Lifestyle factors like physical activity, diet and sleep can lower the ‘biological age’ of your cells and tissues and reduce age-related physical decline.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in a wheelchair as she returns to the Senate after a more than two-month absence, May 10, 2023.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Physical ailments and deteriorated health may be the one area in which politicians can escape scrutiny.
A core focus of palliative care is on easing symptoms and increasing quality of life for people who have a serious or chronic illness, and not solely for those who are dying.
(Shutterstock)
The challenging realities surrounding end-of-life care are especially difficult for older people experiencing homelessness, who have more barriers to accessing hospice care.
‘Our machines have now been running for 70. or 80. years,’ an old Thomas Jefferson, right, wrote to an even older John Adams, left.
Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Americans have long nurtured mixed feelings about age and aged leaders. Yet during the country’s founding, a young America admired venerable old sages.
Older monkeys still hang out, just with a smaller circle of intimates.
Lauren Brent
Many older people tend to trim their social circles and focus their social efforts on family and close friends. New research on our close primate relatives may help explain why.
COVID-19 is still with us, and is still causing serious illness and death. However, it is disproportionately affecting older people.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
COVID-19 is the third-leading cause of death in Canada, but it’s older people who are dying. That we accept this and carry on as if the pandemic is over reveals our ageism: We don’t value older people.
The number of Americans covered by Medicare is growing.
OR Images/DigitalVision via Getty Images
New research affords a rare window into the circumstances and needs of a potentially very vulnerable group that until now has remained largely invisible: people with dementia who have no close kin.
Healthspan measures incorporate quality of life in ways that lifespan does not.
Ira T. Nicolai/The Image Bank via Getty Images
Aging is a major risk factor for many chronic diseases. Figuring out what influences longevity and how to identify rapid agers could lead to healthier and longer lives for more people.
Epigenetics is but one of many factors that influence aging, health and disease.
bestdesigns/iStock via Getty Images
People don’t all age at the same rate. Untangling the factors that influence health and disease – such as epigenetics, demographics and behavior – could lead to better care for those who need it most.
These boots were made for superhuman balance.
Candler Hobbs, Georgia Institute of Techology
Most Americans know Dianne Feinstein as a US senator. But for voters in San Francisco, she will forever be remembered as the woman who stepped in at a tragic and traumatic moment to lead the city.
Racial and ethnic inequality extends to what researches call ‘disease cost burdens.’
sukanya sitthikongsak/Moment via Getty Images
A study of medical costs and income losses found that those who can least afford to pay for health care and miss out on their paychecks rack up the biggest bills.
People don’t necessarily tell the same stories over and over again because they’re losing cognitive function, but because the stories are important, and they feel we need to know them.
(Shutterstock)
Repeated storytelling from elderly relatives doesn’t necessarily always signal age or cognitive decline. It’s about conveying memories and values to a new generation.
Positive and negative stereotypes about aging have cultural and political implications that determine how societies care for their older generations.
(Shutterstock)
In a 1959 essay, Capote noted how Avedon seemed to capture ‘every hard-earned crow’s foot’ in his subjects – perhaps not realizing that he would one day be photographed by that same unvarnished gaze.
When bonds are forged between generations, both the young and the old benefit.
Maskot/DigitalVision via Getty Images
Social isolation and loneliness in aging adults have been linked to numerous physical and mental health ailments. Teaching students how to listen deeply to older people can lessen those effects.
For workers in long-term care homes, distress due to difficult working conditions is often dismissed as a part of the job description.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
The oldest person in the world, Kane Tanaka of Japan, died in April 2022 at 119 years. The record of Jeanne Calment of France, who died at 122, has stood for almost 25 years. Will it be beaten?
Uncertainty about how long symptoms will last can be tough for women going through hormonal changes that come with menopause. Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear cut time frame.
Professor, Department of Gerontology, McCormack Graduate School Director, Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging, Gerontology Institute, UMass Boston
Senior Scientist Team Lead Nutrition Exercise Physiology and Sarcopenia Team Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, Professor of Medicine, Tufts University