Higher Levels Of Social Activity Decrease The Risk Of Developing Disability In Old Age

Afraid of becoming disabled in old age, not being able to dress yourself or walk up and down the stairs? Staying physically active before symptoms set in could help. But so could going out to eat, playing bingo and taking overnight trips.

According to research conducted at Rush University Medical Center, higher levels of social activity are associated with a decreased risk of becoming disabled. The study has just been posted online and will be published in the April issue of the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences.

"Social activity has long been recognized as an essential component of healthy aging, but now we have strong evidence that it is also related to better everyday functioning and less disability in old age," said lead researcher Bryan James, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the epidemiology of aging and dementia in the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center. "The findings are exciting because social activity is potentially a risk factor that can be modified to help older adults avoid the burdens of disability."

The study included 954 older adults with a mean age of 82 who are participating in the Rush Memory and Aging Project, an ongoing longitudinal study of common chronic conditions of aging. At the start of the investigation, none of the participants had any form of disability. They each underwent yearly evaluations that included a medical history and neurological and neuropsychological tests.

Social activity was measured based on a questionnaire that assessed whether, and how often, participants went to restaurants, sporting events or the teletract (off-track betting) or played bingo; went on day trips or overnight trips; did volunteer work; visited relatives or friends; participated in groups such as the Knights of Columbus; or attended religious services.

To assess disability, participants were asked whether they could perform six activities of daily living without help: feeding, bathing, dressing, toileting, transferring and walking across a small room. They were also asked whether they could perform three tasks that require mobility and strength: walking up and down a flight of stairs, walking a half mile and doing heavy housework. Finally, they were asked about their ability to perform what are referred to as "instrumental" activities of daily living, such as using the telephone, preparing meals and managing medications. Difficulties with household management and mobility are more common and represent less severe disability than difficulty with self-care tasks, so the measures represented a range of disability.

Results showed that a person who reported a high level of social activity was about twice as likely to remain free of a disability involving activities of daily living than a person with a low level of social activity, and about 1.5 times as likely to remain free of disability involving instrumental activities of daily living or mobility.

Why social activity plays a role in the development of disability is not clear, James said. Possibly, social activity may reinforce the neural networks and musculoskeletal function required to maintain functional independence.

Future research is needed to determine whether interventions aimed at increasing late-life social activity can play a part in delaying or preventing disability, James said.

Other researchers at Rush involved in the study were Patricia Boyle, PhD, Dr. Aron Buchman and Dr. David Bennett.

Source:
Rush University Medical Center

When I'm Old and Gay

by David Mixner

In the Bible in Palms 71:18 there is a verse that says, "When I am old and gray, do not forsake me..."
The LGBT community is about to lose their tribal leaders, elders and generational history without even a peep. In addition, our collective soul might be scarred for ignoring the plight and needs of those whose sacrifice made it possible for today's generation. Most will never even know or enjoy the rights that they fought so hard for you to celebrate today. They couldn't adopt children, run for office or serve in the military.

Often they were institutionalized or forced to live lives of lies and fear.

The baby boom generation of LGBT citizens is the one that spans our history from the oppressive 50's, to the transitional 60's, the liberating 70's, the plague ridden 80's and the beginning of hope in the 1990's. A good deal of the male population of those times already passed in the prime of their youth from HIV/AIDS. Some of the most remarkable women LGBT leaders came to power in that time. Epic battles and tragic stories are waiting to be recorded and told to future generations.

The LGBT community must acknowledge that this generation of LGBT baby boomers is getting old in a time with few services to meet their needs as LGBT seniors. Often they are in smaller and smaller living units, scraping by with little food, limited access to healthcare and almost no living facilities to share with other senior LGBT citizens. The few gay men that are still alive after the AIDS onslaught have few or no peers to share their senior years since the disease wiped out so many of their friends. Like it or not, what remains from the pandemic is an epidemic of loneliness among our seniors.

Adding to our shame in treatment of our LGBT seniors is the fact that we are losing our history.

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Dating Sites Focus on People With Health Problems - NYTimes.com

Image via WikipediaBy KAREN BARROW

Sherry Nevius, single and 52, is looking for a mate with all the important adjectives — caring, sincere, intelligent, funny. Oh, and one more thing: disabled.

Born with cerebral palsy, Ms. Nevius uses a wheelchair. She is independent and mobile, but would prefer to meet a man who could roll alongside her.

“That way we’re on equal ground,” she said.
Ms. Nevius has dated several perfectly nice able-bodied men, but none seemed willing to start a serious relationship.

“I think they were a little bit scared because they didn’t know how to treat me,” she said. She lives in Normal, Ill., a town with few single men around her age, let alone familiar and comfortable with disability.

“It’s hard enough to find someone with similar interests,” she said. “Finding someone O.K. with your disability just makes it harder.”

So this fall Ms. Nevius took her search online.

Several dating Web sites for singles with health problems have started up in the last few years.
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New York Irish Cast a Web to Help the Elderly - NYTimes.com

Image via CrunchBaseBy KIRK SEMPLE

At the New York Irish Center’s free Wednesday luncheons for the elderly, the memory of Tony Gallagher — and his sad fate — is never far away.

“Oh, terrible!” Margaret Clifford, 74, said with a slight shudder during a recent lunch. “We still talk about it.”
Mr. Gallagher, a carpenter who immigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1970, died alone in his apartment in Sunnyside, Queens, two years ago this month, at age 72. A week passed before his body was discovered by firefighters summoned by the building’s superintendent.

His lonely ending stunned and embarrassed many Irish New Yorkers, and spurred a collective reckoning: How could this have happened, particularly among a seasoned immigrant population known for its cohesiveness and organization?

Now the soul-searching has led to another search: the Gallagher Initiative, an ambitious effort to evaluate the whereabouts, lives and needs of the elderly Irish in New York.

The initiative, which began in October and is expected to take four to six months, will focus at first on the Irish in Queens, but organizers hope eventually to expand it to all five boroughs. A team of researchers, working under the auspices of Elaine M. Walsh, a social worker and a professor of urban affairs at Hunter College, plans to interview at least 400 people, first-, second- and third-generation Irish over the age of 54, about their living situations, social networks, daily routines, hobbies and health.

The questions will “identify for us how the Irish elderly are now coping, what their current needs are and what their needs could be in the future,” Dr. Walsh said.
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TIME GOES BY | Old People Driving - A Documentary

by Ronni Bennett

In a comment on a recent post here, Mage B who blogs at Postcards mentioned that her driver's license has been confiscated because she had lost consciousness.

It is one the greatest fears elders have – to give up driving, losing the freedom and convenience we have experienced all our lives and to become dependent on friends, relatives or public transportation (which isn't all that good in many places) for everything we need or want to do away from home.

A new documentary film titled, Old People Driving, sensitively explores the emotional and psychological aspects of giving up driving. The 35-year-old producer, Shaleece Haas, tells me that her goal is to dispel some of the myths about older drivers,

“but I didn't want to shy away from the fact that most people will outlive their ability to drive - usually by seven to 10 years - and that all of the alternatives to driving pale in comparison.”

According to Shaleece, there are three million drivers older than 85 in the U.S. and most people believe they are a menace on the road. However, Julio Lacayo, who is the older driver ombudsman for the California DMV, tells us in the film, it is a myth that old drivers are the worst drivers.

Although elder drivers have a 16 percent accident risk compared to other adult drivers, he explains in the film, those under age 25 have a 188 percent accident risk. And while teens most often kill others, old drivers are mostly a danger to themselves.

Shaleece's poignant film tells the stories of two elder drivers - Herbert Bauer, age 99 and her grandfather, Milton Cavalli, 96. Here are the three of them.



Milton has been a car buff all his life, starting with his first Model T when he was 14 years old. He still owns three of them and a Saxon too, which he drives with confidence. “Age has nothing to do with it,” says Milton, sounding like me on this blog when he explains how some people are old at 50 while others are still capable at 100.



Herbert, on the other hand, has been planning for what will be his last day behind the wheel of a car, intent on stopping driving “before someone invites me to change,” he says. When asked if he will miss his car, he says, “I plan to.”



Leading up to that final drive, Herbert visits a bicycle shop to try out an adult tricycle. He has broken his hip in the past and has trouble mounting the trike because the seat is too high for him. I was struck by the young sales girl who, standing nearby, is oblivious to Herbert's struggle.

But he doesn't give up and works out a deal with a friend who still drives to trade his car for her tricycle. Shaleece shows us that sometime later, it sits chained to the side of his house unused because, Herbert explains, his left leg has gotten worse.

On the fateful day of his last drive, Herb is careful not to break his perfect record of no accidents in 80 years of driving as he notes that his last left turn is coming up. It is a powerful moment when he removes the car key from his wallet to give to his friend who drives it away as Herb slowly walks into his house.

Nevertheless, Herbert says giving up driving is a triviality compared to giving up someone you've loved all your life, as he did when his wife died. Losing the freedom of a car is “nothing by comparison.”

Both of these men, the oldest of the old, accept the limitations of their age with astonishing equanimity and in Herbert's case, a humor that I hope I will develop should I live as long. “If you have to live by yourself,” says Herbert, “tell yourself you're in good company.”

Here is a short clip from the beginning of the 24-minute film:
You can find out more about Old People Driving here.

Shaleece Haas has made a remarkably beautiful film that everyone – old, young, caregivers - should see. It will premier on Sunday at the Mill Valley Film Festival, will be screened at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival on 16 and 19 October and will be shown too at the National Transportation Safety Board symposium on older drivers in Washington, D.C.

She hopes to it will be broadcast on television soon; DVD copies for personal use may be purchased online for $20.

Men's Group Gets Men Talking - NYTimes.com

Image via CrunchBaseby Paula Span

“What’s on your minds today, gentlemen?” Paul Heron, a social worker, asked the circle of men. That’s the way he convenes most Wednesday afternoon gatherings of the Riverdale Senior Services center’s men’s group.

Joe Asher, at 94 the eldest at this day’s session, had the war in Afghanistan on his mind. “They don’t want us there,” he declared. “Our nation is going bankrupt. I say, cut the cord now. Leave, like we did in Vietnam.”

“Vietnam did not bomb the World Trade Center,” Dave Roskind responded.

And they were off.

The center, housed in a Bronx apartment building, introduced this antidote to isolation two years ago. Women who came here for meals and activities seemed to naturally fall into impromptu discussions, the center’s director, Julia Schwartz-Leeper, had noticed. Men either clung to their wives or, if they arrived solo, sat by themselves.

The men themselves observed that uncommunicative pattern, though they didn’t quite know how to alter it. “The average woman has about six friends,” explained Dr. George Kaufman, one of those attending the Wednesday session. “The average man has one, a wife or girlfriend, and if he loses her, he’s up a creek.”

“Women have a network,” Mr. Asher agreed. “Someone gets on the phone with my wife and they talk for half an hour. Men don’t do that.”
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• Old Guys Need Friends, Too [Circle Of Friends] (jezebel.com)

Being There, Without Leaving Home - The New Old Age Blog - NYTimes.com

Image via CrunchBase

by Paula Span

At the Selfhelp Benjamin Rosenthal Senior Center in Queens, a social worker, Rachel Itzkowitz, is leading the weekly current events class, guiding participants through a series of discussions. What did they think about that shooting at the Mexican border? About higher compensation for first responders injured on Sept. 11? And what about the controversy over building a Muslim community center near the World Trade Center site?

With backing from Microsoft and the city’s Department for the Aging, Selfhelp has created a “virtual senior center” for about a dozen low-income elderly people, with six more scheduled to join the party at the end of the summer.

Even with big touch-screen monitors and an easy-to-use interface (called It’s Never Too Late), it took twice-a-week training for a couple of months before the new users could manage the equipment. Most had never used a computer. One who’d never learned to type found the QWERTY keyboard confusing, so Microsoft substituted one with keys in alphabetical order. The group has taken advantage of adaptations like magnifiers and screen readers that read text aloud.

Bringing older people online proved to be, in other words, a labor-intensive undertaking. But Selfhelp’s vice president for senior communities, Leo Asen, is convinced that the benefits justify it.

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Local celebrities welcome Scottish service for older gays - PinkPaper.com

Image via Wikipedia

One of Scotland’s first services aimed at older gay people has been endorsed by a string of celebrities, describing it as a “service desperately needed”.

LGBT Age will tackle social exclusion and isolation through social, befriending, information and advocacy services, as part of the LGBT Centre for Health and Well-being.

Garry McGregor, LGBT age coordinator, said support for the scheme was “testament” to the need for an age-linked programme.
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Letter - Helping the Rural Elderly - NYTimes.com

Jo Ivey Boufford's Letter to the Editor in the New York Times:

Re “For Rural Elderly, Times Are Distinctly Harder” (front page, Dec. 10):

The daunting challenges facing the rural elderly highlight America’s failure to embrace the overwhelming needs of this rapidly growing population.

A lack of transportation, cuts in home health care services, and the growing desire of many elderly to age in place for as long as possible are just the tip of the iceberg.

Equally important but often overlooked is the risk of social isolation faced by the elderly who live alone, both in rural and urban environments. Seniors who are isolated from family, friends and their communities face the risk of developing mental illness, depression and other diseases of the brain.

Many cities, with encouragement from the World Health Organization, are developing age-friendly initiatives for all seniors, regardless of their location. Specifically, they seek to improve transportation, housing, social inclusion, community support and health services.

Each community has a responsibility to help its seniors age with the resources, community support and dignity they so richly deserve. The costs of doing so are minimal compared with the consequences of treating this population as out of sight, out of mind.

Jo Ivey Boufford

New York, Dec. 11, 2009

The writer, a doctor and president of the New York Academy of Medicine, helped initiate Age-Friendly New York City, a plan by New York City to address the needs of the elderly.