati Rader, CSA ®
Certified Senior Advisor
Marketing, Events, & Consumer Experience Consultant
www.patirader.com

Life Enrichment Coordinator, Community Relations Director
www.TheHomeCareSource.com

“Golden Years Don’t Have to Lose Their Shine” editorial about the Life Enrichment
Activity Program LEAP

http://www.optimumseniorcare.com/services/alzheimerscare.php

http://optimumseniorcare.com/blog/

Ruth Asawa, 87, Inspires Others With Art

http://www.csa.us/email/spirit/ssarticles/0713SeniorSpotlight.html

Ruth Asawa started her life in a Japanese-American internment camp. Rather than being bitter, she credits her rich and long life as an artist to her early hardships. Click here to view article.

When Ruth Asawa was 16, she and her family were removed from their home in Norwalk, California, and moved to Japanese -American internment camps, first to the Santa Anita race track in California and then to Rohwer, Arkansas. Ruth’s father was arrested, and she wouldn’t see him for another six years. It was 1942, when fear of the Japanese had caused the U.S. government to relocate Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast to remote camps.

This would be a traumatic upheaval for anyone, yet for Ruth, the consequences were ultimately positive. “I hold no hostilities for what happened; I blame no one,” she said in 1994, when she was 68 years old. “Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the internment, and I like who I am.”

Ruth went on to become a well-known artist. Her work—sculptures, paintings and drawings—has been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Oakland Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco.

Ruth became an artist after her desired career as a teacher was thwarted by lingering anti-Japanese sentiment and she was unable to get a teaching internship. Instead, she studied art at Black Mountain College, where she met her future husband, Albert Lanier, and married against the wishes of their families. The couple decided to live in San Francisco, a city they believed would be hospitable to an interracial couple and would provide a vibrant arts community.

In 1982, Ruth started receiving commissions to make public art. That same year, she became interested in developing arts programs in schools, which resulted in a public high school for the arts. In 2010, the School of the Arts High School was named for Ruth and is now the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. Her teaching philosophy is based on her personal experience: Children develop as creative thinkers and problem solvers by practicing art and gardening.

A major advocate for art, Ruth has sat on several arts councils, including the National Endowment for the Arts (1977) and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

In 1985, Ruth was diagnosed with lupus and has never regained her former strength, although the disease remains in remission. In 2002, she reduced her public engagements due to her declining health.

Even if she’s not actively engaged in art, her creative spirit lives on at Ruth’s Table, an arts program in San Francisco that brings together people of all ages, cultures and talents. At Bethany Center, a low-income senior home, residents gather around the table that once sat in Ruth’s home, which she opened to artists, politicians, homeless people and whoever was interested.

“Education doesn’t end at 65,” said Jerry Brown, Bethany Center’s director. “It’s truly amazing to see people engaging, creating, socializing and talking to people that they’ve never met before. The whole experience helps them eat better and sleep better, and it makes the body whole.”

Sources: Ruth’s Table

Western Edition San Francisco

http://www.optimumseniorcare.com/services/alzheimerscare.php

http://optimumseniorcare.com/blog/

Programs Bring Generations Together
Both young people and older adults benefit when they share skills and wisdom. Several schools, universities, cities and individuals have set goals to bridge the generational divide through classes, discussions and other programs. Click here to view article.

In today’s society, the paths of older and younger people seldom cross. Many feel this is a loss to both age groups as well as to the community in general. To counteract this trend, several organizations and individuals are offering workshops, classes and other methods to bring together the generations.

“In these tough economic times, we need new strategies for meeting the challenges facing individuals of all ages and the communities in which they live. Now more than ever we need to strengthen the interdependence across generations,” is how the Intergenerational Center at Temple University explains it.

Two schools in Cleveland are in the forefront of this movement. At the Intergenerational School and the Near West Intergenerational School, both public charter schools, seniors from the community serve as mentors to students, as do college students from a nearby university. The benefit works both ways: not only do older adults help the schoolchildren, but the seniors themselves learn things they may have forgotten or perhaps never knew.

Helen Hui, a Certified Senior Advisor®, realized the need for a place where older adults can share their skills and wisdom after seeing her once-active mother lose her drive after she stopped working.

Her mother had once been a tennis player, and Hui recalls going with her to a tennis tournament where women in their 70s and 80s were playing. “This is the way to go,” Hui thought and told her students at Cairn University, where she taught health and physical fitness, “When I’m 80, you’re going to find me on the tennis court.”

Until she was 87, Hui’s mother ran her own restaurant, working 10 to 12 hours a day, a true example of someone staying vigorous and healthy by staying active. But within three years of her retirement, with her activity level decreased, she watched tennis on TV rather than play it. Now 94, her health is still fairly good, but her drive and passion for life is almost gone.

“It made me start to think: what happened to my mother?” Hui said. “If she kept active, would that have made the difference? If she kept playing tennis? Some of her friends were playing in their 90s.”

What makes a person thrive, she wondered. Hui could see that once people left their familiar routines and connections, their health declined. Even when staying close to friends, older adults tended to talk mainly about their health concerns. New energy was needed, she thought, especially from younger people.

Hui resigned from teaching and started doing research and volunteering, including work with Project Shine at the Intergenerational Center at Temple University, which recruits college-level volunteers to work with immigrant elders. The connection worked both ways: The elders taught tai chi to college students, and the students, who were learning Chinese in school, were able to practice their language skills with the elders. The elders enjoyed the energy of the young people, and the college recruits learned about the elders’ life experiences and shared their own.

Since 1979, the center has created and implemented intergenerational program models, both national and local in scope, that get people of all ages to support one another and address social issues in their communities. In Philadelphia, 550 volunteers—300 older adults and 250 students—annually help more than 4,000 people with caregiving, immigrant integration and other programs.

The center’s programs include older adults supporting children with special needs through in-home support, respite trips and social work services, in addition to helping low-income middle school students prepare to enter and succeed in college. Other programs include:

• Grandma’s Kids—serving children living with caregivers other than their biological parents
• Time Out Respite Program—providing low-cost services to families caring for the frail elderly
• English as a Second Language (ESL) and Citizenship—mobilizing college students from diverse disciplines and cultures to tutor older immigrants and refugees in basic English language skills, U.S. history and civics needed to pass the naturalization exam
• Workforce Development—building teams of younger tutors and older volunteers to provide immigrants and refugees with ESL classes that focus on workplace and employment skills

After volunteering at the Intergenerational Center at Temple University, Hui decided to develop an intergenerational center in Philadelphia, where she lives. Hui wants her center, called Heritage Builders, to be “a facility or place where crucial exchanges can take place, where young and old can interact and learn from each other. Senior adults need a place to socialize or share their experiences, expertise and hobbies with the younger generation.” She envisions an older person with carpentry skills mentoring a younger person, and older adults teaching a new generation about the lost art of cooking.

To start, she will use churches, where facilities and differing populations are already in place. Rather than getting grants for funding, Hui wants to create a more sustainable model by establishing small businesses using the skills taught in the classes at the center. Perhaps she can open a snack shop with culturally appropriate food.

“The bottom line,” she says, “is that by mixing the generations, older adults feel needed and get energy just being around younger people, and with their life experience, they can relate to younger people, who need someone to talk to.”

Another university program that works on intergenerational issues is the Penn State Intergenerational Program, which provides “leadership and resource support for organizations interested in developing and studying intergenerational programs and activities that enrich people’s lives and help address vital social and community issues.”

Last March it held a discussion among 24 10th grade students and 18 older adult volunteers at a local high school in central Pennsylvania. Using the book, Hitler’s Daughter, the group discussed World War II, the Holocaust, moral and ethical issues related to war and peace, and family relationship issues, particularly in times of turmoil.

Making the discussion more real, several of the adults had lived through World War II and were able to talk about their own experiences. One student later commented, “The class gave me an experience that no account of history can give. I was given a human connection to WWII and a sense of the real emotions for the events that took place. . . . I learned that war really should not be glorified in any way, as some of the seniors explained how they realized this after WWII.”

Every year, MetLife Foundation and Generations United honor four communities in the United States with the 2013 Best Intergenerational Communities Awards (“Communities Awards. America’s Best Intergenerational Communities”). One winner, Dunedin, Florida, sponsors 29 events each year that bring together multiple generations. In addition, the community has ongoing programs, ranging from teenagers visiting nursing homes, the Rotary Club assisting children in grades K through 2 to improve their reading skills and third grade students and older adults stitching together a quilt that represents the younger and older generations.

Another winner, Itta Bena, Mississippi, has no grocery store, but a community garden engages people of all ages in the planning, harvesting and distribution of the garden’s produce. In Montgomery County, Maryland, the public schools work with several nonprofit organizations to bring in older adults to tutor and mentor students. In turn, the schools offer students service-learning opportunities where they can help older residents. Westchester County, New York, the fourth winner, boasts more than 40 intergenerational programs.

As anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “Somehow we have to get older people back close to growing children if we are to restore a sense of community, a knowledge of the past and a sense of the future.”

Benefits of Intergenerational Programs

The positive effects work on all levels: community, youth and older adults.

For the Community

• Strengthens community by dispelling stereotypes held by young and older people, creating a unified group identity and decreasing alienation felt by children, youth and older adults.
• Maximizes human resources by using older adults and youth to benefit the community.
• Encourages cultural exchange by promoting the transmission of cultural traditions and values from older to younger generations, helping to build a sense of personal and societal identity while encouraging tolerance.

For Youth and Children

• Enhances social skills through interaction with older adults, as well as promoting self-esteem and developing problem-solving abilities.
• Improves academic performance through tutoring by older adults, which boosts school attendance and performance.
• Increases stability by providing positive role models with whom children can interact on a regular basis.

For Older Adults

• Enhances socialization so older adults remain productive, useful and contributing members of society.
• Stimulates learning, with youth passing on new innovations and technologies.
• Increases emotional support by giving seniors an opportunity to participate in a meaningful activity, which decreases loneliness, boredom and depression while increasing self-esteem.

Source: EPA

http://www.optimumseniorcare.com/services/alzheimerscare.php

http://optimumseniorcare.com/blog/

How to Have a Good Retirement on a Budget
Experts recommend creating a budget for retirement so you can figure out what you really need and want. From there, you can get rid of expenses that are unnecessary and thus enjoy the life you always imagined. Click here to view article.

The concept of a golden retirement is a relatively new idea. It was not until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that workers started getting pensions and lived long enough to enjoy their later years. Before that, people worked until they died (Wikipedia).

More recently, we’ve created the ideal vision of retirement: usually a couple living near a beach (probably Florida) where they spend their days swimming, fishing, golfing and eating out with friends. Even though this ideal is unrealistic for most people, retirement can be pleasant if you watch your budget.

Creating a Budget

While figures vary, the general rule of thumb is to plan for a retirement that lasts 20 years, depending, of course, on what age you retire. This can be a long time to stretch your savings. The rule of thumb is that you’ll need about 70–80 percent of your pre-retirement income to live on in retirement, but that depends on your lifestyle and your health.

In creating a budget, experts recommend deciding how much money you need to live comfortably, taking inflation and taxes into consideration. If you are using financial planning software, you may be able to create an estimate of how much your money will depreciate over the next few decades. Even a small percentage of inflation (under 4 percent) will cause you to lose almost half of your buying power over 25 years.

Whether you’re thinking about retiring or have already retired, it’s good to make a budget, figure out what you need and what you don’t. First determine your income, remembering to use all your sources, including a long-term care policy or a reverse mortgage.

Experts recommend being realistic about investments and how much they will increase over time. Because the stock market is not performing as reliably as it once did, the old rule of withdrawing 4 percent a year from your nest egg is far from viable these days for most people. Economists have lowered their long-term projections for the stock market since its downturn. For example, baby boomers’ net household assets, 401(k)s, pensions, homes and other investments, minus their total debt, have lost 18 percent of their value since 2007, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Controlling Spending

Most retirees can’t control their amount of income, whether Social Security or rate of return on investments or pensions, but they can control spending. To give yourself a realistic view of how much money you need every month and what can be cut, experts recommend looking at your past expenses, usually your bank account and credit card statements for the past last 6 to 12 months. The next step is to list all your fixed or required monthly obligations, breaking them down into three parts (“How to Make a Retirement Budget):”

• Essentials: This includes expenses that cover food, clothing, housing, transportation and health care.
• Non-essential monthly obligations:These include payments for cable TV, cell phone, gym memberships and subscriptions.
• Required non-monthly expenses: Items such as property taxes, insurance premiums, auto registration and home warranties may come up once a year. These expenses should be calculated on a monthly basis and included in your retirement budget.

Next, list all your flexible or optional expenses, such as traveling, hobbies, eating out and so forth. Even if you’ve retired already, you might want to think about your dream retirement, all the things you could do if you had the means. Then, consider how you could reallocate money from current spending.

The last step is to calculate your fixed versus flexible expenses and then total the two. Divide your fixed expenses by your total expenses. This shows you how much of your retirement income is going toward fixed expenses.

Several budget worksheets are available on the Internet to help you keep track of your expenses. Getting Rid of Unnecessary Expenses.

Financial advisors recommend several ways to save money by removing superfluous expenses.

Insurance: Retirees can save thousands of dollars a year by getting rid of unnecessary insurance policies. You should sit down with your advisor to review your insurance portfolio to determine if there might be ways to reduce your premiums or perhaps eliminate coverage that is no longer needed.

If you’re no longer working, you probably don’t need disability insurance.

Downsizing: If you don’t need the big house, maybe the one you raised your family in, moving to a smaller house or simpler apartment can reduce your expenses considerably. Downsizing can shrink costs for utilities such as heating and air conditioning, as well as for maintenance on roofs, furnaces, yard work and so forth. A smaller home usually means less expensive property taxes. Even moving to a less expensive location can save money.

Debt: More than half of retirees had outstanding debts upon retirement, according to a study by CESI Debt Solutions. Interest payments can cost thousands of dollars a year, money that you could spend on traveling or eating out. Because debt payments will eat into your relatively fixed nest egg, financial advisors recommend getting rid of as much debt as you can.

Many financial advisors recommend a strategy of paying as much as possible on the highest interest-rate debts first and minimum payments on all other debts until all are paid off.

Investment fees: Financial advisors recommend assessing whether retirees are paying too much in the form of expense ratios, transactional fees and trading and account costs for their investments. Some seniors can cut these fees substantially without altering their portfolios or making significant allocation changes. Managing such costs can save thousands of dollars a year, according to one estimate. One advisor recommends keeping fees as close to 1 percent of the total portfolio as possible.

Phones: Getting rid of either your landline or cell phone can save hundreds of dollars annually. Although most seniors might opt for getting rid of their cell phones, because of concerns about reception, one advisor recommends disconnecting the landline. You can use a cell phone anywhere, and a signal booster can improve reception.

Household appliances: Retirees can save money on their utility bills by replacing older, inefficient appliances and other energy-wasting items, as well as by improving their home’s insulation. Many utility companies offer free or discounted home energy audits to help homeowners and renters assess their power usage. One expert estimates that homeowners can save as much as $500 a year in energy costs after making recommended changes. Further, many states and utility companies now offer rebates for purchasing more energy-efficient appliances, such as refrigerators and air-conditioners.

Sources:

“How to Create a Retirement Budget,” Ehow.com

“How to Make a Retirement Budget,”about.com

“6 Expenses to Ditch in Retirement,” smartmoney.com

“How to Set a Retirement Budget,” smartmoney.com

Retirement Budget

Listed are costs and income sources to consider when creating a budget:

Housing Costs

• Mortgage or rent
• Real estate taxes
• Maintenance and repair
• Home insurance

Personal Expenses

• Grooming
• Clothing
• Vacations
• Auto insurance
• Auto expense
• Other

Living Expenses

• Groceries
• Entertainment
• Utilities
• Telephone

Medical Expenses

• Prescription drugs
• Medical insurance

Retirement Income Sources

• Social Security income
• Company pensions
• Other retirement plans

Adapted from: Microsoft

http://www.optimumseniorcare.com/services/alzheimerscare.php

http://optimumseniorcare.com/blog/

http://www.csa.us/email/spirit/ssarticles/0713MedNews.html

Centenarians Lead the Way to Longer Lives
A study is looking at centenarians, whose population is increasing, to see what they have in common. Genetics plays a part, as does staying lean and not smoking.Click here to view article.

John’s retirement community has a party each year for residents who are 90 and over, and each year the party gets larger (although probably not more boisterous). John himself, at age 91, is in good health, with no major problems except for loss of short-term memory. Even in his early 90s, he doesn’t need glasses.

John is one of a growing number of Americans who are living past 85, and an increasing number into their 100s. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that those age 85 and over “are the most rapidly growing elderly age group. Between 1960 and 1994, their numbers rose 274 percent. In contrast, the elderly population in general rose 100 percent and the entire U.S. population grew only 45 percent.” The Census Bureau projects that the 85 and over population could grow from 5.5 million in 2010 to 19 million by 2050.

To find out what keeps certain men and women living and staying healthy longer, the New England Centenarian Study from the Boston University School of Medicine is studying people age 100 and over.

When the centenarian study began in 1994, the number of centenarians (those 100 and over) in industrialized countries, including the United States, was 1 per 10,000. Today, the figure is about 1 per 6,000, making centenarians one of, if not the fastest growing segments of the population. Although started in Boston, the study has expanded to include centenarians from throughout the United States and other countries and has become the largest comprehensive study of centenarians around the globe. Not only does the study include 1,600 centenarians but is also the biggest sample (approximately 107 people) in the world of supercentenarians (age 110-plus). As of 2010, there were about 80,000 centenarians in the United States, mostly women (85 percent).

Because centenarians don’t become disabled until the end of their lives, the New England study views them as good models of aging well. Looking at its subjects’ ability to avoid diseases later in life, the study concluded that “we believe that instead of the aging myth ‘the older you get, the sicker you get,’ it is much more the case of ‘the older you get, the healthier you’ve been.’”

When the study looked at geography—that is, claims that people in certain regions live longer—it could find no evidence. Yet it recommends more study of people in certain areas who live longer and have more active lives, such as men between the ages of 80 and 99 in the Tibetan mountains who still herd livestock and lead physically strenuous lives.

Characteristics of Centenarians

Although the New England study found that centenarians varied widely in years of education (zero years to post-graduate), socioeconomic status (very poor to very rich), religion, ethnicity and patterns of diet (strictly vegetarian to extremely rich in saturated fats), they found a number of characteristics in common:

• Few centenarians are obese. In the case of men, they are nearly always lean.
• Substantial smoking history is rare.
• Centenarians may be better able to handle stress than the majority of people.
• Not all centenarians show signs of dementia, and some had healthy-appearing brains.
• A woman who naturally has a child after the age of 40 has a four times greater chance of living to 100 compared to women who do not. A late pregnancy may be an indicator that the woman’s reproductive system is aging slowly and that the rest of her body is as well.
• At least 50 percent of centenarians have first-degree relatives and/or grandparents who also achieve extremely old age, and many have exceptionally old siblings. Male siblings of centenarians have a 17 times greater chance than other men born around the same time of reaching age 100, and female siblings have an 8.5 times greater chance than other females born around the same time of achieving age 100.
• Many of the children of centenarians (age range of 65 to 82) appear to be following in their parents’ footsteps with marked delays in cardiovascular disease, diabetes and overall mortality.
• Some families demonstrate exceptional longevity that cannot be due to chance and must be due to familial factors.
• The offspring of centenarians, compared to population norms, score low in neuroticism and high in extraversion.

The Role of Genes Versus Environment

Scientists have long debated the role of nature versus nurture: Studies of identical twins reared apart, for example, have shown 70–80 percent environmental influence and 20-30 percent genes. However, the New England Centenarian Study discovered that exceptional longevity (living over the age of 100) runs strongly in families. Other study results strongly suggest that the genetic component of exceptional longevity gets larger and larger with increasing age and is especially high for those age 106 years and older. The New England study was particularly interested in how centenarians are able to markedly delay, or in some cases escape, Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers performed detailed and annual neuropsychological examinations on centenarians in the Boston area. The study concluded that most people have the genetic makeup to live into their mid- to late 80s in good health, and like centenarians, compress the time they are sick toward the end of their lives. Much of their ability to do so depends upon healthy behaviors, including not smoking, strength-training exercise and a diet conducive to being lean. Other studies have found that a sense of humor, playing music and a strong social system contribute to living over 100.

Recent Scientific Breakthroughs

Science is making discoveries that could keep people living even longer than 100-plus. In March, Sciencemagazine announced that a team led by an Australian researcher found that targeting a single anti-aging enzyme in the body has the potential to prevent age-related diseases and extend lifespan. This means that a whole new class of anti-aging drugs could ultimately prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and Type 2 diabetes.

“The target enzyme, SIRT1, is switched on naturally by calorie restriction and exercise, but it can also be enhanced through activators. The most common naturally-occurring activator is resveratrol, which is found in small quantities in red wine, but synthetic activators with much stronger activity are already being developed.”

In May, a team of 70 scientists from the United States, China, Australia and Japan reported that it sequenced and annotated the genome of the lotus plant, which is believed to have a genetic system that repairs genetic defects and may hold secrets about aging successfully (“Research may help scientists learn anti-aging secrets of sacred lotus,” Medical.net).

“The lotus genome is an ancient one, and we now know its ABCs,” says Jane Shen-Miller, one of the researchers and a senior scientist with UCLA’s Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life. “Molecular biologists can now more easily study how its genes are turned on and off during times of stress and why this plant’s seeds can live for 1,300 years. This is a step toward learning what anti-aging secrets the sacred lotus plant may offer.”

Longevity research seems to be increasingly aimed not at getting people to live longer but, if they are going to live longer, to stay healthy. In the New England study, nonagenarians (subjects in their 90s), centenarians (ages 100–104), semi-supercentenarians (ages 105–109) and supercentenarians (ages 110+) had progressively shorter periods of their lives spent with age-related diseases. These findings support the hypothesis, known as the compression of morbidity, that as one approaches the limits of lifespan, diseases (morbidity) must be delayed (or escaped) toward the end of these longest lived, and that there truly is a limit to human life span and that this limit is around 110–125 years.

Despite this finding, the field of increasing our lifespan, known as life extension science, is a large one and appears to be growing (see sidebar).

Ideas for Extending Life

Many theories and ideas for living a longer life are either unproved, experimental or have worked in limited situations:

• Preliminary studies of caloric restriction on humans have provided some evidence that caloric restriction may have powerful protective effects against secondary aging in humans, such as Type 2 diabetes and atherosclerosis.
• The free-radical theory of aging, which states that organisms age because cells accumulate free radical damage over time, suggests that antioxidant supplements, such as vitamin C, vitamin E, Q10, lipoic acid, carnosine and N-acetylcysteine, might extend human life. Other trials suggest that beta-carotene supplements and high doses of vitamin E increase mortality rates.
• Resveratrol, a protein stimulant, appears to extend lifespan in simple organisms such as nematodes and short-lived fish.
• Some supplements, including the minerals selenium and zinc, have been reported to extend the lifespan of rats and mice, though this is not proven in humans.
• Future advances in nanomedicine (the manipulation of matter on an atomic and molecular scale) could give rise to life extension through the repair of many processes thought to be responsible for aging, such as damaged cells.
• Therapeutic cloning and stem cell research could one day provide a way to generate cells, body parts or even entire bodies (generally referred to as reproductive cloning) that would be genetically identical to a prospective patient.
• In gene therapy, artificial genes are integrated with an organism to replace mutated or otherwise deficient genes.

http://www.optimumseniorcare.com/services/alzheimerscare.php

http://optimumseniorcare.com/blog/