Aging

Today at the American Physiological Society (APS) annual meeting at Experimental Biology 2018 in San Diego a group of scholars posited that low "mental energy" may affect walking patterns in older adults more than physical fatigue.  Researchers from Clarkson University in New York observed a group of older adults (average age 75) while they performed physically and mentally tiring tasks. The volunteers performed the physical task--a timed walking test at normal speed for six minutes--before and after the cognitive components. LED sensors embedded in the five-meter walking track captured…

In dating, at least the online kind, younger people tend to have a hard line on educational matching, but older people feel like that's less important. Traditionally, humans look for certain characteristics and traits in a partner, including symmetry in areas such as: age, aesthetics, attractiveness, personality, culture, education, religion and race. The early days of the Internet showed this extended online, with women lying about weight and posting pictures from when they were younger to get someone interested to where their personality would show, while men lied about height and posted…

Elderly women who sit more than 10 hours a day have accelerated biological aging, according to an epidemiology paper. They have older cells?  It's the increasingly popular shorter telomeres hypothesis. Telomeres are tiny caps found on the ends of DNA strands, like the plastic tips of shoelaces, that protect chromosomes from deterioration. It has been found that they progressively shorten with age, just one of the reasons why we are considered to be biologically programmed to die.  Nearly 1,500 women ages 64 to 95 who are part of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), a national,…

Chemicals found in the blood, biomarkers, can be combined to produce patterns that signify how well a person is aging and his or risk for future aging-related diseases, according to a new study. The biomarker data in Aging Cell article was collected from the blood samples of almost 5,000 participants in the Long Life Family Study, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The researchers found that a large number of people--about half --had an average "signature," or pattern, of 19 biomarkers. But smaller groups of people had specific patterns…

In what will send cheers throughout the parenting community, a new paper suggest that helping care for grandchildren might affect the well-being of older adults. Caregivers' feelings partly depend on their perception of the experience, as well as on how they are treated by their family and by the community.   The researchers looked at information from the "Population Study of Chinese Elderly (PINE)," which examined more than 3,000 Chicago-area Chinese-Americans aged 60 and older between 2011 and 2013. The participants answered questions to screen for depression, anxiety, stress,…

"Could you repeat that?" The reason you may have to say something twice when talking to older family members at Thanksgiving dinner may not be because of their hearing. Researchers at the University of Maryland have determined that something is going on in the brains of typical older adults that causes them to struggle to follow speech amidst background noise, even when their hearing would be considered normal on a clinical assessment. In the study, researchers Samira Anderson, Jonathan Z. Simon, and Alessandro Presacco found that adults aged 61-73 with normal hearing scored significantly…

Some loss of memory is often considered an inevitable part of aging, but new research reveals how some people appear to escape that fate. A study older adults whose memory performance is equivalent to that of younger individuals and finds that certain key areas of their brains resemble those of young people.  The paper in The Journal of Neuroscience is part of a research program aimed at understanding how some older adults retain youthful thinking abilities and the brain circuits that support those abilities. While most older adults experience a gradual decline in memory ability, some…

In a survey of online articles about preventing Alzheimer's disease, research finds that many online resources for preventing Alzheimer's disease are problematic and could be steering people in the wrong direction. There was poor advice and one in five promoted products for sale--a clear conflict of interest, though hucksters like Joe Mercola, D.O., never acknowledge that. Today, 564,000 Canadians are living with dementia but the number is expected to grow to nearly one million in the next 15 years as the population ages. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia but there is a…

A new study increases and strengthens the links that have led some to propose the "transposon theory of aging" centering on the rogue elements of DNA that break free in aging cells and rewrite themselves elsewhere in the genome. They believe this is potentially creating lifespan-shortening chaos in the genetic makeups of tissues. As cells get older, prior studies have shown, tightly wound heterochromatin wrapping that typically imprisons transposons becomes looser, allowing them to slip out of their positions in chromosomes and move to new ones, disrupting normal cell function. Meanwhile,…

This week, an Australian woman delivered a baby at the age of 62 after having in vitro fertilization (IVF) abroad. Few women can naturally conceive a baby later in life without the help of IVF – and these are rarely first pregnancies. These women go through menopause later, and have lower risks of heart disease, osteoporosis and dementia. But does that mean that it’s safe to start a family later in life? Are there other risks and complications associated with pregnancy and childbirth in your 50s and 60s – or even your 40s? Changing demographics A woman’s reproductive capacity has a finite…