For example, Lane’s daughter, nicknamed “Pitsy,” has told him he should learn to work a computer. “I’m doing a lot of things my daughter is telling me,” Lane said. “She’s my mentor. She seems to be doing very well doing the things she’s doing.”
So, Lane decided to take advice about learning the workings of the computer from the younger set — his daughter, a clinical psychologist living in Oregon, is 69 years old.
For his part, Lane is a virtual beginner at learning to use a computer as he approaches, in April, his 95th birthday.
Still, he is determined not to be like some other seniors.
“A lot of older people are scared by change,” he said. “They think, ‘I made it through life this far without it, why do I need to know that now?”
Lane is taking computer lessons from Art Kraus, a retired certified public accountant, and volunteer with the Tri-City Consortium on Aging. For the consortium, Kraus has done many jobs to aid seniors where ever he is needed.
At 68, Kraus gets great delight in teaching Lane the workings of the computer.
“He was born the same year as my father (the late Robert Kraus),” said Kraus, a resident of Winchester Road in Lyndhurst. “And, my father was an electrician, too.”
The electrician work holds significance in that Lane, of Green Road in South Euclid, owned for 25 years, until 1984, an electrical construction business.
Lane never graduated from college, although he did attend classes at John Carroll University to learn more about electronics. He initially learned some things about the subject from his years working as a construction estimator.
In addition to a daughter, Lane is father to Stanley, 66, a bio-chemist in Nashville.
Lane modestly brushed off any suggestion that he could be a very smart man, given that he has two PhD.s as children. Instead, he said, his children’s educational aptitude must come from his late wife, Ruth, who died Oct. 3 after nearly 72 years of marriage.
Lane, today, marvels at the intricacy of the needlepoint works of art Ruth left behind, but admitted, “When I look at them, it brings a mist to my eyes.
“The hardest part about being a widower is the loneliness,” he said. It is because of that loneliness that his daughter suggested he take up computers to meaningfully occupy his time.
“The first thing he needs to do is to get a computer,” Kraus said before explaining to Lane how, if he did make the purchase, lessons could then be practiced on a regular basis at home.
Now, the two meet only every two or three weeks in the computer room at Hawken Lower-Middle School, 5000 Clubside Road in Lyndhurst.
Still, with such little chance at repetition of what has just been learned, Kraus said of Lane, “He’s a great student.”
Kraus then joked, “I never have to discipline him.”
Still spry in mind and body, Lane, a 1933 Shaker Heights High School graduate, would like to see other seniors learn how to use a computer, but knows it’s a hard sell.
“I’m not an advisor to them,” he said, “but I’m with seniors a lot. I tell them they should do it. They just look at me. I know they’re not going to do it.”
Lane, who remembers such things from his just-married days in the 1930s as the cost of a quart of milk (five cents), a newspaper (two cents), and a week’s streetcar pass (75 cents), said learning some new facts could help keep his fellow seniors a little younger.
“When I look at other older people,” he said, “people younger than me, they just look too damn old.”
When told he walks like a much younger man, Lane replied, “You don’t know the pain I feel.”
A former avid chess player — his daughter advised him he should again take up the game now that he is single — Lane said, “I want to learn the computer to communicate, and to play games. I know I won’t learn everything because it’s too intricate for that.”
He looks forward to communicating with his two children, and three grandchildren. Lane is especially eager to learn from Kraus how he can exchange photos with his grandchildren via the computer.
Lane said he will soon take Kraus’ advice and buy a new computer, to which Kraus said he could then go to Lane’s home to teach him.
Because he is actively pursuing his daughter’s advice on computers and chess, Lane was asked if she had given him any more mentor-like advice.
Lane thought for a moment, laughed, and said, “Yes, she told me to stay away from women.” [rc]
Jeff Piorkowski
jpiorkowski@sunnews.com
© 2010 Cleveland Live, Inc.
February 28, 2010
USA: At 95, he feels you're never too old to learn something new
.
CLEVELAND, Ohio / Sun Messenger / February 27, 2010
By Jeff Piorkowski
For example, Lane’s daughter, nicknamed “Pitsy,” has told him he should learn to work a computer. “I’m doing a lot of things my daughter is telling me,” Lane said. “She’s my mentor. She seems to be doing very well doing the things she’s doing.”
So, Lane decided to take advice about learning the workings of the computer from the younger set — his daughter, a clinical psychologist living in Oregon, is 69 years old.
For his part, Lane is a virtual beginner at learning to use a computer as he approaches, in April, his 95th birthday.
Still, he is determined not to be like some other seniors.
“A lot of older people are scared by change,” he said. “They think, ‘I made it through life this far without it, why do I need to know that now?”
Lane is taking computer lessons from Art Kraus, a retired certified public accountant, and volunteer with the Tri-City Consortium on Aging. For the consortium, Kraus has done many jobs to aid seniors where ever he is needed.
At 68, Kraus gets great delight in teaching Lane the workings of the computer.
“He was born the same year as my father (the late Robert Kraus),” said Kraus, a resident of Winchester Road in Lyndhurst. “And, my father was an electrician, too.”
The electrician work holds significance in that Lane, of Green Road in South Euclid, owned for 25 years, until 1984, an electrical construction business.
Lane never graduated from college, although he did attend classes at John Carroll University to learn more about electronics. He initially learned some things about the subject from his years working as a construction estimator.
In addition to a daughter, Lane is father to Stanley, 66, a bio-chemist in Nashville.
Lane modestly brushed off any suggestion that he could be a very smart man, given that he has two PhD.s as children. Instead, he said, his children’s educational aptitude must come from his late wife, Ruth, who died Oct. 3 after nearly 72 years of marriage.
Lane, today, marvels at the intricacy of the needlepoint works of art Ruth left behind, but admitted, “When I look at them, it brings a mist to my eyes.
“The hardest part about being a widower is the loneliness,” he said. It is because of that loneliness that his daughter suggested he take up computers to meaningfully occupy his time.
“The first thing he needs to do is to get a computer,” Kraus said before explaining to Lane how, if he did make the purchase, lessons could then be practiced on a regular basis at home.
Now, the two meet only every two or three weeks in the computer room at Hawken Lower-Middle School, 5000 Clubside Road in Lyndhurst.
Still, with such little chance at repetition of what has just been learned, Kraus said of Lane, “He’s a great student.”
Kraus then joked, “I never have to discipline him.”
Still spry in mind and body, Lane, a 1933 Shaker Heights High School graduate, would like to see other seniors learn how to use a computer, but knows it’s a hard sell.
“I’m not an advisor to them,” he said, “but I’m with seniors a lot. I tell them they should do it. They just look at me. I know they’re not going to do it.”
Lane, who remembers such things from his just-married days in the 1930s as the cost of a quart of milk (five cents), a newspaper (two cents), and a week’s streetcar pass (75 cents), said learning some new facts could help keep his fellow seniors a little younger.
“When I look at other older people,” he said, “people younger than me, they just look too damn old.”
When told he walks like a much younger man, Lane replied, “You don’t know the pain I feel.”
A former avid chess player — his daughter advised him he should again take up the game now that he is single — Lane said, “I want to learn the computer to communicate, and to play games. I know I won’t learn everything because it’s too intricate for that.”
He looks forward to communicating with his two children, and three grandchildren. Lane is especially eager to learn from Kraus how he can exchange photos with his grandchildren via the computer.
Lane said he will soon take Kraus’ advice and buy a new computer, to which Kraus said he could then go to Lane’s home to teach him.
Because he is actively pursuing his daughter’s advice on computers and chess, Lane was asked if she had given him any more mentor-like advice.
Lane thought for a moment, laughed, and said, “Yes, she told me to stay away from women.” [rc]
Jeff Piorkowski
jpiorkowski@sunnews.com
© 2010 Cleveland Live, Inc.
For example, Lane’s daughter, nicknamed “Pitsy,” has told him he should learn to work a computer. “I’m doing a lot of things my daughter is telling me,” Lane said. “She’s my mentor. She seems to be doing very well doing the things she’s doing.”
So, Lane decided to take advice about learning the workings of the computer from the younger set — his daughter, a clinical psychologist living in Oregon, is 69 years old.
For his part, Lane is a virtual beginner at learning to use a computer as he approaches, in April, his 95th birthday.
Still, he is determined not to be like some other seniors.
“A lot of older people are scared by change,” he said. “They think, ‘I made it through life this far without it, why do I need to know that now?”
Lane is taking computer lessons from Art Kraus, a retired certified public accountant, and volunteer with the Tri-City Consortium on Aging. For the consortium, Kraus has done many jobs to aid seniors where ever he is needed.
At 68, Kraus gets great delight in teaching Lane the workings of the computer.
“He was born the same year as my father (the late Robert Kraus),” said Kraus, a resident of Winchester Road in Lyndhurst. “And, my father was an electrician, too.”
The electrician work holds significance in that Lane, of Green Road in South Euclid, owned for 25 years, until 1984, an electrical construction business.
Lane never graduated from college, although he did attend classes at John Carroll University to learn more about electronics. He initially learned some things about the subject from his years working as a construction estimator.
In addition to a daughter, Lane is father to Stanley, 66, a bio-chemist in Nashville.
Lane modestly brushed off any suggestion that he could be a very smart man, given that he has two PhD.s as children. Instead, he said, his children’s educational aptitude must come from his late wife, Ruth, who died Oct. 3 after nearly 72 years of marriage.
Lane, today, marvels at the intricacy of the needlepoint works of art Ruth left behind, but admitted, “When I look at them, it brings a mist to my eyes.
“The hardest part about being a widower is the loneliness,” he said. It is because of that loneliness that his daughter suggested he take up computers to meaningfully occupy his time.
“The first thing he needs to do is to get a computer,” Kraus said before explaining to Lane how, if he did make the purchase, lessons could then be practiced on a regular basis at home.
Now, the two meet only every two or three weeks in the computer room at Hawken Lower-Middle School, 5000 Clubside Road in Lyndhurst.
Still, with such little chance at repetition of what has just been learned, Kraus said of Lane, “He’s a great student.”
Kraus then joked, “I never have to discipline him.”
Still spry in mind and body, Lane, a 1933 Shaker Heights High School graduate, would like to see other seniors learn how to use a computer, but knows it’s a hard sell.
“I’m not an advisor to them,” he said, “but I’m with seniors a lot. I tell them they should do it. They just look at me. I know they’re not going to do it.”
Lane, who remembers such things from his just-married days in the 1930s as the cost of a quart of milk (five cents), a newspaper (two cents), and a week’s streetcar pass (75 cents), said learning some new facts could help keep his fellow seniors a little younger.
“When I look at other older people,” he said, “people younger than me, they just look too damn old.”
When told he walks like a much younger man, Lane replied, “You don’t know the pain I feel.”
A former avid chess player — his daughter advised him he should again take up the game now that he is single — Lane said, “I want to learn the computer to communicate, and to play games. I know I won’t learn everything because it’s too intricate for that.”
He looks forward to communicating with his two children, and three grandchildren. Lane is especially eager to learn from Kraus how he can exchange photos with his grandchildren via the computer.
Lane said he will soon take Kraus’ advice and buy a new computer, to which Kraus said he could then go to Lane’s home to teach him.
Because he is actively pursuing his daughter’s advice on computers and chess, Lane was asked if she had given him any more mentor-like advice.
Lane thought for a moment, laughed, and said, “Yes, she told me to stay away from women.” [rc]
Jeff Piorkowski
jpiorkowski@sunnews.com
© 2010 Cleveland Live, Inc.
February 27, 2010
USA: Finding their voice and that old confidence, too
.
BOSTON, Massachusetts / The Bostone Globe / Health & Fitness / February 27, 2010
With age, vocal cords weaken, but these seniors show how singing can help
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff
Gathered around a piano with 15 other Bostonians of a certain age, Dory Tobias was trying to find her voice.
“Come to your life like a warrior,’’ she sang out, joining in the lilting lyric of the “Song of the Soul’’ with a boldness often lacking when she talks.
Tobias has a soft voice, and she said she is often asked to speak up - requests that fill her with doubt and twist her tongue. Now, in this singing for seniors class, she is learning to breathe deeply to support her voice, open her mouth wider, and warm up - basic singing techniques that she can integrate into her speaking voice, too.
A collaboration between Longy School of Music and the United South End Settlements, the class focuses on ensemble singing and harmony, but also on techniques that can strengthen voices that are naturally changing with age.
“I’m not much worried about being a singer,’’ the 63-year-old Tobias said during a break. “I just want to speak with confidence.’’
Normal aging causes natural changes in the body and mind, from wrinkles to memory loss. The voice also changes, in a phenomenon called presbyphonia. Older voices become quieter, shakier, reedier. Men’s voices tend to get higher; women’s, lower.
Joseph Stemple, professor of communication sciences and disorders at the University of Kentucky College of Health Sciences, said that aging muscles weaken and vocal cords no longer close completely - creating an airiness or breathiness in speech. Each syllable takes a greater portion of breath.
Such changes are usually not considered a problem, and most people don’t seek help from a voice therapist. But for some, a weakened voice can affect their lives, making them feel isolated or less confident - afraid they won’t be heard in dinnertime conversation, or will be unable to read stories aloud to grandchildren. Tobias finds that being asked to repeat what she says makes her feel nervous and wonder, “What did I say wrong?’’
Daniel Kempler, chairman of the communication sciences and disorders department at Emerson College, is studying whether older people’s voices lead to prejudice or stereotyping of the elderly.
“We treat [presbyphonia] when it affects people’s ability to function in the real world,’’ said Kempler, a consultant to the senior singing class Tobias is part of. “The effect is people can’t hear you or people think something’s wrong and they say, ‘Are you OK?’ ’’
Most of Tobias’s classmates aren’t there with the goal of improving their speaking voices - for most it’s about the singing and camaraderie. But any improvement in the students’ voices will be measured through a survey and by comparing how long they can sing “ah’’ at the start and finish of the class.
For instructor Elizabeth Anker, the aging voice has a distinctive sound.
“What I tend to notice with older voices is the range diminishes - the highs come down,’’ Anker said. “I hear voices being left unsupported and more easily fatigued.’’
So Anker starts class by asking her students to clasp their hands over their head and then to bring their hands down, as a preparation for taking deep breaths that comes not from the shoulders but from the diaphragm. They go to the mirror and trill their lips in an exercise that allows them to practice generating deep breaths - and also amuse their grandchildren at home. And they practice ways of projecting sound and breathing.
The class is free, supported by a grant from the MetLife Foundation Creative Aging Program. Most of the people taking the class didn’t sign up because of problems with their voices, even though they have noticed changes as the years have passed.
Rachel Silva, 67, who crooned a silky solo of “Someone to Watch Over Me’’ at a recent class, said she was hoping her voice would crack less.
“People laugh at me all the time,’’ said Silva.
Joycelyn Harewood, returning to the class for a second year, said that the breathing techniques she learned last year helped her in the three church choirs she sings in.
“As you’re singing, you open up your lungs, you can breathe better, and you become healthier,’’ Harewood said. “I’m 68 this year and as far as my voice, it seems to be getting better instead of weaker.’’
Stemple has found that specific vocal therapies can alter vocal aerodynamics in beneficial ways. One study, he said, found that female singers of all ages had better vocal function than people who did not sing.
While research has yet to show that Do-Re-Mi will turn back time for your voice, one good thing about singing as therapy is that people do it anyway, whether in church or the shower.
“The kinds of things that we would do in standard therapy,’’ Kempler said, “can be done in a context of singing songs from your youth or putting on a show.’’[rc]
Carolyn Y. Johnson
E-Mail: cjohnson@globe.com
© Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
USA: Retired teacher offers her views of civil rights
.
CHICAGO, Illinois / The Chicago Sun-Times / Lifestyles / February 27, 2010
'Sometimes I don't like to look back'
A perspective of 110 years
By Maudlyne Ihejirika, Staff Reporter
"I have a scar on my back I got when I was a slave. . . . You got people out there with this scar on their brains. . . ." -- from the 1974 movie "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,'' now on DVD
Throughout this month, we asked Chicagoans and prominent visitors their thoughts on Black History Month. Most said it is still relevant, though many questioned relegating the celebration of a people's history to any specific period.
We close the month with 110-year-old Ethel Darden of Hyde Park, tied with another supercentenarian as Illinois' oldest resident.
Born in Dallas, Texas, on Feb. 17, 1900, to Ella Mary Allen and Charles Boswell, two schoolteachers, she is a pioneering educator who helped establish the city's first private, nonsectarian school for blacks, the Howalton Day School.
Photo of Ethel Darden courtesy CBS
Founded in 1947 by her sister Doris Allen-Anderson and two other women, the school operated until 1986. It was responsible for educating many of Chicago's black elite, including the children of boxer Joe Louis, U.S. Rep. Ralph Metcalfe, historian Timuel Black, Judge R. Eugene Pincham and Mayor Eugene Sawyer.
In 1996, she donated the school's archives to the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library's Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection.
"There were five of us girls. The whole darn family became educators," said Darden, laughing as she smoothed out a brown ruffled dress with her long, slender rhinestone-ringed fingers.
"She's sweet as pie, always full of smiles and laughter," said her caretaker and close friend, Betty Miller. "She still has that southern genteel. Occasionally, she'll ask me, 'Honey, is he colored or white?' "
Darden outlived her siblings and husband, Lloyd Darden, a successful accountant she married in 1942 before the couple moved here. She lives at Montgomery Place, a retirement home staffed by University of Chicago Medical Center physicians.
Her doctor, William Dale, said he's in awe at the health of Darden, who occasionally enjoys a glass of wine.
"She has no diseases, takes no prescriptions and looks decades younger," he gushed. "And while her short-term memory is poor, her long-term memory is very intact."
Darden attended Dallas Colored High School, graduated in 1921 from the historically black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas -- featured in the 2007 movie "The Great Debaters" -- taught 20 years in Dallas schools, then 40 years here.
Here's what she had to say:
"You know, sometimes I don't like to look back. It's hard enough to look front. When I think about the past too much, it knocks me down.
"I came up with Jim Crow. But I didn't let it bother me. I was just living. We didn't have money, anyway, to go places they didn't want us. In the South, we knew where we could go and couldn't. Didn't have to hear them say it. It was written loud and clear, 'Whites Only.' 'For Colored.'
"It was terrible what they did to black folks those days. Lynched them. Burned them. I don't want to talk too much about that.
"Dr. [Martin Luther] King came to our church. My twin sister and I sang a duet for him. I liked him. He wasn't afraid of anybody. Marched up to Washington. He asked our help. We collected money in jars at school. I did march. One time, we put on buttons to protest, marched right downtown and had breakfast. I wasn't scared.
"I honor all those who tried to make it good for us, so we could come downtown and have lunch if we wanted to. The Civil Rights Act was a great day because I felt free at last. That I could walk with my head up, that we were free to go to any school at last. I did feel good.
"Black president? Didn't think so soon, but I felt we'd eventually have a black everything. I don't like to say 'black' history. It's just history.
"I don't know why I lived so long. I never thought of it. Just tried to do my work and treat people the right way. There's a road you have to take, and you take it. It's been a good life. I wouldn't say a 'fine' life, just 'good.' Could have been worse.
"A white man is a white man. Let him be white. A black man is a black man. Let him be black. Just watch the way they treat you as a human being. Treat folks right, and respect them the way God would have you do. Let history take care of itself."
[rc]
© Copyright 2010 Sun-Times Media, LLC
We close the month with 110-year-old Ethel Darden of Hyde Park, tied with another supercentenarian as Illinois' oldest resident.
Born in Dallas, Texas, on Feb. 17, 1900, to Ella Mary Allen and Charles Boswell, two schoolteachers, she is a pioneering educator who helped establish the city's first private, nonsectarian school for blacks, the Howalton Day School.
Photo of Ethel Darden courtesy CBS
Founded in 1947 by her sister Doris Allen-Anderson and two other women, the school operated until 1986. It was responsible for educating many of Chicago's black elite, including the children of boxer Joe Louis, U.S. Rep. Ralph Metcalfe, historian Timuel Black, Judge R. Eugene Pincham and Mayor Eugene Sawyer.
In 1996, she donated the school's archives to the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library's Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection.
"There were five of us girls. The whole darn family became educators," said Darden, laughing as she smoothed out a brown ruffled dress with her long, slender rhinestone-ringed fingers.
"She's sweet as pie, always full of smiles and laughter," said her caretaker and close friend, Betty Miller. "She still has that southern genteel. Occasionally, she'll ask me, 'Honey, is he colored or white?' "
Darden outlived her siblings and husband, Lloyd Darden, a successful accountant she married in 1942 before the couple moved here. She lives at Montgomery Place, a retirement home staffed by University of Chicago Medical Center physicians.
Her doctor, William Dale, said he's in awe at the health of Darden, who occasionally enjoys a glass of wine.
"She has no diseases, takes no prescriptions and looks decades younger," he gushed. "And while her short-term memory is poor, her long-term memory is very intact."
Darden attended Dallas Colored High School, graduated in 1921 from the historically black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas -- featured in the 2007 movie "The Great Debaters" -- taught 20 years in Dallas schools, then 40 years here.
Here's what she had to say:
"You know, sometimes I don't like to look back. It's hard enough to look front. When I think about the past too much, it knocks me down.
"I came up with Jim Crow. But I didn't let it bother me. I was just living. We didn't have money, anyway, to go places they didn't want us. In the South, we knew where we could go and couldn't. Didn't have to hear them say it. It was written loud and clear, 'Whites Only.' 'For Colored.'
"It was terrible what they did to black folks those days. Lynched them. Burned them. I don't want to talk too much about that.
"Dr. [Martin Luther] King came to our church. My twin sister and I sang a duet for him. I liked him. He wasn't afraid of anybody. Marched up to Washington. He asked our help. We collected money in jars at school. I did march. One time, we put on buttons to protest, marched right downtown and had breakfast. I wasn't scared.
"I honor all those who tried to make it good for us, so we could come downtown and have lunch if we wanted to. The Civil Rights Act was a great day because I felt free at last. That I could walk with my head up, that we were free to go to any school at last. I did feel good.
"Black president? Didn't think so soon, but I felt we'd eventually have a black everything. I don't like to say 'black' history. It's just history.
"I don't know why I lived so long. I never thought of it. Just tried to do my work and treat people the right way. There's a road you have to take, and you take it. It's been a good life. I wouldn't say a 'fine' life, just 'good.' Could have been worse.
"A white man is a white man. Let him be white. A black man is a black man. Let him be black. Just watch the way they treat you as a human being. Treat folks right, and respect them the way God would have you do. Let history take care of itself."
[rc]
© Copyright 2010 Sun-Times Media, LLC
CHILE: Death toll rising from 8.8 magnitude Chile quake
.
AUCKLAND, New Zealand / The Timaru Herald / Breaking News / February 27, 2010
A massive magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck south-central Chile early on Saturday, killing at least 64 people, knocking down buildings and triggering a tsunami.
[rc]
© 2010 Fairfax New Zealand Limited
[rc]
© 2010 Fairfax New Zealand Limited
February 26, 2010
USA: 10 Trends in Longevity
.
WASHINGTON, DC / US News & World Report// Money / February 26, 2010
The Best Life
10 Trends in Longevity
By Philip Moeller
The goals of improved health and financial security are to live longer and, presumably, more fulfilling lives. Increases in longevity have certainly been impressive. Not only has 60 become the new 40, but we're well on our way to the day when 80 becomes the new 60. While the victors in the longevity race have many spoils to enjoy, they also have many aches, pains, and other unpleasant reminders of their continued existence. The government pulls together an impressive array of statistical snapshots in its current compendium, "Health, 2009," a 550-page record of the state of the nation's well-being. Here are some of its most compelling findings about the health of an aging America.
[See 10 Ways Baby Boomers Will Reinvent Retirement.]
Life expectancy. Babies will live to average ages of 75 (male) and 80 (female), based on 2006 survey data. For those who reach the age of 65, a man can expect to live until 82, on average, while a woman will live until she's 85. These are averages. Millions of us will live well into our 90s.
Senior power. In 2007, about 12 percent of Americans were 65 or older. By 2050, that will rise to a projected 20 percent—a huge jump in demographic terms. And more of these people will be 75 or older (11 percent) than between the ages of 65 and 74 (9 percent). With the nation's population forecast to be 440 million in 40 years, nearly 90 million of us will be 65 or older.
Financial protection. Social Security and Medicare make a huge difference in the financial security of older Americans. The poverty rate for persons 65 and older in less than 10 percent—the lowest of any large age group and only about half the poverty rate of children under age 18. Still, an additional 25 percent of older people lived near the poverty line. When the recession's financial impact is clearer in a year or two, the picture may get worse, because of rising healthcare costs and the absence of cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) in Social Security benefits. There is no COLA this year because consumer prices did not rise, and no increase is expected next year, either.
Sleeping. Nearly a third of older Americans regularly have trouble getting a good night's sleep (30 percent of men, 34 percent of women). Many take sleeping aids to help—11 percent of men ages 65 and up, and 15 percent of women in that age group.
Depression. People over the age of 60 are less likely to be depressed (4 percent) than other age groups. The rates of depression are 5.5 percent for everyone, including 4.4 percent for males and 6.6 percent for females. Depression rates were highest at 7.3 percent for people 40 to 59 years of age, while the rate was 4.7 percent for the 18-to-39-year-old age group.
Chronic health problems. Persistent ailments are a constant companion for many of us as we age. As of 2007, the most recent data year, 26 percent of people ages 65 to 74 said they had to limit their activities in some way because of a chronic health condition. That compares with 10 percent for persons ages 18 to 64. Activity limitations rose sharply in older age groups, affecting 36 percent of those ages 75 to 84 and 62 percent of persons 85 and older.
Causes of death. More than 2.4 million Americans died in 2006, including nearly 1.8 million persons ages 65 and older. Among this older group, the five leading causes of death were heart disease (29 percent), cancer (22 percent), strokes and other blood-vessel issues in the brain (7 percent), respiratory disease (6 percent), and Alzheimer's disease (4 percent). Over time, Alzheimer's will move toward the top of this list.
Healthcare expenses. Staying alive, let alone healthy, gets increasingly expensive as we age. Impressive longevity gains increase the need to include healthcare costs in your retirement planning. In 2004, average healthcare spending was $10,800 in the 65-to-74-year-old age group, $16,400 for those ages 75 to 84, and $25,700 for people ages 85 and up. Keep in mind that these are averages; you may need to set aside more money based on your personal health needs. In another survey, people who were 65 and older paid about 15 percent of their healthcare expenses out of their own pockets in 2006. That, too, is an average. For those with private health insurance, 21 percent of their health expenses were paid out-of-pocket (that excludes the premiums for the insurance and nonprescription drugs).
Fitness and stress. In our stressed and out-of-shape nation, hypertension, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol are problems that don't go away as we age. Hypertension affects 65 percent of older men and 70 to 80 percent of older women. High blood pressure occurs in 30 to 40 percent of older men and 40 to 55 percent of older women. High cholesterol is found in 10 percent of older men and 19 to 24 percent of older women. Our longevity gains are especially impressive given how poorly we take care of ourselves. Clearly, if you can avoid or minimize these maladies, your odds of reaching 90 or even 100 are substantial.
Weight. In the weight Olympics, we are big winners, too. Among persons ages 65 to 74, upwards of 80 percent of men and 70 percent of women are overweight. The percentages dip, but only a bit, for people ages 75 and up. About a third of older Americans are clinically obese, defined as having body mass indexes above 30. While high blood pressure and cholesterol measurements have improved in recent years, the trend is going the other way in terms of hypertension and obesity.
The Best Life: Contributing editor Philip Moeller writes about the people, ideas and programs that provide "best life" retirement solutions and opportunities. [rc]
Copyright © 2010 U.S.News & World Report LP
The Best Life
10 Trends in Longevity
By Philip Moeller
The goals of improved health and financial security are to live longer and, presumably, more fulfilling lives. Increases in longevity have certainly been impressive. Not only has 60 become the new 40, but we're well on our way to the day when 80 becomes the new 60. While the victors in the longevity race have many spoils to enjoy, they also have many aches, pains, and other unpleasant reminders of their continued existence. The government pulls together an impressive array of statistical snapshots in its current compendium, "Health, 2009," a 550-page record of the state of the nation's well-being. Here are some of its most compelling findings about the health of an aging America.
[See 10 Ways Baby Boomers Will Reinvent Retirement.]
Life expectancy. Babies will live to average ages of 75 (male) and 80 (female), based on 2006 survey data. For those who reach the age of 65, a man can expect to live until 82, on average, while a woman will live until she's 85. These are averages. Millions of us will live well into our 90s.
Senior power. In 2007, about 12 percent of Americans were 65 or older. By 2050, that will rise to a projected 20 percent—a huge jump in demographic terms. And more of these people will be 75 or older (11 percent) than between the ages of 65 and 74 (9 percent). With the nation's population forecast to be 440 million in 40 years, nearly 90 million of us will be 65 or older.
Financial protection. Social Security and Medicare make a huge difference in the financial security of older Americans. The poverty rate for persons 65 and older in less than 10 percent—the lowest of any large age group and only about half the poverty rate of children under age 18. Still, an additional 25 percent of older people lived near the poverty line. When the recession's financial impact is clearer in a year or two, the picture may get worse, because of rising healthcare costs and the absence of cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) in Social Security benefits. There is no COLA this year because consumer prices did not rise, and no increase is expected next year, either.
Sleeping. Nearly a third of older Americans regularly have trouble getting a good night's sleep (30 percent of men, 34 percent of women). Many take sleeping aids to help—11 percent of men ages 65 and up, and 15 percent of women in that age group.
Depression. People over the age of 60 are less likely to be depressed (4 percent) than other age groups. The rates of depression are 5.5 percent for everyone, including 4.4 percent for males and 6.6 percent for females. Depression rates were highest at 7.3 percent for people 40 to 59 years of age, while the rate was 4.7 percent for the 18-to-39-year-old age group.
Chronic health problems. Persistent ailments are a constant companion for many of us as we age. As of 2007, the most recent data year, 26 percent of people ages 65 to 74 said they had to limit their activities in some way because of a chronic health condition. That compares with 10 percent for persons ages 18 to 64. Activity limitations rose sharply in older age groups, affecting 36 percent of those ages 75 to 84 and 62 percent of persons 85 and older.
Causes of death. More than 2.4 million Americans died in 2006, including nearly 1.8 million persons ages 65 and older. Among this older group, the five leading causes of death were heart disease (29 percent), cancer (22 percent), strokes and other blood-vessel issues in the brain (7 percent), respiratory disease (6 percent), and Alzheimer's disease (4 percent). Over time, Alzheimer's will move toward the top of this list.
Healthcare expenses. Staying alive, let alone healthy, gets increasingly expensive as we age. Impressive longevity gains increase the need to include healthcare costs in your retirement planning. In 2004, average healthcare spending was $10,800 in the 65-to-74-year-old age group, $16,400 for those ages 75 to 84, and $25,700 for people ages 85 and up. Keep in mind that these are averages; you may need to set aside more money based on your personal health needs. In another survey, people who were 65 and older paid about 15 percent of their healthcare expenses out of their own pockets in 2006. That, too, is an average. For those with private health insurance, 21 percent of their health expenses were paid out-of-pocket (that excludes the premiums for the insurance and nonprescription drugs).
Fitness and stress. In our stressed and out-of-shape nation, hypertension, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol are problems that don't go away as we age. Hypertension affects 65 percent of older men and 70 to 80 percent of older women. High blood pressure occurs in 30 to 40 percent of older men and 40 to 55 percent of older women. High cholesterol is found in 10 percent of older men and 19 to 24 percent of older women. Our longevity gains are especially impressive given how poorly we take care of ourselves. Clearly, if you can avoid or minimize these maladies, your odds of reaching 90 or even 100 are substantial.
Weight. In the weight Olympics, we are big winners, too. Among persons ages 65 to 74, upwards of 80 percent of men and 70 percent of women are overweight. The percentages dip, but only a bit, for people ages 75 and up. About a third of older Americans are clinically obese, defined as having body mass indexes above 30. While high blood pressure and cholesterol measurements have improved in recent years, the trend is going the other way in terms of hypertension and obesity.
The Best Life: Contributing editor Philip Moeller writes about the people, ideas and programs that provide "best life" retirement solutions and opportunities. [rc]
Copyright © 2010 U.S.News & World Report LP
GREECE: Somebody has to pay
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ASHEVILLE, North Carolina / WORLD Magazine / Money / March 13, 2010 edition
Money
The Greek debt crisis has no easy solution
By Timothy Lamer
The problem with out-of-control government spending is that, at some point, somebody has to pay for it. Governments tend to ignore that fact, but Greece, over the last few weeks, provided a reminder that it cannot be ignored forever. The drama of street protests in Athens and angry remarks from leaders across Europe is largely an exercise in determining who will pay for years of Greek profligacy. Nobody wants to pay, but somebody must.
Associated Press/Photo by Petros Giannakouris
The crisis was brought on by a swelling Greek budget deficit and national debt, which have grown to almost 13 percent and 113 percent of GDP, respectively. These numbers raised the possibility of the Greek government defaulting on its debt. Such a move would shake confidence in the European Union and the euro, and so other EU nations, especially financial leader Germany, demanded budgetary reform.
The Greek government responded by freezing the wages of government workers, raising the Greek retirement age from 61 to 63, and raising some taxes. Thousands of Greek government workers, union workers, and pensioners—the biggest beneficiaries of high levels of government spending—in late February took to the streets to protest the moves.
If the Greek protesters get their way and "austerity" measures are repealed or softened, then someone else will have to pay. Observers have pointed to three options:
• Greek taxpayers: Tax avoidance is a problem in Greece, but decades of low fertility rates have created a bigger problem: Greece has a rapidly aging population. The Greek fertility rate dropped below replacement level (2.1 births per woman) in 1981, hit 1.4 in 1990, and has floundered between 1.25 and 1.4 since then. It will be increasingly difficult for Greek taxpayers to bear the burden of their government's debts, because not enough of them exist.
• Those who hold Greek debt, a majority of whom are non-Greek: The Greek government could default on its debt, and those who took the risk of lending to such a demographic basket case would lose money. But this option concerns the rest of Europe, because several other countries—Spain, Ireland, and Italy among them—are on the verge of a Greek-like collapse. If the EU allows the Greeks to default, then investors will likely flee those other countries. Buyers of Spanish government bonds were beginning to demand higher interest rates last week.
• European taxpayers, especially the Germans. The most likely scenario is a bailout led by the Germans, but such a move is extremely unpopular in Germany. Greece's early retirement age is a big sticking point for Germans, who recently raised their own retirement age from 65 to 67. "The Greeks go onto the streets to protest against the increase of the pension age from 61 to 63," said the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in an editorial. "Does that mean that the Germans should in the future extend the working age from 67 to 69, so that the Greeks can enjoy their retirement?"
Greek politicians, dismayed by such comments, said the Germans, because of the sins of their grandfathers during World War II, owe at least patience to Greece, if not a bailout: "They took away the Greek gold that was at the Bank of Greece, they took away the Greek money and they never gave it back," Greek Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos told the BBC on Feb. 24. "This is an issue that has to be faced sometime in the future."
As friction between the two nations grows, the next big date to watch for is March 16. That's the deadline EU finance ministers have given for Greece to show progress in bringing its budget under control. If Greece doesn't do so, then the EU may dictate specific reforms.
The really bad news in all of this is that Japan, the United States, and the rest of Europe—all with low fertility rates and big government debts—will soon face their own versions of this Greek tragedy. And somebody will have to pay.
[rc]
Copyright © 2010 WORLD Magazine
The problem with out-of-control government spending is that, at some point, somebody has to pay for it. Governments tend to ignore that fact, but Greece, over the last few weeks, provided a reminder that it cannot be ignored forever. The drama of street protests in Athens and angry remarks from leaders across Europe is largely an exercise in determining who will pay for years of Greek profligacy. Nobody wants to pay, but somebody must.
Associated Press/Photo by Petros Giannakouris
The crisis was brought on by a swelling Greek budget deficit and national debt, which have grown to almost 13 percent and 113 percent of GDP, respectively. These numbers raised the possibility of the Greek government defaulting on its debt. Such a move would shake confidence in the European Union and the euro, and so other EU nations, especially financial leader Germany, demanded budgetary reform.
The Greek government responded by freezing the wages of government workers, raising the Greek retirement age from 61 to 63, and raising some taxes. Thousands of Greek government workers, union workers, and pensioners—the biggest beneficiaries of high levels of government spending—in late February took to the streets to protest the moves.
If the Greek protesters get their way and "austerity" measures are repealed or softened, then someone else will have to pay. Observers have pointed to three options:
• Greek taxpayers: Tax avoidance is a problem in Greece, but decades of low fertility rates have created a bigger problem: Greece has a rapidly aging population. The Greek fertility rate dropped below replacement level (2.1 births per woman) in 1981, hit 1.4 in 1990, and has floundered between 1.25 and 1.4 since then. It will be increasingly difficult for Greek taxpayers to bear the burden of their government's debts, because not enough of them exist.
• Those who hold Greek debt, a majority of whom are non-Greek: The Greek government could default on its debt, and those who took the risk of lending to such a demographic basket case would lose money. But this option concerns the rest of Europe, because several other countries—Spain, Ireland, and Italy among them—are on the verge of a Greek-like collapse. If the EU allows the Greeks to default, then investors will likely flee those other countries. Buyers of Spanish government bonds were beginning to demand higher interest rates last week.
• European taxpayers, especially the Germans. The most likely scenario is a bailout led by the Germans, but such a move is extremely unpopular in Germany. Greece's early retirement age is a big sticking point for Germans, who recently raised their own retirement age from 65 to 67. "The Greeks go onto the streets to protest against the increase of the pension age from 61 to 63," said the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in an editorial. "Does that mean that the Germans should in the future extend the working age from 67 to 69, so that the Greeks can enjoy their retirement?"
Greek politicians, dismayed by such comments, said the Germans, because of the sins of their grandfathers during World War II, owe at least patience to Greece, if not a bailout: "They took away the Greek gold that was at the Bank of Greece, they took away the Greek money and they never gave it back," Greek Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos told the BBC on Feb. 24. "This is an issue that has to be faced sometime in the future."
As friction between the two nations grows, the next big date to watch for is March 16. That's the deadline EU finance ministers have given for Greece to show progress in bringing its budget under control. If Greece doesn't do so, then the EU may dictate specific reforms.
The really bad news in all of this is that Japan, the United States, and the rest of Europe—all with low fertility rates and big government debts—will soon face their own versions of this Greek tragedy. And somebody will have to pay.
[rc]
Copyright © 2010 WORLD Magazine
IRELAND: Why our kids will reach the ripe old age of . . . 150
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DUBLIN, Ireland / Irish Independent / Health / Fitness / February 26, 2010
Ed Power on the new technology that is making us live longer
By Ed Power
Spare a thought for Ireland's post-millennium generation. As adults, they will be saddled with the mother of all national debts. Climate change will probably have reached disaster movie proportions by the time they hit middle age. They will grow up traumatised by childhood memories of Jedward.
GROWING APART: Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as lovers in Benjamin Button, one getting younger, the other getting older
Still, there is one glimmer of sunshine amid the gloom -- according to experts, those born in Ireland in the year 2010 have a realistic chance of reaching the grand old age of... 150. The infants of today, it is claimed, may well live up to 70 years longer than current average life-spans as science pushes back the boundaries of human life.
The idea of old age stretching far past 100 sounds like something from a science fiction movie. However, scientists say ongoing medical breakthroughs promise to completely redefine our idea of what it is to be elderly. In an article published in medical journal The Lancet several months ago, the Danish Aging Research Centre said that, as a consequence of rising living standards, there is a realistic likelihood most Westerners born since 2000 will make it to age 100 at least (so long as rising obesity problems across the US and Europe are kept in check).
"Very long lives are not the distant privilege of remote future generations," wrote one of the authors of the study, Kaare Christensen. "Very long lives are the probable destiny of most people alive now in developed countries."
In addition to benefiting from higher living standards, many specific new developments have the potential to make the ripe old age of 150 a realistic goal.
Firstly, the medical community is taking huge steps forward in the field of prosthetics. A few decades hence, a non-functioning body part or organ will not longer be necessarily a threat to one's life.
In particular, the science of bone prosthetics is advancing rapidly, raising the possibility that future generations of old people may be spared arthritis, aching joints and impaired mobility.
Rather than having to rely on a walking stick or wheelchair, they will be able to simply book into a bone prosthetics clinic and come out all spruced up and nimble.
Similar breakthroughs will mean deafness and blindness are no longer an issue as we creep into our 80s and 90s. Artificial lenses will make eye-replacement surgery feasible and progression in laser technology means deterioration in vision can be halted and reversed.
"The good news is people will generally be functioning well -- it's more like they're postponing their aging process," said the Danish team.
At a cellular level, meanwhile, researchers are along the road of being able to grow and harvest body tissue by turning on and off genetic triggers in stem cells. They have already achieved this in mice, growing new skin cells from modified stem cells. Should advancements proceed at the present rate, "organ farms" may be only a few decades away.
Furthermore, experts increasingly believe that, by cutting back on our food intake, we could extend our life-span. In Boston, nutritionists have produced evidence that lowering your calorie intake by 25pc might help you live longer.
"I feel better and lighter and healthier," said one of the participants in the study. "But if it could help you live longer, that would be pretty amazing."
At first glance, the idea that eating less could help you carry on longer sounds counter-intuitive. However, experiments on lab rats showed that those whose diets were restricted lived 50pc longer.
More interestingly, work with rhesus monkeys indicates that, by cutting back on calories, we are less susceptible to disease. Monkeys on a restricted diet suffered a much lower incidence of diabetes, heart and brain disease and cancer.
Most intriguing of all is our deepening understanding of the process of aging itself. While factors such as smoking, stress and our level of regular exercise all have a bearing on the rate at which we grow older, geneticists have now uncovered a genetic link to cellular aging.
Studies of human chromosomes have revealed that, at either end of the DNA strands contained in every cell, are protective caps called telomeres. Each time a cell dies and replicates itself, these caps shorten -- the analogy offered by scientists is of plastic tips fraying at the end of shoelaces.
As telomeres grow shorter, the evidence is that we become more vulnerable to age-related ailments such as heart disease and certain kinds of cancer. If researchers can find a way to stop this decline, humanity may have arrived at a way to turn 'off' the aging process.
For kids today, aging may eventually be something you can halt or even reverse. Mind you, they'll still have to overcome those childhood memories of Jedward. [rc]
- Ed Power
Irish Independent
©Independent.ie
GROWING APART: Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as lovers in Benjamin Button, one getting younger, the other getting older
Still, there is one glimmer of sunshine amid the gloom -- according to experts, those born in Ireland in the year 2010 have a realistic chance of reaching the grand old age of... 150. The infants of today, it is claimed, may well live up to 70 years longer than current average life-spans as science pushes back the boundaries of human life.
The idea of old age stretching far past 100 sounds like something from a science fiction movie. However, scientists say ongoing medical breakthroughs promise to completely redefine our idea of what it is to be elderly. In an article published in medical journal The Lancet several months ago, the Danish Aging Research Centre said that, as a consequence of rising living standards, there is a realistic likelihood most Westerners born since 2000 will make it to age 100 at least (so long as rising obesity problems across the US and Europe are kept in check).
"Very long lives are not the distant privilege of remote future generations," wrote one of the authors of the study, Kaare Christensen. "Very long lives are the probable destiny of most people alive now in developed countries."
In addition to benefiting from higher living standards, many specific new developments have the potential to make the ripe old age of 150 a realistic goal.
Firstly, the medical community is taking huge steps forward in the field of prosthetics. A few decades hence, a non-functioning body part or organ will not longer be necessarily a threat to one's life.
In particular, the science of bone prosthetics is advancing rapidly, raising the possibility that future generations of old people may be spared arthritis, aching joints and impaired mobility.
Rather than having to rely on a walking stick or wheelchair, they will be able to simply book into a bone prosthetics clinic and come out all spruced up and nimble.
Similar breakthroughs will mean deafness and blindness are no longer an issue as we creep into our 80s and 90s. Artificial lenses will make eye-replacement surgery feasible and progression in laser technology means deterioration in vision can be halted and reversed.
"The good news is people will generally be functioning well -- it's more like they're postponing their aging process," said the Danish team.
At a cellular level, meanwhile, researchers are along the road of being able to grow and harvest body tissue by turning on and off genetic triggers in stem cells. They have already achieved this in mice, growing new skin cells from modified stem cells. Should advancements proceed at the present rate, "organ farms" may be only a few decades away.
Furthermore, experts increasingly believe that, by cutting back on our food intake, we could extend our life-span. In Boston, nutritionists have produced evidence that lowering your calorie intake by 25pc might help you live longer.
"I feel better and lighter and healthier," said one of the participants in the study. "But if it could help you live longer, that would be pretty amazing."
At first glance, the idea that eating less could help you carry on longer sounds counter-intuitive. However, experiments on lab rats showed that those whose diets were restricted lived 50pc longer.
More interestingly, work with rhesus monkeys indicates that, by cutting back on calories, we are less susceptible to disease. Monkeys on a restricted diet suffered a much lower incidence of diabetes, heart and brain disease and cancer.
Most intriguing of all is our deepening understanding of the process of aging itself. While factors such as smoking, stress and our level of regular exercise all have a bearing on the rate at which we grow older, geneticists have now uncovered a genetic link to cellular aging.
Studies of human chromosomes have revealed that, at either end of the DNA strands contained in every cell, are protective caps called telomeres. Each time a cell dies and replicates itself, these caps shorten -- the analogy offered by scientists is of plastic tips fraying at the end of shoelaces.
As telomeres grow shorter, the evidence is that we become more vulnerable to age-related ailments such as heart disease and certain kinds of cancer. If researchers can find a way to stop this decline, humanity may have arrived at a way to turn 'off' the aging process.
For kids today, aging may eventually be something you can halt or even reverse. Mind you, they'll still have to overcome those childhood memories of Jedward. [rc]
- Ed Power
Irish Independent
©Independent.ie
February 25, 2010
USA: Catch 55 - The Beauty Dilemma Facing Modern Women
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NEW YORK, NY / TheWomenOnTheWeb / Relationships / February 25, 2010
A Friend Stopped By
A model-turned-psychotherapist on a universal midlife quandary.
By Dr. Vivian Diller
Marlene, a woman in her 50s, walked into my office with a problem that has become increasingly common these days. The picture of success, she’s a married mother of two, managing a healthy balance between her family and the demands of her work. But the only thing on her mind was the "work" she was thinking of doing on her face. After consulting with a cosmetic surgeon, she was having difficulty sleeping.
Editor’s Note: Dr. Vivian Diller is the author, with Jill Muir-Sukenick, of Face It: What Women Really Feel As Their Looks Change.
It took only a little bit of prompting to get Marlene to move from advice for insomnia to debating which part of her face she should lift. Soon, she was talking about her deeper concerns. "I’m worried about becoming invisible," she explained. Unless she did something radical, she went on, she was afraid she would lose everything; her power, her career, even her husband. "I’m embarrassed that I have angst about this issue at all — and, worse, that I’m contemplating such radical solutions to relieve it," Marlene confessed. I responded by welcoming her to the "beauty paradox" faced by millions of women who feel pulled in different directions as they try to come to terms with their aging appearance.
I believe that women today have lost their equilibrium, and are eager to find a path that will steady them as they age. The first step is to be aware of the paradox in which we live, and think more carefully about how to deal with it. This is not to say that beauty does or does not matter. I’m not anti-surgery, anti-potions or peels or anything else that allows women to feel better about themselves. What I am against is thoughtless, pressured, anxious reactions to what is a natural process. The goal is for women, who have broken through in so many arenas, to make these decisions with a calm, clear head and realistic expectations.
Getting older was never a walk in the park, but it is particularly frightful to a generation who planned to stay "forever young." Once an appealing notion, those words have become a mandatory mantra. We are strong, smart and vital women who have been given the gift of time. Let’s not waste it trying to stop the inevitable. [rc]
© 2010 The Women on the Net Inc
Marlene, a woman in her 50s, walked into my office with a problem that has become increasingly common these days. The picture of success, she’s a married mother of two, managing a healthy balance between her family and the demands of her work. But the only thing on her mind was the "work" she was thinking of doing on her face. After consulting with a cosmetic surgeon, she was having difficulty sleeping.
Editor’s Note: Dr. Vivian Diller is the author, with Jill Muir-Sukenick, of Face It: What Women Really Feel As Their Looks Change.
It took only a little bit of prompting to get Marlene to move from advice for insomnia to debating which part of her face she should lift. Soon, she was talking about her deeper concerns. "I’m worried about becoming invisible," she explained. Unless she did something radical, she went on, she was afraid she would lose everything; her power, her career, even her husband. "I’m embarrassed that I have angst about this issue at all — and, worse, that I’m contemplating such radical solutions to relieve it," Marlene confessed. I responded by welcoming her to the "beauty paradox" faced by millions of women who feel pulled in different directions as they try to come to terms with their aging appearance.
We are supposed to be true to ourselves, and now we're being told not to look our age. It's a Catch 22 -- or as we call it, Catch 55.I understood Marlene’s discomfort, both personally and professionally. Because I was a model before becoming a psychotherapist, I knew all too well what it meant to anticipate being pushed aside by the next one in line. (And I learned all this at 22!) At the end of my modeling career, as I began graduate school, I learned how to balance my investment in youthful beauty with other, more sustainable aspects of myself. And, as I got older, making that shift many times more, I realized that most women face that transition at some point in their lives when their looks inevitably change. An entire generation — Marlene and myself included — is in the midst of a dilemma that needs to be resolved. Over time, I took Marlene through the six steps described in the book I wrote with another model-turned-therapist. This struggle, I explained, starts with surface concerns that are at the heart of a woman’s identity. After all, for millions of years, our value and self-worth relied largely on our ability to attract men, find a mate and procreate. Women aged — and looked their age — and that was that. It wasn’t until the dawn of full-fledged feminism that a wealth of other options became available. Our worth became less about being "Mrs. Someone" and more about making someone of ourselves. Beauty would no longer determine our future prospects. Now, things have shifted once more. We continue to live increasingly longer lives. We expect to be admired for our accomplishments and empowered by our years of experience. But we did not expect to feel anxious and depressed the moment those years showed up on our face. Today, smart, savvy women are perplexed. We are supposed to be true to ourselves, and now we’re being told not to look our age. It’s a Catch 22 — or as we call it, Catch 55. The message? If we are to enjoy our ever-expanding lives, we are to use every tool available to defy our age. The mixed messages are coming at us not only from magazines, movies and advertisements. They also come from our equally confounded contemporaries, who flaunt their feminism only to appear suddenly and mysteriously "rested." And from our loved ones, who give us a year’s supply of Botox as a gift on Valentine’s Day. Surely they know aging is the gift that keeps on giving. Surely we know that the younger we try to look, the less beautiful we feel. Are we back to square one?
We are supposed to be true to ourselves, and now we're being told not to look our age. It's a Catch 22 -- or as we call it, Catch 55.
I believe that women today have lost their equilibrium, and are eager to find a path that will steady them as they age. The first step is to be aware of the paradox in which we live, and think more carefully about how to deal with it. This is not to say that beauty does or does not matter. I’m not anti-surgery, anti-potions or peels or anything else that allows women to feel better about themselves. What I am against is thoughtless, pressured, anxious reactions to what is a natural process. The goal is for women, who have broken through in so many arenas, to make these decisions with a calm, clear head and realistic expectations.
Getting older was never a walk in the park, but it is particularly frightful to a generation who planned to stay "forever young." Once an appealing notion, those words have become a mandatory mantra. We are strong, smart and vital women who have been given the gift of time. Let’s not waste it trying to stop the inevitable. [rc]
© 2010 The Women on the Net Inc
USA: Evidence of benefits of high BP drugs in diabetic eye disease
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ROCKVILLE, Maryland / Science Daily / February 25, 2010
Scientists in Massachusetts are reporting new evidence that certain high blood pressure drugs may be useful in preventing and treating diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of vision loss in people with diabetes. The study, the largest to date on proteins in the retina, could lead to new ways to prevent or treat the sight-threatening disease, they say.
The largest study to date of proteins in the retina, above, indicates that high blood pressure drugs may be useful in preventing diabetic eye disease.
Credit:
Wikimedia Commons, Danny Hope
The findings are in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Proteome Research, a monthly publication.
Edward Feener and colleagues point out that diabetic retinopathy is a common complication of diabetes, which affects millions of people worldwide. It involves damage to blood vessels in the retina, the light sensitive tissue in the back of the eye. Previous studies suggested that drugs used to treat high blood pressure, including ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), may help prevent the condition.
The scientists analyzed proteins from the retinas laboratory mice with normal blood pressure and diabetes and compared them to those of non-diabetic mice. They identified 65 abnormal proteins in the diabetic mice out of more than 1,700 proteins in the study. Treatment with the ARB medication, candesartan, prevented the abnormal changes in more than 70 percent of the proteins. [rc]
Source: American Chemical Society
Journal Reference:
Gao et al. Angiotensin AT1 Receptor Antagonism Ameliorates Murine Retinal Proteome Changes Induced by Diabetes. Journal of Proteome Research, 2009; 8 (12): 5541 DOI: 10.1021/pr9006415
Copyright © 1995-2009 ScienceDaily LLC
The largest study to date of proteins in the retina, above, indicates that high blood pressure drugs may be useful in preventing diabetic eye disease.
Credit:
Wikimedia Commons, Danny Hope
The findings are in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Proteome Research, a monthly publication.
Edward Feener and colleagues point out that diabetic retinopathy is a common complication of diabetes, which affects millions of people worldwide. It involves damage to blood vessels in the retina, the light sensitive tissue in the back of the eye. Previous studies suggested that drugs used to treat high blood pressure, including ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), may help prevent the condition.
The scientists analyzed proteins from the retinas laboratory mice with normal blood pressure and diabetes and compared them to those of non-diabetic mice. They identified 65 abnormal proteins in the diabetic mice out of more than 1,700 proteins in the study. Treatment with the ARB medication, candesartan, prevented the abnormal changes in more than 70 percent of the proteins. [rc]
Source: American Chemical Society
Journal Reference:
Gao et al. Angiotensin AT1 Receptor Antagonism Ameliorates Murine Retinal Proteome Changes Induced by Diabetes. Journal of Proteome Research, 2009; 8 (12): 5541 DOI: 10.1021/pr9006415
Copyright © 1995-2009 ScienceDaily LLC
JAPAN: "Most men don't want to grow up. I certainly don't!"
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TOKYO, Japan / The Japan Times / Life in Japan / February 25, 2010
WORDS TO LIVE BY
Albion Art President Kazumi Arikawa
By Judit Kawaguchi
Kazumi Arikawa, 57, is the president of the Albion Art Co. Ltd. in Tokyo. Arikawa is one of the world's top dealers and collectors of historical jewelry, from the Greco-Roman era to the Art Deco period. He specializes in tiaras and cameos of European monarchs, and jewels that adorned historical figures. The cameo that Napoleon I carried with him to his exile on the island of St. Helena in 1815, and the Diadem of Princess Marie Bonaparte, created by Cartier, are just the type of pieces that Arikawa falls in love with. And once that happens, he doesn't rest until he gets his hands on them. His formidable collection is frequently on display in museums around the world. In 2007 he was the biggest lender of jewels for the "Brilliant Europe: Jewels from European Courts" exhibition in Brussels, preceding even the Louvre Museum in Paris. And this January, he is again the top lender for the "Pearls" exhibition at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. For his contribution to preserving jewelry by historic French houses, such as Chaumet, Boucheron, Cartier, Mauboussin and Mellerio, in March 2007 he received the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Ministry of Culture.
Albion Art President Kazumi Arikawa Judit Kawaguchi Photo
I am not important. Who cares about who sold the Mona Lisa to whom! We care about the Mona Lisa. Same with me: I'm a nobody, but the jewels I love are treasures.
Humans yearn to become jewels. Any kind of substance has a tendency to transform itself into a more stable form. Crystallization, which jewels have acquired, is the final and ultimate form of stability. I think that's exactly what humans desire, too. I certainly do! That's why everyone loves gemstones. We see them and feel, "Yes, they've achieved perfection!" And here we are, still full of impurities while our DNA is pushing us into a more sophisticated and brilliant form.
When you begin to see people as money, it's time to study Buddhism. I was in my early 20s and was running a juku (cram school). The money was rolling in but one day I noticed that I began to see students as nothing else but walking bags of money. I was shocked. "OK, I became a monster," I thought. I sold the business and decided to become a monk. For two years I did nothing but Zen meditation. I didn't even see my family, just studied Buddhism. After two years, I felt that I could be a decent person and returned to society. Even today, I meditate every day.
Beauty is not something to understand but something to feel on your skin. When I visit museums, I glance around and whatever grabs me, I gravitate to it, like a magnet. I never look at explanations, and I don't care about prestige or fame. Is my heart shaken by it? I only listen to my sense, not to critics.
If you know and love your own culture, you can be open to others. I'm an expert in Japanese art. That gives me confidence in myself, and my country, so I can go anywhere in the world and appreciate the beauty they have developed there.
One meeting can change the course of one's life. I lost my father when I was 10 years old. After that, my mother was working hard every single day, selling jewelry from door to door. Still, I did not think of becoming involved with her business. But after I quit my monk training, I traveled to London. That's where I had my great rendezvous with a piece of antique jewelry at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I was transformed.
To sharpen up your sense of beauty, you must look for quality. Inferior art or poor-quality rubies won't provide you with much sense of beauty even if you see thousands of them. But one fine ruby with the highest quality will.
Only the crazies make it big. I was just a small dealer when I saw a tiara made by the famous jeweler Faberge. I fell in love immediately, but I really didn't have the funds to purchase it. Still, I didn't give up but scraped the funds together, which were substantial, about half of the value of my entire my collection at that time. I just had to have that tiara and it is a good thing I bought it because today only four Faberge tiaras exist in the world. I made it and since then I collect whatever I love, without thinking of the price. I'm a fool but luckily there are other fools out there, too!
When you see the real thing, grab it, because there'll never be a second chance. Jewels or people, it's the same. I met the violinist Shinichi Suzuki (founder of the Suzuki method) one day. He was already in his late 90s then. I never played any instrument but this man had such charisma that I had to be near him. That night I went home, packed up my family and we moved to Nagano where Suzuki was teaching. My wife and daughters took lessons but I just hung out with him as much as I could. It's not the technique or music that we got from him, but the feeling for beauty in everything.
Most men don't want to grow up. I certainly don't! But since girls mature into wonderful women, we don't have to.
It's not enough to clean the toilet; you have to do it until it shines like a jewel. I was in a Zen temple for two years in my 20s. We would clean the temple every morning until the floors were like mirrors. It felt good. Zen teaches you to do your task completely well. All tasks. When I clean the toilet in the mornings, I really polish it. It is like a jewel for our everyday life, so let is shine!
Beauty is our last salvation. Our water is polluted, the woods are lost, the Earth is warming. All we have left is our ability to focus on beauty. I see a bento box and am impressed. Beauty is literally all over us, so focus on it. [rc]
Judit Kawaguchi loves to listen. She is a volunteer counselor and a TV reporter on NHK's "Out & About." Learn more at: http://juditfan.blog58.fc2.com/
(C) The Japan Times
Kazumi Arikawa, 57, is the president of the Albion Art Co. Ltd. in Tokyo. Arikawa is one of the world's top dealers and collectors of historical jewelry, from the Greco-Roman era to the Art Deco period. He specializes in tiaras and cameos of European monarchs, and jewels that adorned historical figures. The cameo that Napoleon I carried with him to his exile on the island of St. Helena in 1815, and the Diadem of Princess Marie Bonaparte, created by Cartier, are just the type of pieces that Arikawa falls in love with. And once that happens, he doesn't rest until he gets his hands on them. His formidable collection is frequently on display in museums around the world. In 2007 he was the biggest lender of jewels for the "Brilliant Europe: Jewels from European Courts" exhibition in Brussels, preceding even the Louvre Museum in Paris. And this January, he is again the top lender for the "Pearls" exhibition at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. For his contribution to preserving jewelry by historic French houses, such as Chaumet, Boucheron, Cartier, Mauboussin and Mellerio, in March 2007 he received the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Ministry of Culture.
Albion Art President Kazumi Arikawa Judit Kawaguchi Photo
I am not important. Who cares about who sold the Mona Lisa to whom! We care about the Mona Lisa. Same with me: I'm a nobody, but the jewels I love are treasures.
Humans yearn to become jewels. Any kind of substance has a tendency to transform itself into a more stable form. Crystallization, which jewels have acquired, is the final and ultimate form of stability. I think that's exactly what humans desire, too. I certainly do! That's why everyone loves gemstones. We see them and feel, "Yes, they've achieved perfection!" And here we are, still full of impurities while our DNA is pushing us into a more sophisticated and brilliant form.
When you begin to see people as money, it's time to study Buddhism. I was in my early 20s and was running a juku (cram school). The money was rolling in but one day I noticed that I began to see students as nothing else but walking bags of money. I was shocked. "OK, I became a monster," I thought. I sold the business and decided to become a monk. For two years I did nothing but Zen meditation. I didn't even see my family, just studied Buddhism. After two years, I felt that I could be a decent person and returned to society. Even today, I meditate every day.
Beauty is not something to understand but something to feel on your skin. When I visit museums, I glance around and whatever grabs me, I gravitate to it, like a magnet. I never look at explanations, and I don't care about prestige or fame. Is my heart shaken by it? I only listen to my sense, not to critics.
If you know and love your own culture, you can be open to others. I'm an expert in Japanese art. That gives me confidence in myself, and my country, so I can go anywhere in the world and appreciate the beauty they have developed there.
One meeting can change the course of one's life. I lost my father when I was 10 years old. After that, my mother was working hard every single day, selling jewelry from door to door. Still, I did not think of becoming involved with her business. But after I quit my monk training, I traveled to London. That's where I had my great rendezvous with a piece of antique jewelry at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I was transformed.
To sharpen up your sense of beauty, you must look for quality. Inferior art or poor-quality rubies won't provide you with much sense of beauty even if you see thousands of them. But one fine ruby with the highest quality will.
Only the crazies make it big. I was just a small dealer when I saw a tiara made by the famous jeweler Faberge. I fell in love immediately, but I really didn't have the funds to purchase it. Still, I didn't give up but scraped the funds together, which were substantial, about half of the value of my entire my collection at that time. I just had to have that tiara and it is a good thing I bought it because today only four Faberge tiaras exist in the world. I made it and since then I collect whatever I love, without thinking of the price. I'm a fool but luckily there are other fools out there, too!
When you see the real thing, grab it, because there'll never be a second chance. Jewels or people, it's the same. I met the violinist Shinichi Suzuki (founder of the Suzuki method) one day. He was already in his late 90s then. I never played any instrument but this man had such charisma that I had to be near him. That night I went home, packed up my family and we moved to Nagano where Suzuki was teaching. My wife and daughters took lessons but I just hung out with him as much as I could. It's not the technique or music that we got from him, but the feeling for beauty in everything.
Most men don't want to grow up. I certainly don't! But since girls mature into wonderful women, we don't have to.
It's not enough to clean the toilet; you have to do it until it shines like a jewel. I was in a Zen temple for two years in my 20s. We would clean the temple every morning until the floors were like mirrors. It felt good. Zen teaches you to do your task completely well. All tasks. When I clean the toilet in the mornings, I really polish it. It is like a jewel for our everyday life, so let is shine!
Beauty is our last salvation. Our water is polluted, the woods are lost, the Earth is warming. All we have left is our ability to focus on beauty. I see a bento box and am impressed. Beauty is literally all over us, so focus on it. [rc]
Judit Kawaguchi loves to listen. She is a volunteer counselor and a TV reporter on NHK's "Out & About." Learn more at: http://juditfan.blog58.fc2.com/
(C) The Japan Times
JAPAN: Macrobiotic master extols joys of cooking
.
TOKYO, Japan / The Japan Times / Life in Japan / Lifestyle /February 25, 2010
By Tomoko Otake, Staff writer
At age 51, Madonna still has a fantastic physique, and she has Chef Mayumi Nishimura to thank in part for that.
Macrobiotics, a diet and lifestyle regimen aimed at longer, healthier living, has enjoyed a boom in recent years due to some high-profile celebrity fans. Along with Madonna, actors Tom Cruise and Gwyneth Paltrow are among those thought to be keen on the diet, whose basic principles include eating whole grains, locally-grown organic vegetables, natural seasonings and food without artificial additives.
Act locally: Chef Mayumi Nishimura, who promotes eating a macrobiotic diet consisting of organic and locally grown foods, sits down to one of her creations. Yoshiaki Miura Photo
Nishimura is undoubtedly a leader of the macrobiotic lifestyle, having served as Madonna's private chef for seven years through the end of 2007. She even lived with the singer's family in London and accompanied her on wordwide tours.
Now back home in Japan, 53-year-old Nishimura hopes to promote a more relaxed, contemporary style of macrobiotic cooking that she calls "petit-macro." Nishimura's style sticks to natural seasonings and a largely vegetarian diet, allowing for more flexibility in people's food choices.
Nuts and berries of macrobiotics
The word macrobiotics comes from Greek, meaning "long life." It was coined in the 1950s by Japanese philosopher Yukikazu Sakurazawa (1893-1966), who was known in the West as George Ohsawa. He drew from traditional Japanese and Asian cultures to create his own philosophy of health, which included eating a diet mainly consisting of unmilled, whole-grain rice and vegetables.
His students, Michio Kushi and his wife, Aveline, helped spread the concept more widely in the West. After emigrating to the United States following World War II, Kushi opened the Kushi Institute in Boston in 1978 to promote macrobiotic philosophy and practices.
Today, the standard macrobiotic diet advocates a daily intake of whole grains, organic and locally grown vegetables, beans and sea vegetables such as nori, kombu and wakame. Optionally, fruits, seeds and nuts can be included. Refined foods — such as white rice or white sugar — and artificial additives should be avoided. Macrobiotic teachings also include chewing foods slowly to ease digestion and assimilate nutrients.
Organic vegetables and some ingredients used in the macrobiotic diet, such as brown rice and sea salt, can be found in regular supermarkets, but others, such as organic wholewheat flour and naturally fermented soy sauce are hard to find. In addition, organic foodstuffs are also generally more expensive than regular foods.
"Macrobiotics is not about dos and don'ts, but about trying to have a balanced diet using a variety of ingredients," Nishimura said during a recent interview in Tokyo, while preparing an appetizing platter of vegetable burritos using slices of avocado and carrot, and lentils seasoned with sea salt and a maple syrup-balsamic vinegar mixture.
"As long as you base your diet on the whole grain, vegetables and no refined foods or artificial additives, the rest is free; choices are really up to you."
In her new English-language book, "Mayumi's Kitchen," which was released by Kodansha International earlier this month, Nishimura shares a variety of recipes that defy the dull, stoic images of macrobiotics that she said are often confused with traditional Japanese cuisine.
"Some people say macrobiotics is the same as eating Japanese food," she said. "It's not. I think there should be an Italian-style macrobiotic diet in Italy and British-style macrobiotics in Britain. The most important thing is that each country (and region) has a traditional diet specific to the country or the region. . . . How did the ancient people eat back then? You should study how and what kind of food people in your region used to eat."
On differences between macrobiotics and traditional Japanese food, Nishimura, who long studied and worked in the United States under macrobotics pioneer Michio Kushi, says that the shoyu (soy sauce) used in macrobiotic cooking is naturally fermented with no artificial additives, while shoyu used for everyday Japanese cooking is often made from fermented wheat or has its fermenting process accelerated by artificial additives.
A Western-style presentation is also something Nishimura came up with while working for Madonna. For example, her "spiral rice pasta with salad and soy meat" looks almost identical to chicken pasta salad.
She even has a recipe for chocolate brownies, which she divulges in the book "proved incredibly popular with Madonna's backup dancers." Nishimura's brownies use unbleached white flour or barley flour, and maple sugar instead of white sugar in line with the macrobiotic principles of avoiding refined foods.
While proponents of the diet say it helps to prevent and cure illnesses, including cancer, academic research so far does not support such claims. The American Cancer Society, a nonprofit health organization, states on its Web site that, "A diet consisting mostly of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains is associated with general health benefits and lower risk for several diseases, and a macrobiotic diet, by virtue of its main components, can also achieve these benefits. However, macrobiotic diets can lead to poor nutrition if not properly planned."
Nishimura stresses that followers should not get worked up over rules, and that they can enjoy meat occasionally.
"You can even try macrobiotics only on weekends, as a starter," she says. "If you continue that for a year, I'm sure you will get some results." [rc]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Healty shopping
While not widespread in shops, the nacrobiotic diet's ingredients are available online:
Lima Shigashi-Kitazawa (Shibuya): www.lima.co.jp/limatenpo-index.html
Anew: www.anew.co.jp/stores/
Shio-no-michi Club (online): www.shionomichi.com/kaimono.html
Seisyoku Society (online): www.macrobiotic.gr.jp/macro_shop/
Warabe Mura (Gifu/online): www.warabe.co.jp/english2.html
Tengu (online): jbayles.netfirms.com/shop/nfoscomm/catalog/index.php
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) The Japan Times Ltd
Macrobiotics, a diet and lifestyle regimen aimed at longer, healthier living, has enjoyed a boom in recent years due to some high-profile celebrity fans. Along with Madonna, actors Tom Cruise and Gwyneth Paltrow are among those thought to be keen on the diet, whose basic principles include eating whole grains, locally-grown organic vegetables, natural seasonings and food without artificial additives.
Act locally: Chef Mayumi Nishimura, who promotes eating a macrobiotic diet consisting of organic and locally grown foods, sits down to one of her creations. Yoshiaki Miura Photo
Nishimura is undoubtedly a leader of the macrobiotic lifestyle, having served as Madonna's private chef for seven years through the end of 2007. She even lived with the singer's family in London and accompanied her on wordwide tours.
Now back home in Japan, 53-year-old Nishimura hopes to promote a more relaxed, contemporary style of macrobiotic cooking that she calls "petit-macro." Nishimura's style sticks to natural seasonings and a largely vegetarian diet, allowing for more flexibility in people's food choices.
Nuts and berries of macrobiotics
The word macrobiotics comes from Greek, meaning "long life." It was coined in the 1950s by Japanese philosopher Yukikazu Sakurazawa (1893-1966), who was known in the West as George Ohsawa. He drew from traditional Japanese and Asian cultures to create his own philosophy of health, which included eating a diet mainly consisting of unmilled, whole-grain rice and vegetables.
His students, Michio Kushi and his wife, Aveline, helped spread the concept more widely in the West. After emigrating to the United States following World War II, Kushi opened the Kushi Institute in Boston in 1978 to promote macrobiotic philosophy and practices.
Today, the standard macrobiotic diet advocates a daily intake of whole grains, organic and locally grown vegetables, beans and sea vegetables such as nori, kombu and wakame. Optionally, fruits, seeds and nuts can be included. Refined foods — such as white rice or white sugar — and artificial additives should be avoided. Macrobiotic teachings also include chewing foods slowly to ease digestion and assimilate nutrients.
Organic vegetables and some ingredients used in the macrobiotic diet, such as brown rice and sea salt, can be found in regular supermarkets, but others, such as organic wholewheat flour and naturally fermented soy sauce are hard to find. In addition, organic foodstuffs are also generally more expensive than regular foods.
"Macrobiotics is not about dos and don'ts, but about trying to have a balanced diet using a variety of ingredients," Nishimura said during a recent interview in Tokyo, while preparing an appetizing platter of vegetable burritos using slices of avocado and carrot, and lentils seasoned with sea salt and a maple syrup-balsamic vinegar mixture.
"As long as you base your diet on the whole grain, vegetables and no refined foods or artificial additives, the rest is free; choices are really up to you."
In her new English-language book, "Mayumi's Kitchen," which was released by Kodansha International earlier this month, Nishimura shares a variety of recipes that defy the dull, stoic images of macrobiotics that she said are often confused with traditional Japanese cuisine.
"Some people say macrobiotics is the same as eating Japanese food," she said. "It's not. I think there should be an Italian-style macrobiotic diet in Italy and British-style macrobiotics in Britain. The most important thing is that each country (and region) has a traditional diet specific to the country or the region. . . . How did the ancient people eat back then? You should study how and what kind of food people in your region used to eat."
On differences between macrobiotics and traditional Japanese food, Nishimura, who long studied and worked in the United States under macrobotics pioneer Michio Kushi, says that the shoyu (soy sauce) used in macrobiotic cooking is naturally fermented with no artificial additives, while shoyu used for everyday Japanese cooking is often made from fermented wheat or has its fermenting process accelerated by artificial additives.
A Western-style presentation is also something Nishimura came up with while working for Madonna. For example, her "spiral rice pasta with salad and soy meat" looks almost identical to chicken pasta salad.
She even has a recipe for chocolate brownies, which she divulges in the book "proved incredibly popular with Madonna's backup dancers." Nishimura's brownies use unbleached white flour or barley flour, and maple sugar instead of white sugar in line with the macrobiotic principles of avoiding refined foods.
While proponents of the diet say it helps to prevent and cure illnesses, including cancer, academic research so far does not support such claims. The American Cancer Society, a nonprofit health organization, states on its Web site that, "A diet consisting mostly of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains is associated with general health benefits and lower risk for several diseases, and a macrobiotic diet, by virtue of its main components, can also achieve these benefits. However, macrobiotic diets can lead to poor nutrition if not properly planned."
Nishimura stresses that followers should not get worked up over rules, and that they can enjoy meat occasionally.
"You can even try macrobiotics only on weekends, as a starter," she says. "If you continue that for a year, I'm sure you will get some results." [rc]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Healty shopping
While not widespread in shops, the nacrobiotic diet's ingredients are available online:
Lima Shigashi-Kitazawa (Shibuya): www.lima.co.jp/limatenpo-index.html
Anew: www.anew.co.jp/stores/
Shio-no-michi Club (online): www.shionomichi.com/kaimono.html
Seisyoku Society (online): www.macrobiotic.gr.jp/macro_shop/
Warabe Mura (Gifu/online): www.warabe.co.jp/english2.html
Tengu (online): jbayles.netfirms.com/shop/nfoscomm/catalog/index.php
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) The Japan Times Ltd
February 24, 2010
USA: Virtual meetups spark real fitness
.
HUNTINGTON BEACH, California / CNN Health / February 24, 2010
By Ashley Fantz
Spark friends Rebecca Coats and Eve Rasmussen
run in the Surf City marathon in Huntington Beach,
California, February 7.
Becki Coats was embarrassed, so embarrassed that she didn't want to show pictures of herself with her new grandchild.
"I couldn't stand thinking about people saying, 'Oh, my, what happened to you,'" she said. "Well, I'd become a fat, cuddly grandmother who cannot play with her own grandbaby, that's what."
Coats weighed 230 pounds. At 49, she was too heavy -- and sidelined with herniated disks and a bum knee -- to do her job as a firefighter, so her bosses gave her a desk job. But her physical pain was no match for the anguish to come when over the next year and a half her teenage son died in a car wreck, her mother died and she lost a friend to cancer.
"It was just constant bad news. I was told that if I didn't lose weight, I was going to lose my job entirely," she said.
Required to attend a work fitness program, Coats learned about Sparkpeople.com, a free fitness social networking site that, like Facebook, relies on its users to sustain it. They provide basic biographical information and weight loss goals and are automatically transferred to Spark Teams, small chat groups bound by similar shape-up goals.
The ad-supported site lets users build their own Sparkpages -- which can be linked to Facebook -- and have access to the lively written Sparkblog, which offers advice from certified trainers, the latest health articles and studies and recipes.
When Coats logged on she was connected with seven other women in a "40-something with 25 to 49 pounds to lose" message board. She quickly felt a kinship with these women she'd never met.
"They were talking about life -- jobs, husbands, their kids, traveling, getting to know each other like they were your girlfriends sitting at your kitchen table having coffee," she said. "It's not like you sign on and it's all about 'Drop that weight!'
"Here were women who are going to encourage me to get off my butt but weren't going to judge me if I didn't look like a swimsuit model in six months," she said.
Coats and several of the other women in her chat group met for the first time earlier this month to run the Surf City Marathon in Huntington Beach, California. Each ran a different distance, and they met at the finish line.
"It meant a lot to us to do this together, something that each of us never considered that we'd ever do," she said.
Spark was launched 10 years ago by a wealthy early eBay investor. It is among the best known secrets in the weight-loss world. According to Comscore, it's the most visited fitness site with 7 million users (162 million page views in January), but Spark has taken a low-key, word-of-mouth approach compared to its big bucks advertising competitors like Weight Watchers.
"Spark is built on a truth that people love feeling like they're needed on a team," said founder Chris Downie who, along with two business partners, sold his late 1990s online auction site to eBay for a reported $72 million and started Spark.
Downie spends much of his day in his Silicon Valley home messaging back and forth with Spark users or reading what people are talking about in the Sparkcafe. (On February 3, among the 798,784 cafe chatters, nearly 10,000 people were involved in a "Should you eat breakfast?" thread.)
"I always had shyness and anxiety as a kid, and I wanted to create something that would allow users to remain comfortably anonymous if they wanted but still connect," Downie said.
"The key to me is that I felt supported and not judged," said Jennifer Lang, an upstate New York psychotherapist who is part of the group. After having her fourth child at 41, Lang weighed 228 pounds.
"I had not exercised in 20 years," she said. "Really. In 20 years. It just wasn't a part of my life until it had to become my life or else."
She found Spark while surfing the Internet and joined other Spark groups, including the pointedly named "Mothers with 2-year-olds." She faithfully filled in her nutrition tracker every day, a function that not only automates calories but tells you when you type in "Dannon yogurt" what the heck's really in that container and whether it's really good for you. It also provides ideas for substitute meals. Spark's software won't allow someone to program a diet less than 1,200 calories a day.
A year later, Lang is 50 pounds lighter.
Stories like Lang's and Coats' are ubiquitous on Spark. CNN.com signed on to the site and messaged with several users who said they'd shed 5 to 100 pounds.
Many said they didn't even mind being sent the flurry of Spark e-mails they say didn't strike them as spam. A few examples: "Where to find the nearest running trail near your home" and "5 Ways to Avoid Hitting the Snooze." A hip and glute stretch video was short and direct, and another e-mail containing a low-cal recipe did not, like so many in its genre, produce food that tastes like cardboard.
As Lang got healthier, Tammy Rhones signed onto the women's chat group as "Marathon Mom," even though the 49-year-old's problems with weight and a clubbed foot sidelined her from most sports over the past few years.
"I never got past being that little girl who thought she couldn't run," she said, describing how she would watch Ironman competitions with amazement at the monster triathlon. A trainer told her about Sparkpeople.
Shortly after registering, Spark "woggers" (runners who walk) began sending her instant messages, motivating her to join a real-life running club to work on her foot. Months later, in a burst of extra motivation, Rhones completed a 2.4 mile ocean swimming competition and 150-mile bike ride. She also started competing in Spark's online 5K and 10K races where users post their real-life mileage. It might take a week, but in the virtual races, the first one to complete the total distance wins.
"I've always had a competitive side, but Spark has given me the chance to appreciate my successes as opposed to comparing myself to everyone else," Rhones said after running the half portion of the Surf City marathon. "I don't need to look at a magazine anymore and say, 'Oh I need to strive for that.' I'm a size 12, not a size 6, and I'm happy with that, that's OK." [rc]
© 2010 Cable News Network.
Spark friends Rebecca Coats and Eve Rasmussen
run in the Surf City marathon in Huntington Beach,
California, February 7.
Becki Coats was embarrassed, so embarrassed that she didn't want to show pictures of herself with her new grandchild.
"I couldn't stand thinking about people saying, 'Oh, my, what happened to you,'" she said. "Well, I'd become a fat, cuddly grandmother who cannot play with her own grandbaby, that's what."
Coats weighed 230 pounds. At 49, she was too heavy -- and sidelined with herniated disks and a bum knee -- to do her job as a firefighter, so her bosses gave her a desk job. But her physical pain was no match for the anguish to come when over the next year and a half her teenage son died in a car wreck, her mother died and she lost a friend to cancer.
"It was just constant bad news. I was told that if I didn't lose weight, I was going to lose my job entirely," she said.
Required to attend a work fitness program, Coats learned about Sparkpeople.com, a free fitness social networking site that, like Facebook, relies on its users to sustain it. They provide basic biographical information and weight loss goals and are automatically transferred to Spark Teams, small chat groups bound by similar shape-up goals.
The ad-supported site lets users build their own Sparkpages -- which can be linked to Facebook -- and have access to the lively written Sparkblog, which offers advice from certified trainers, the latest health articles and studies and recipes.
When Coats logged on she was connected with seven other women in a "40-something with 25 to 49 pounds to lose" message board. She quickly felt a kinship with these women she'd never met.
"They were talking about life -- jobs, husbands, their kids, traveling, getting to know each other like they were your girlfriends sitting at your kitchen table having coffee," she said. "It's not like you sign on and it's all about 'Drop that weight!'
"Here were women who are going to encourage me to get off my butt but weren't going to judge me if I didn't look like a swimsuit model in six months," she said.
Coats and several of the other women in her chat group met for the first time earlier this month to run the Surf City Marathon in Huntington Beach, California. Each ran a different distance, and they met at the finish line.
"It meant a lot to us to do this together, something that each of us never considered that we'd ever do," she said.
Spark was launched 10 years ago by a wealthy early eBay investor. It is among the best known secrets in the weight-loss world. According to Comscore, it's the most visited fitness site with 7 million users (162 million page views in January), but Spark has taken a low-key, word-of-mouth approach compared to its big bucks advertising competitors like Weight Watchers.
"Spark is built on a truth that people love feeling like they're needed on a team," said founder Chris Downie who, along with two business partners, sold his late 1990s online auction site to eBay for a reported $72 million and started Spark.
Downie spends much of his day in his Silicon Valley home messaging back and forth with Spark users or reading what people are talking about in the Sparkcafe. (On February 3, among the 798,784 cafe chatters, nearly 10,000 people were involved in a "Should you eat breakfast?" thread.)
"I always had shyness and anxiety as a kid, and I wanted to create something that would allow users to remain comfortably anonymous if they wanted but still connect," Downie said.
"The key to me is that I felt supported and not judged," said Jennifer Lang, an upstate New York psychotherapist who is part of the group. After having her fourth child at 41, Lang weighed 228 pounds.
"I had not exercised in 20 years," she said. "Really. In 20 years. It just wasn't a part of my life until it had to become my life or else."
She found Spark while surfing the Internet and joined other Spark groups, including the pointedly named "Mothers with 2-year-olds." She faithfully filled in her nutrition tracker every day, a function that not only automates calories but tells you when you type in "Dannon yogurt" what the heck's really in that container and whether it's really good for you. It also provides ideas for substitute meals. Spark's software won't allow someone to program a diet less than 1,200 calories a day.
A year later, Lang is 50 pounds lighter.
Stories like Lang's and Coats' are ubiquitous on Spark. CNN.com signed on to the site and messaged with several users who said they'd shed 5 to 100 pounds.
Many said they didn't even mind being sent the flurry of Spark e-mails they say didn't strike them as spam. A few examples: "Where to find the nearest running trail near your home" and "5 Ways to Avoid Hitting the Snooze." A hip and glute stretch video was short and direct, and another e-mail containing a low-cal recipe did not, like so many in its genre, produce food that tastes like cardboard.
As Lang got healthier, Tammy Rhones signed onto the women's chat group as "Marathon Mom," even though the 49-year-old's problems with weight and a clubbed foot sidelined her from most sports over the past few years.
"I never got past being that little girl who thought she couldn't run," she said, describing how she would watch Ironman competitions with amazement at the monster triathlon. A trainer told her about Sparkpeople.
Shortly after registering, Spark "woggers" (runners who walk) began sending her instant messages, motivating her to join a real-life running club to work on her foot. Months later, in a burst of extra motivation, Rhones completed a 2.4 mile ocean swimming competition and 150-mile bike ride. She also started competing in Spark's online 5K and 10K races where users post their real-life mileage. It might take a week, but in the virtual races, the first one to complete the total distance wins.
"I've always had a competitive side, but Spark has given me the chance to appreciate my successes as opposed to comparing myself to everyone else," Rhones said after running the half portion of the Surf City marathon. "I don't need to look at a magazine anymore and say, 'Oh I need to strive for that.' I'm a size 12, not a size 6, and I'm happy with that, that's OK." [rc]
© 2010 Cable News Network.
USA: Speed dating for an older set
.
DENVER, Colorado / 9News.com / February 24, 2010
By Kim Christiansen
CENTRAL CITY - If you have ever been set up on a blind date, or attended a singles function, you know the feeling. Butterflies fill your stomach and you might feel flushed and need a glass of water.
A room full of people experienced all of those feelings recently on a trip to Central City.
They were not nervous about losing money in the slot machines. But while this gamble had nothing to do with cash, it certainly involved a little luck, if not guts.
Rocky Mountain Singles organized a first time ever "Speed Dating" event at Fortune Valley for seniors.
For those who do not know what speed dating is, it is an opportunity for a group of single people to meet several people in a short period of time. Each person is assigned a number and moves around a room from table to table to meet several people in roughly an hour's time.
Each date lasts just six minutes, enough time to hopefully decide if you want to meet again.
For this group, there is enough time for eight dates. There are 17 women and 13 men, from Denver, Greeley, Aurora, and as far as Montrose.
Joseph Brady is a Chinese medical doctor and a specialist in healthy aging. He applauds this type of thing.
"Anything to get people to make friends and have relationships, that makes a big difference when it comes to healthy aging," Brady said.
The people in this group are keenly aware of the importance of meeting new people and staying engaged in life.
Carl traveled from Greeley to take part.
"Even if you just make a new friend, you don't have to sit at home and be depressed," he said.
Carl is an outdoorsy type who likes to hunt and fish, but when asked what a woman should know about him, he said, "I'm a good dancer."
For many of the participants, this is a non-threatening environment and more like a social hour. Several told us they would never consider an Internet dating site, and really are not interested in a serious relationship.
Some say they will never marry again, but they would like the chance to go to dinner, dancing or even a movie with a new friend.
After their speed dating session, Rocky Mountain Singles will review the cards they filled out about their dates and match up those that express a mutual interest in seeing each other again.
What happens next? Only time will tell. [rc]
KUSA-TV © 2010 Multimedia Holdings Corporation
CENTRAL CITY - If you have ever been set up on a blind date, or attended a singles function, you know the feeling. Butterflies fill your stomach and you might feel flushed and need a glass of water.
A room full of people experienced all of those feelings recently on a trip to Central City.
They were not nervous about losing money in the slot machines. But while this gamble had nothing to do with cash, it certainly involved a little luck, if not guts.
Rocky Mountain Singles organized a first time ever "Speed Dating" event at Fortune Valley for seniors.
For those who do not know what speed dating is, it is an opportunity for a group of single people to meet several people in a short period of time. Each person is assigned a number and moves around a room from table to table to meet several people in roughly an hour's time.
Each date lasts just six minutes, enough time to hopefully decide if you want to meet again.
For this group, there is enough time for eight dates. There are 17 women and 13 men, from Denver, Greeley, Aurora, and as far as Montrose.
Joseph Brady is a Chinese medical doctor and a specialist in healthy aging. He applauds this type of thing.
"Anything to get people to make friends and have relationships, that makes a big difference when it comes to healthy aging," Brady said.
The people in this group are keenly aware of the importance of meeting new people and staying engaged in life.
Carl traveled from Greeley to take part.
"Even if you just make a new friend, you don't have to sit at home and be depressed," he said.
Carl is an outdoorsy type who likes to hunt and fish, but when asked what a woman should know about him, he said, "I'm a good dancer."
For many of the participants, this is a non-threatening environment and more like a social hour. Several told us they would never consider an Internet dating site, and really are not interested in a serious relationship.
Some say they will never marry again, but they would like the chance to go to dinner, dancing or even a movie with a new friend.
After their speed dating session, Rocky Mountain Singles will review the cards they filled out about their dates and match up those that express a mutual interest in seeing each other again.
What happens next? Only time will tell. [rc]
KUSA-TV © 2010 Multimedia Holdings Corporation
UK: Professor Mark Cato reveals "Why I'm dying to live"
.
LONDON, England / The Telegraph / Lifestyle / Health / February 24, 2010
When law professor Mark Cato was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, he started a popular blog detailing the frustrations of daily life - and the inventions he came up with to triumph over the cruel wasting disease. Here are selected extracts from his heart-rending online diary.
Professor Mark Cato Photo: Masons News Service
By Professor Mark Cato, with an introduction by Cassandra Jardine
In April 2008, Professor Mark Cato was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease and told that he might have only 14 months to live. Faced with this deadly illness, Cato – aptly named after the great Roman stoic – did not turn his face to the wall. A year ago, he began a blog that is “more about living than dying”; a diary of the frustrations and triumphs of daily life with this cruel wasting disease.
With its combination of serious discussion, jokes and anecdotes about the inventions he has designed to help him overcome his physical problems around the house, the Dying to Live blog (www.dmarkcato.com) has attracted some 200,000 readers, garnering a following among those who believe in living “every moment of every day”.
Cato – never happier than watching cricket with a glass of champagne in his hand – is an extraordinary man. Having worked as a chartered surveyor until his late forties, he trained in law and became an Arbitrator. For the last 25 years, he has practised, lectured and written on resolving property disputes. Aged 75, from Saffron Walden, Essex, he holds a professorship in China and is founder and president of The Arbitration Club.
After a sickly childhood in which infected tonsils prevented him from playing games, his passion for a wide range of sports is equalled only by his fondness for a good lunch with old friends. A decade ago he suffered from prostate cancer, which he has also blogged about with searing honesty, but he learned to live with the consequences. Now, helped by his wife Alice – “my lovely” – and his children and grandchildren, he is grabbing what is left of life with both hands – even if those hands are no longer working as well as they once did.
April 2009
I went up to London today, to have lunch with my nephew. Unfortunately the trip started badly. The train came into the station at Audley End, I was the last to leave the waiting room and was unable to open the door quickly enough – it was just too heavy. By the time I managed to get the door open the train was about to depart. In my anxiety I dropped my bag, spilling out all the contents. To compound everything I then tripped over them and fell flat on my back. The kind man who stopped to assist me said he saw my head bounce on the concrete platform. However, no harm done. By this time, though, the train driver, possibly fearing he would be delayed, closed the doors and pulled out. I had to wait half an hour for the next train.
Walked around the golf course and lunched with my old mates. I introduced the members to my new cigar holder. I had it made from a 15in-high wooden toilet-roll holder with a spring clip on the top. I bought a cheap plastic holder in London the other day, and jam it into the spring clip and can therefore smoke without using my hands. I only smoke two small cigars each day but I do enjoy one with a drink after walking around the golf course.
May 2009
I managed Lord’s quite well. I now tend to keep my travelcard in a plastic pocket hanging around my neck, as I find it almost impossible to get my hand in my pocket to produce it. One thing I did learn today was the easiest way to eat a sandwich. My weakened arms mean that I have to use both hands to get it to my month. I now have the sandwich chopped up into small bite-size squares, stab it with a fork and, with the assistance of my wrist splint, can manage with my right hand alone.
July 2009
It would be totally dishonest if I did not admit that I am anxious much of the time about my condition, most particularly, I suppose, in bed at night. One lies there knowing one is going downhill, but how fast? Beyond that, I do not believe that I am seriously depressed. The worst aspect of this condition is the overall sense of weakness and increasing frustration in being unable to do things with one’s hands. I can still manage my laptop with my hands, using the middle finger of my left hand to operate the mouse. In addition, I have a joystick mouse. When the hands go. I shall have to revert to a foot-operated mouse.
I tried a bath a couple of weeks ago. It was a hot day and I was sweaty and thought it might be rather fun. Unfortunately, I found I could not get out, despite struggling for up to an hour. I was simply too weak to lever myself out. I even let the water out in case I landed on my face and drowned. I had visions of Alice arriving home and finding me sitting there, blue with cold. Fortunately I had taken the mobile telephone up with me. I dialled the directory enquiries for my neighbour’s telephone number and found her in.
I never told Alice. She would kill me if she knew. On the whole, I would say that my lovely wife and I are managing, but for how long?
August 2009
My back scratcher, which I have had bent to a 135° angle as my arms are not strong enough to reach behind my back, was returned to me today. The ideal angle, for someone in my position, would be probably one closer to something like 30°. I shall experiment.
September 2009
Decided to fill up with petrol. Unable to lift the lever releasing the petrol cap and too weak to squeeze the pump, I asked a kindly looking customer for assistance. Unfortunately, between the time of asking and his coming to assist, I managed to topple over backwards. After this kind gentleman had helped me up and filled up my tank, I got him to push in my safety belt and turn the key – both of which I find now almost impossible to do myself. I’m sure he was wondering whether I should be allowed on the road at all, or whether he was even on Candid Camera. [In November, Cato’s wife insisted he stop driving.]
Alice, my lovely, usually puts out my clothes the night before, and helps me to dress, although I can usually get on my own underpants. Certainly, buttons are beyond me, but I can make a shot with my trousers, having had all the zips fitted with a keyring; the clips and buttons removed from the top and substituted with Velcro and a cloth loop which I can usually drag across. All of my ties have been pre-tied and just have to be slipped over my head and pushed up to the collar by Alice. If I am going to London or for an important appointment, my lovely even finds me a fresh rose for my buttonhole, which it has always been my habit to wear.
October 2009
I have worked out how to take my pills – by licking the 'frozen’ forefinger finger on my left hand and picking them up that way. Things like pieces of chocolate or segments of orange I nudge on to the back of my left hand and eat them from there. It’s rather like taking snuff.
November 2009
My lovely’s antique four-poster bed is rather high off the ground. I’m now using a stool to get in. I know my lovely is keen to replace it, but as I have slept in it for the best part of 50 years, and my darling daughter was born in it, I am loath to get rid of it. I find it virtually impossible to pull up the duvet around my neck which can be a little annoying when it’s chilly. Even the lightest down pillow is too heavy for me to lift other than between my two-fisted hands.
I have already given my lovely authority to sign my cheques so I am at her mercy over my money. I just hope she doesn’t run off with the milkman!
December 2009
On Friday, I went to London and had lunch with two old friends in a rather smart London restaurant. My hosts helped me don my apron, fitted my two wrist supports – one with a shooter, another little gadget I designed and had made, and (a new 'invention’ of mine) a wipeable cloth sleeve for my left arm. I thought up this one because I’m having difficulty raising my right hand to my mouth with a spoonful of food. However, if I assist the arm using my left one, I can feed myself – thus the need for the sleeve, to protect my clothing, against any food which spills off the spoon.
Regretfully, I can no longer wrap presents so my lovely has to wrap her own and indeed write the cards that go with them but using my own words. Although I can no longer write legibly and therefore can no longer jot down notes during the night, I found an excellent substitute in a Dictaphone on which I have had glued some pimple material to enable me to operate the switch.
January 2010
Well, we’ve made it to another year. Traditionally this is the time when one makes New Year resolutions; dieting, drinking less, exercising more, etc. I had no intention of doing any of these things, instead I intend to pursue last year’s policy of carpe diem.
February 2010
Went to London by train today to see my stockbroker. I had great difficulty getting into the taxi. A long struggle ensued to get me on to the seat, during which the taxi driver sat impassively, distaining interest. He had seen it all before, it seems. Once seated, I explained to him that I was not a legless drunk but was suffering from MND. [rc]
* Read more from Dr Mark Cato’s Dying to Live diary at www.dmarkcato.com
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010
When law professor Mark Cato was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, he started a popular blog detailing the frustrations of daily life - and the inventions he came up with to triumph over the cruel wasting disease. Here are selected extracts from his heart-rending online diary.
Professor Mark Cato Photo: Masons News Service
By Professor Mark Cato, with an introduction by Cassandra Jardine
In April 2008, Professor Mark Cato was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease and told that he might have only 14 months to live. Faced with this deadly illness, Cato – aptly named after the great Roman stoic – did not turn his face to the wall. A year ago, he began a blog that is “more about living than dying”; a diary of the frustrations and triumphs of daily life with this cruel wasting disease.
With its combination of serious discussion, jokes and anecdotes about the inventions he has designed to help him overcome his physical problems around the house, the Dying to Live blog (www.dmarkcato.com) has attracted some 200,000 readers, garnering a following among those who believe in living “every moment of every day”.
Cato – never happier than watching cricket with a glass of champagne in his hand – is an extraordinary man. Having worked as a chartered surveyor until his late forties, he trained in law and became an Arbitrator. For the last 25 years, he has practised, lectured and written on resolving property disputes. Aged 75, from Saffron Walden, Essex, he holds a professorship in China and is founder and president of The Arbitration Club.
After a sickly childhood in which infected tonsils prevented him from playing games, his passion for a wide range of sports is equalled only by his fondness for a good lunch with old friends. A decade ago he suffered from prostate cancer, which he has also blogged about with searing honesty, but he learned to live with the consequences. Now, helped by his wife Alice – “my lovely” – and his children and grandchildren, he is grabbing what is left of life with both hands – even if those hands are no longer working as well as they once did.
April 2009
I went up to London today, to have lunch with my nephew. Unfortunately the trip started badly. The train came into the station at Audley End, I was the last to leave the waiting room and was unable to open the door quickly enough – it was just too heavy. By the time I managed to get the door open the train was about to depart. In my anxiety I dropped my bag, spilling out all the contents. To compound everything I then tripped over them and fell flat on my back. The kind man who stopped to assist me said he saw my head bounce on the concrete platform. However, no harm done. By this time, though, the train driver, possibly fearing he would be delayed, closed the doors and pulled out. I had to wait half an hour for the next train.
Walked around the golf course and lunched with my old mates. I introduced the members to my new cigar holder. I had it made from a 15in-high wooden toilet-roll holder with a spring clip on the top. I bought a cheap plastic holder in London the other day, and jam it into the spring clip and can therefore smoke without using my hands. I only smoke two small cigars each day but I do enjoy one with a drink after walking around the golf course.
May 2009
I managed Lord’s quite well. I now tend to keep my travelcard in a plastic pocket hanging around my neck, as I find it almost impossible to get my hand in my pocket to produce it. One thing I did learn today was the easiest way to eat a sandwich. My weakened arms mean that I have to use both hands to get it to my month. I now have the sandwich chopped up into small bite-size squares, stab it with a fork and, with the assistance of my wrist splint, can manage with my right hand alone.
July 2009
It would be totally dishonest if I did not admit that I am anxious much of the time about my condition, most particularly, I suppose, in bed at night. One lies there knowing one is going downhill, but how fast? Beyond that, I do not believe that I am seriously depressed. The worst aspect of this condition is the overall sense of weakness and increasing frustration in being unable to do things with one’s hands. I can still manage my laptop with my hands, using the middle finger of my left hand to operate the mouse. In addition, I have a joystick mouse. When the hands go. I shall have to revert to a foot-operated mouse.
I tried a bath a couple of weeks ago. It was a hot day and I was sweaty and thought it might be rather fun. Unfortunately, I found I could not get out, despite struggling for up to an hour. I was simply too weak to lever myself out. I even let the water out in case I landed on my face and drowned. I had visions of Alice arriving home and finding me sitting there, blue with cold. Fortunately I had taken the mobile telephone up with me. I dialled the directory enquiries for my neighbour’s telephone number and found her in.
I never told Alice. She would kill me if she knew. On the whole, I would say that my lovely wife and I are managing, but for how long?
August 2009
My back scratcher, which I have had bent to a 135° angle as my arms are not strong enough to reach behind my back, was returned to me today. The ideal angle, for someone in my position, would be probably one closer to something like 30°. I shall experiment.
September 2009
Decided to fill up with petrol. Unable to lift the lever releasing the petrol cap and too weak to squeeze the pump, I asked a kindly looking customer for assistance. Unfortunately, between the time of asking and his coming to assist, I managed to topple over backwards. After this kind gentleman had helped me up and filled up my tank, I got him to push in my safety belt and turn the key – both of which I find now almost impossible to do myself. I’m sure he was wondering whether I should be allowed on the road at all, or whether he was even on Candid Camera. [In November, Cato’s wife insisted he stop driving.]
Alice, my lovely, usually puts out my clothes the night before, and helps me to dress, although I can usually get on my own underpants. Certainly, buttons are beyond me, but I can make a shot with my trousers, having had all the zips fitted with a keyring; the clips and buttons removed from the top and substituted with Velcro and a cloth loop which I can usually drag across. All of my ties have been pre-tied and just have to be slipped over my head and pushed up to the collar by Alice. If I am going to London or for an important appointment, my lovely even finds me a fresh rose for my buttonhole, which it has always been my habit to wear.
October 2009
I have worked out how to take my pills – by licking the 'frozen’ forefinger finger on my left hand and picking them up that way. Things like pieces of chocolate or segments of orange I nudge on to the back of my left hand and eat them from there. It’s rather like taking snuff.
November 2009
My lovely’s antique four-poster bed is rather high off the ground. I’m now using a stool to get in. I know my lovely is keen to replace it, but as I have slept in it for the best part of 50 years, and my darling daughter was born in it, I am loath to get rid of it. I find it virtually impossible to pull up the duvet around my neck which can be a little annoying when it’s chilly. Even the lightest down pillow is too heavy for me to lift other than between my two-fisted hands.
I have already given my lovely authority to sign my cheques so I am at her mercy over my money. I just hope she doesn’t run off with the milkman!
December 2009
On Friday, I went to London and had lunch with two old friends in a rather smart London restaurant. My hosts helped me don my apron, fitted my two wrist supports – one with a shooter, another little gadget I designed and had made, and (a new 'invention’ of mine) a wipeable cloth sleeve for my left arm. I thought up this one because I’m having difficulty raising my right hand to my mouth with a spoonful of food. However, if I assist the arm using my left one, I can feed myself – thus the need for the sleeve, to protect my clothing, against any food which spills off the spoon.
Regretfully, I can no longer wrap presents so my lovely has to wrap her own and indeed write the cards that go with them but using my own words. Although I can no longer write legibly and therefore can no longer jot down notes during the night, I found an excellent substitute in a Dictaphone on which I have had glued some pimple material to enable me to operate the switch.
January 2010
Well, we’ve made it to another year. Traditionally this is the time when one makes New Year resolutions; dieting, drinking less, exercising more, etc. I had no intention of doing any of these things, instead I intend to pursue last year’s policy of carpe diem.
February 2010
Went to London by train today to see my stockbroker. I had great difficulty getting into the taxi. A long struggle ensued to get me on to the seat, during which the taxi driver sat impassively, distaining interest. He had seen it all before, it seems. Once seated, I explained to him that I was not a legless drunk but was suffering from MND. [rc]
* Read more from Dr Mark Cato’s Dying to Live diary at www.dmarkcato.com
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010
UK: Gordon Brown says don't legalise assisted suicide
.
LONDON, England / The Telegraph / Politics / Law & Order / February 24, 2010
Gordon Brown has warned against legalising assisted suicide as prosecutors prepare to introduce guidelines that will make it easier to help others end their lives without facing punishment.
By James Kirkup, Political Correspondent
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the Prime Minister says that changing the law to permit assisted suicide would run the risk of putting the frail and ill under pressure to end their lives.
His warning comes a day before Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, will set out final guidelines on assisted suicide.
The Prime Minister warns that a legal 'right' to die would put unacceptable pressure on the sick and old. Photo: PA
He is expected to make it clear that those who help others end their lives are unlikely to face court action if they acted out of compassion. The guidelines, which follow a series of high-profile court cases, are seen by many as effectively decriminalising assisted suicide by the back door.
Mr Brown says that while Mr Starmer should be free to clarify the legal guidelines on assisted suicide, the law itself should not be altered by Parliament.
Creating a legal “right” to die, no matter what safeguards were in place, would put unacceptable pressure on the sick and old, Mr Brown claims.
“Let us be clear: death as an option and an entitlement, via whatever bureaucratic processes a change in the law on assisted suicide might devise, would fundamentally change the way we think about death,” he says.
“The risk of pressures – however subtle – on the frail and the vulnerable, who may for example feel their existences burdensome to others, cannot ever be entirely excluded.”
Two attempts to legalise assisted suicide have failed in the House of Lords in recent years. Mr Brown suggests that, rather than heralding a change in the law, Mr Starmer’s guidance could weaken the case for new attempts to legalise assisted suicide.
“I believe that because of the clarification of the public interest factors now being discussed, and because of some important developments in care over recent decades, the case for a change in the law is now weaker,” he says. “I know in my heart that there is such a thing as a good death. And I believe it is our duty as a society… to use the laws we have well, rather than change them.”
Mr Brown also warns that any move to give doctors and nurses greater freedom to end the lives of the sick and old would harm the medical professions.
“The inevitable erosion of trust in the caring professions – if they were in a position to end life – would be to lose something very precious,” he says.
Mr Brown has consistently opposed legislative changes on assisted suicide, and the strength and timing of his intervention today could be seen as a signal to Mr Starmer not to go too far. Mr Starmer will issue new guidance on the circumstances in which someone is likely to be charged if they help another person to die. Lawyers have pointed out that there is no precedent for prosecutors to set out in such detail the ways in which people can commit a crime and avoid being charged.
Pointedly, Mr Brown does not express support for Mr Starmer’s decision. “It is for him to clarify his approach and the Government has not made any representation to him,” he says.
Rather than alter the rules on assisted suicide, Mr Brown says that more must be done to address the fears many people have of a slow painful death, or of becoming a burden on their family in old age. “I believe that a duty of government is to minimise the fear of dying badly,” Mr Brown says.
A poll for The Daily Telegraph found last month that four out of five people believed that relatives should be allowed to help terminally ill loved ones take their own lives.
Mr Brown conceded that recent high-profile cases had bolstered public support for a change in the rules on assisted dying.
Earlier this year, a judge criticised the Crown Prosecution Service for bringing a case against Kay Gilderdale, who was found not guilty of the attempted murder of her daughter, Lynn, 31, who suffered from the neurological condition ME.
“Cases now dominating the public arena make harrowing reading and the first and most obvious response is to say that something must be done,” he says.
“But when these complex, individual and distressing cases are considered in detail, a solution that at first seems sensible – the right to die in a manner and at a time of one’s choosing – swiftly becomes less straightforward and more worrying.”
Aiding or abetting another to end their life is punishable by up to 14 years in prison under the 1961 Suicide Act.
Mr Brown said his thinking on the issue had been informed by the work of Dame Cecily Saunders, the founder of the hospice movement who died in 2005.
Her work brought about advances in palliative care, improving the lives of the sick and old in their final days.
Further progress in that area, Mr Brown says, is more important than changing the law to make it easier for people to die. [rc]
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the Prime Minister says that changing the law to permit assisted suicide would run the risk of putting the frail and ill under pressure to end their lives.
His warning comes a day before Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, will set out final guidelines on assisted suicide.
The Prime Minister warns that a legal 'right' to die would put unacceptable pressure on the sick and old. Photo: PA
He is expected to make it clear that those who help others end their lives are unlikely to face court action if they acted out of compassion. The guidelines, which follow a series of high-profile court cases, are seen by many as effectively decriminalising assisted suicide by the back door.
Mr Brown says that while Mr Starmer should be free to clarify the legal guidelines on assisted suicide, the law itself should not be altered by Parliament.
Creating a legal “right” to die, no matter what safeguards were in place, would put unacceptable pressure on the sick and old, Mr Brown claims.
“Let us be clear: death as an option and an entitlement, via whatever bureaucratic processes a change in the law on assisted suicide might devise, would fundamentally change the way we think about death,” he says.
“The risk of pressures – however subtle – on the frail and the vulnerable, who may for example feel their existences burdensome to others, cannot ever be entirely excluded.”
Two attempts to legalise assisted suicide have failed in the House of Lords in recent years. Mr Brown suggests that, rather than heralding a change in the law, Mr Starmer’s guidance could weaken the case for new attempts to legalise assisted suicide.
“I believe that because of the clarification of the public interest factors now being discussed, and because of some important developments in care over recent decades, the case for a change in the law is now weaker,” he says. “I know in my heart that there is such a thing as a good death. And I believe it is our duty as a society… to use the laws we have well, rather than change them.”
Mr Brown also warns that any move to give doctors and nurses greater freedom to end the lives of the sick and old would harm the medical professions.
“The inevitable erosion of trust in the caring professions – if they were in a position to end life – would be to lose something very precious,” he says.
Mr Brown has consistently opposed legislative changes on assisted suicide, and the strength and timing of his intervention today could be seen as a signal to Mr Starmer not to go too far. Mr Starmer will issue new guidance on the circumstances in which someone is likely to be charged if they help another person to die. Lawyers have pointed out that there is no precedent for prosecutors to set out in such detail the ways in which people can commit a crime and avoid being charged.
Pointedly, Mr Brown does not express support for Mr Starmer’s decision. “It is for him to clarify his approach and the Government has not made any representation to him,” he says.
Rather than alter the rules on assisted suicide, Mr Brown says that more must be done to address the fears many people have of a slow painful death, or of becoming a burden on their family in old age. “I believe that a duty of government is to minimise the fear of dying badly,” Mr Brown says.
A poll for The Daily Telegraph found last month that four out of five people believed that relatives should be allowed to help terminally ill loved ones take their own lives.
Mr Brown conceded that recent high-profile cases had bolstered public support for a change in the rules on assisted dying.
Earlier this year, a judge criticised the Crown Prosecution Service for bringing a case against Kay Gilderdale, who was found not guilty of the attempted murder of her daughter, Lynn, 31, who suffered from the neurological condition ME.
“Cases now dominating the public arena make harrowing reading and the first and most obvious response is to say that something must be done,” he says.
“But when these complex, individual and distressing cases are considered in detail, a solution that at first seems sensible – the right to die in a manner and at a time of one’s choosing – swiftly becomes less straightforward and more worrying.”
Aiding or abetting another to end their life is punishable by up to 14 years in prison under the 1961 Suicide Act.
Mr Brown said his thinking on the issue had been informed by the work of Dame Cecily Saunders, the founder of the hospice movement who died in 2005.
Her work brought about advances in palliative care, improving the lives of the sick and old in their final days.
Further progress in that area, Mr Brown says, is more important than changing the law to make it easier for people to die. [rc]
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010
February 23, 2010
USA: Medicine and 'luck' on multiple heart attack survivors' side
.
NORTH, Southern Carolina / CNN International / Health / February 23, 2010
Medicine and 'luck' on multiple heart attack survivors' side
By Madison Park, CNN
In 32 years, Former Vice President Dick Cheney
has survived five heart attacks
A fifth heart attack, such as the one suffered this week by former Vice President Dick Cheney, is not rare because of advances in modern medicine, cardiologists say.
"It's something we see often enough that we're not surprised about it," said Dr. Cam Patterson, chief of cardiology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, who is not involved in Cheney's care. "But it's also an indication that somebody has some luck on their side."
More patients are surviving multiple heart attacks because of procedures and drugs, Patterson said.
"We have patients who are taken to the [cardiac catheterization labs] to have blocked arteries opened up," he said. "We have stents to keep blocked arteries opened and high-potency drugs like statins that protect against risk factors that make heart disease progress rapidly."
Although these options help heart disease patients, they may not prevent another heart attack. Patients who've suffered a heart attack usually have more blockages in other vessels that weren't problematic earlier. But over time, the blockage builds and could cause future heart attacks, doctors said.
Cheney, 69, went to the George Washington University Hospital after experiencing chest pains Monday and underwent a stress test and a heart catheterization, according to his office.
In a cardiac catheterization, a thin, flexible tube is threaded into the heart, usually from the groin or the arm, to examine blood pressure within the heart and how much oxygen is in the blood.
Cheney has a long history of heart problems. He suffered his first heart attack in 1978, when he was 37.
He had his second heart attack in 1984 and a third in 1988 and underwent a quadruple bypass surgery to unblock his arteries. Shortly after Cheney was elected vice president in November 2000, he had a fourth heart attack and received a stent to open an artery.
In some cases, even patients who follow instructions do not respond to therapies and drugs, and they continue to get heart attacks, said Dr. Randall Starling, vice chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, who also is not involved in Cheney's care.
"I'd like to believe that if patients take their meds, exercise, they're on a great diet, they reduce their risk," he said. "But unfortunately, there are patients who have progressive disease even by following all their doctor's orders. That's where some of the genetics get into things."
In 2001, doctors implanted a monitoring device to keep track of Cheney's heart rhythm and slow it down if necessary. In 2008, he underwent a procedure to restore his heart to a normal rhythm after doctors found that he was experiencing a recurrence of the condition, known as atrial fibrillation.
Since Cheney left office in 2009, the former vice president has remained visible, appearing on political talk shows, most recently on ABC's "This Week," where he was highly critical of President Obama's policies.
Cheney is expected to be discharged from the hospital in the next day or two, according to his office.
This month, former President Clinton was also hospitalized briefly because of a heart problem. Clinton received two stents to restore blood flow to a coronary artery after doctors discovered blockage.
The two have heart disease. This condition is the leading cause of death in the United States; more than 630,000 people die each year from it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Having the kind of medical care that Clinton and Cheney receive increases the chances of the patient's survival.
"There is very strong data that shows both access to care and socioeconomic status has marked impact on outcomes with people with heart disease," said Patterson, director of the UNC McAllister Heart Institute.
And even after several heart attacks, someone like Cheney can continue to live an active life.
"If his heart function remains strong, he's got good medical care and is taking care of risk factors, he can be in very good shape," Patterson said. [rc]
CNN's John King contributed to this report.
© 2010 Cable News Network
Medicine and 'luck' on multiple heart attack survivors' side
By Madison Park, CNN
In 32 years, Former Vice President Dick Cheney
has survived five heart attacks
A fifth heart attack, such as the one suffered this week by former Vice President Dick Cheney, is not rare because of advances in modern medicine, cardiologists say.
"It's something we see often enough that we're not surprised about it," said Dr. Cam Patterson, chief of cardiology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, who is not involved in Cheney's care. "But it's also an indication that somebody has some luck on their side."
More patients are surviving multiple heart attacks because of procedures and drugs, Patterson said.
"We have patients who are taken to the [cardiac catheterization labs] to have blocked arteries opened up," he said. "We have stents to keep blocked arteries opened and high-potency drugs like statins that protect against risk factors that make heart disease progress rapidly."
Although these options help heart disease patients, they may not prevent another heart attack. Patients who've suffered a heart attack usually have more blockages in other vessels that weren't problematic earlier. But over time, the blockage builds and could cause future heart attacks, doctors said.
Cheney, 69, went to the George Washington University Hospital after experiencing chest pains Monday and underwent a stress test and a heart catheterization, according to his office.
In a cardiac catheterization, a thin, flexible tube is threaded into the heart, usually from the groin or the arm, to examine blood pressure within the heart and how much oxygen is in the blood.
Cheney has a long history of heart problems. He suffered his first heart attack in 1978, when he was 37.
He had his second heart attack in 1984 and a third in 1988 and underwent a quadruple bypass surgery to unblock his arteries. Shortly after Cheney was elected vice president in November 2000, he had a fourth heart attack and received a stent to open an artery.
In some cases, even patients who follow instructions do not respond to therapies and drugs, and they continue to get heart attacks, said Dr. Randall Starling, vice chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, who also is not involved in Cheney's care.
"I'd like to believe that if patients take their meds, exercise, they're on a great diet, they reduce their risk," he said. "But unfortunately, there are patients who have progressive disease even by following all their doctor's orders. That's where some of the genetics get into things."
In 2001, doctors implanted a monitoring device to keep track of Cheney's heart rhythm and slow it down if necessary. In 2008, he underwent a procedure to restore his heart to a normal rhythm after doctors found that he was experiencing a recurrence of the condition, known as atrial fibrillation.
Since Cheney left office in 2009, the former vice president has remained visible, appearing on political talk shows, most recently on ABC's "This Week," where he was highly critical of President Obama's policies.
Cheney is expected to be discharged from the hospital in the next day or two, according to his office.
This month, former President Clinton was also hospitalized briefly because of a heart problem. Clinton received two stents to restore blood flow to a coronary artery after doctors discovered blockage.
The two have heart disease. This condition is the leading cause of death in the United States; more than 630,000 people die each year from it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Having the kind of medical care that Clinton and Cheney receive increases the chances of the patient's survival.
"There is very strong data that shows both access to care and socioeconomic status has marked impact on outcomes with people with heart disease," said Patterson, director of the UNC McAllister Heart Institute.
And even after several heart attacks, someone like Cheney can continue to live an active life.
"If his heart function remains strong, he's got good medical care and is taking care of risk factors, he can be in very good shape," Patterson said. [rc]
CNN's John King contributed to this report.
© 2010 Cable News Network
USA: The original playground for America's elderly
. .
SUN CITY, Arizona / BBC News / February 23, 2010
By Kevin Connolly
BBC News, Sun City
I forget for the moment who it was that described jazz and animation as the only two original American art forms but it does not matter, because they are wrong.
Whoever it was forgot barbershop singing - the sweet, soaring blending of four-part harmonies that can instantly conjure the mood of the United States from sometime before World War I.
The Rainbow Quartet is Sun City's very own barbershop group
It is a long-vanished age of course, perhaps it never really existed at all, when American prosperity was bathed in "the light of the silvery moon" and the only stress a fellow felt came from scheming how to snatch a kiss from his "Coney Island baby".
But it seemed somehow appropriate that when we travelled to Sun City, Arizona to mark the 50th anniversary of one of America's most important retirement communities, we should run into the Rainbow Quartet - whose energy and melodic precision belie the fact their combined age is well above 300.
Self-made man
Here is a little clip of the boys in action, four friends enjoying precisely the kind of active retirement Sun City was always meant to provide.
It is only fair to point out by the way, they do not actually remember America before WWI. But they are all military veterans and one of the guys bidding his "Coney Island girl" a sweet farewell is a Vietnam-era fighter pilot.
The four singers were young men starting in their working lives when the American builder and businessman Del Webb started thinking about creating a new kind of town for retired people.
Mr Webb, a self-made millionaire, could fairly be described as one of the architects of the modern United States.
Mob rule
He put up the usual homes and hospitals, of course, but also built such quintessential bits of Americana as major league baseball stadiums and the reinforced concrete silos that housed Minuteman nuclear missiles in the depths of the Cold War.
The area was not much more than a desert in 1959
At one point he even found himself building a casino in Las Vegas for the gangster Bugsy Siegel. The story goes that when he expressed concern at finding himself doing business with the mafia, Mr Siegel reassured him with the grimly prophetic words: "Don't worry, we only shoot each other". This was a few weeks before Mr Siegel was indeed shot by his business rivals - or possibly his partners - in the gaming industry.
Mr Webb though always felt Sun City was his greatest achievement, perhaps because he did more than any other individual to change the perception of what it meant to be retired.
'Country club life'
He once told the American talk show host Merv Griffin: "When I go there, people come up to me and put their arms around me and say, 'Mr Webb you saved my life, my husband and I came from Chicago and we never had a country club life and now we come down here and we're living like kings'."
A "shoplifter" of a different kind
Before he came along, retirement tended to involve remaining in or near the town where you spent your working life, helping out with the grandchildren and, in the words of one Sun City resident, "waiting to die".
Mr Webb's experts told him Americans would not move away from their families, but his instincts told him elderly Americans basking in the prosperity of the Eisenhower era, were ready for something new.
Edson Allen, from the Sun City Historical Society, puts it like this: "He sent people out to interview retirees in Florida and they found out that, yeah, people would move away... women told him, 'I raised my own children, and I don't want to have to raise my grandchildren'."
Mr Webb understood how to market a new idea.
Crowd magnet
When the first phase of Sun City opened on 1 January 1960, he had five completed homes, a golf course and a fully-stocked supermarket ready for the crowds to inspect. And the crowds came.
His-and-hers golf carts are par for the course in Sun City
Legend has it 100,000 people dropped in to take a look at the model of the retirement community. But whatever the exact number, it was clear that Mr Webb had a hit on his hands.
A contemporary photograph shows crowds filling the streets.
And by the end of that first weekend, 237 homes had been sold at a price of $2.5m. That was quite a return on Mr Webb's initial outlay of $1.5m.
The Sun City Historical Society has preserved one of the first show homes complete with its pink kitchen decor, giant refrigerator and his-and-hers golf carts parked under a Sun awning.
Cart mania
The golf cart remains the mode of conveyance of choice for many Sun City folk. I have never seen golf-cart warning signs on highways before, but you can see how they became necessary here.
Transportation the Sun City way
And the appeal of Sun City for folks considering retirement now, remains pretty much the same as it was back in 1960, as the America of Eisenhower was preparing to give way to the America of Kennedy.
There is a sense that you are leaving the cares of an old life behind for a retirement which seems like a summer vacation that death alone can end.
And there is the climate. Arizona can be brutally hot in the summer, not for nothing is the state plant the cactus flower and the state flag a riot of colour in which the livid rays of the midday sun feature prominently.
But in winter and spring it is wonderfully warm and sunny, the perfect reward for lives well lived in the snows of Montana or Minnesota and the industrial cold of Pennsylvania or New York.
Sunny prospects
Paul Herrmann, the executive director of the visitor centre at Sun City, says there are similarities between living in extremes of hot and cold - you would not stand around chatting to the neighbours when the temperature is 30 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing and you would not do it when it is much more than 100 above either.
Sun City is still essentially a desert town
But as Paul points out when you ask him whether it is better to be too hot or too cold: "You don't have to shovel heat".
Sun City has spawned countless imitations around the United States and many of them for obvious reasons are in the Sun Belt of the South.
But not all. There are retirement communities these days right up in the north-eastern United States, not far from the old towns and cities which the original snowbirds were fleeing.
And that, I guess, sums up the appeal of Sun City and places like it. The climate is important, but more important still is the chance to enjoy a period of leisure at the end of your life.
There are plenty of Americans who cannot afford this type of retirement of course. Americans stranded by the collapse of company pension schemes who find themselves flipping burgers or waiting tables well into their seventies and beyond.
American lifestyle
But Lori Petersen who came to Sun City with her husband from Minnesota captured the essence of this lifestyle for those can afford it.
She told me that "It's the perfect beginning to the end of your life.
"When I was a kid we went to the playground every day in the summer and now I'm retired, I go to the playgrounds again, and I absolutely love it."
Sun City is proud of its status as the original retirement community
I got the same signal, too from the Barbershop boys, from the retired people in the gym and from just about everyone we met as we travelled through Sun City and it is a strangely cheering signal in an age where perhaps we fear ageing and death a little too much.
As Lori says, there is no reason why the end of your life cannot be the time of your life. [rc]
© BBC MMX
I forget for the moment who it was that described jazz and animation as the only two original American art forms but it does not matter, because they are wrong.
Whoever it was forgot barbershop singing - the sweet, soaring blending of four-part harmonies that can instantly conjure the mood of the United States from sometime before World War I.
The Rainbow Quartet is Sun City's very own barbershop group
It is a long-vanished age of course, perhaps it never really existed at all, when American prosperity was bathed in "the light of the silvery moon" and the only stress a fellow felt came from scheming how to snatch a kiss from his "Coney Island baby".
But it seemed somehow appropriate that when we travelled to Sun City, Arizona to mark the 50th anniversary of one of America's most important retirement communities, we should run into the Rainbow Quartet - whose energy and melodic precision belie the fact their combined age is well above 300.
Self-made man
Here is a little clip of the boys in action, four friends enjoying precisely the kind of active retirement Sun City was always meant to provide.
It is only fair to point out by the way, they do not actually remember America before WWI. But they are all military veterans and one of the guys bidding his "Coney Island girl" a sweet farewell is a Vietnam-era fighter pilot.
The four singers were young men starting in their working lives when the American builder and businessman Del Webb started thinking about creating a new kind of town for retired people.
Mr Webb, a self-made millionaire, could fairly be described as one of the architects of the modern United States.
Mob rule
He put up the usual homes and hospitals, of course, but also built such quintessential bits of Americana as major league baseball stadiums and the reinforced concrete silos that housed Minuteman nuclear missiles in the depths of the Cold War.
The area was not much more than a desert in 1959
At one point he even found himself building a casino in Las Vegas for the gangster Bugsy Siegel. The story goes that when he expressed concern at finding himself doing business with the mafia, Mr Siegel reassured him with the grimly prophetic words: "Don't worry, we only shoot each other". This was a few weeks before Mr Siegel was indeed shot by his business rivals - or possibly his partners - in the gaming industry.
Mr Webb though always felt Sun City was his greatest achievement, perhaps because he did more than any other individual to change the perception of what it meant to be retired.
'Country club life'
He once told the American talk show host Merv Griffin: "When I go there, people come up to me and put their arms around me and say, 'Mr Webb you saved my life, my husband and I came from Chicago and we never had a country club life and now we come down here and we're living like kings'."
A "shoplifter" of a different kind
Before he came along, retirement tended to involve remaining in or near the town where you spent your working life, helping out with the grandchildren and, in the words of one Sun City resident, "waiting to die".
Mr Webb's experts told him Americans would not move away from their families, but his instincts told him elderly Americans basking in the prosperity of the Eisenhower era, were ready for something new.
Edson Allen, from the Sun City Historical Society, puts it like this: "He sent people out to interview retirees in Florida and they found out that, yeah, people would move away... women told him, 'I raised my own children, and I don't want to have to raise my grandchildren'."
Mr Webb understood how to market a new idea.
Crowd magnet
When the first phase of Sun City opened on 1 January 1960, he had five completed homes, a golf course and a fully-stocked supermarket ready for the crowds to inspect. And the crowds came.
His-and-hers golf carts are par for the course in Sun City
Legend has it 100,000 people dropped in to take a look at the model of the retirement community. But whatever the exact number, it was clear that Mr Webb had a hit on his hands.
A contemporary photograph shows crowds filling the streets.
And by the end of that first weekend, 237 homes had been sold at a price of $2.5m. That was quite a return on Mr Webb's initial outlay of $1.5m.
The Sun City Historical Society has preserved one of the first show homes complete with its pink kitchen decor, giant refrigerator and his-and-hers golf carts parked under a Sun awning.
Cart mania
The golf cart remains the mode of conveyance of choice for many Sun City folk. I have never seen golf-cart warning signs on highways before, but you can see how they became necessary here.
Transportation the Sun City way
And the appeal of Sun City for folks considering retirement now, remains pretty much the same as it was back in 1960, as the America of Eisenhower was preparing to give way to the America of Kennedy.
There is a sense that you are leaving the cares of an old life behind for a retirement which seems like a summer vacation that death alone can end.
And there is the climate. Arizona can be brutally hot in the summer, not for nothing is the state plant the cactus flower and the state flag a riot of colour in which the livid rays of the midday sun feature prominently.
But in winter and spring it is wonderfully warm and sunny, the perfect reward for lives well lived in the snows of Montana or Minnesota and the industrial cold of Pennsylvania or New York.
Sunny prospects
Paul Herrmann, the executive director of the visitor centre at Sun City, says there are similarities between living in extremes of hot and cold - you would not stand around chatting to the neighbours when the temperature is 30 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing and you would not do it when it is much more than 100 above either.
Sun City is still essentially a desert town
But as Paul points out when you ask him whether it is better to be too hot or too cold: "You don't have to shovel heat".
Sun City has spawned countless imitations around the United States and many of them for obvious reasons are in the Sun Belt of the South.
But not all. There are retirement communities these days right up in the north-eastern United States, not far from the old towns and cities which the original snowbirds were fleeing.
And that, I guess, sums up the appeal of Sun City and places like it. The climate is important, but more important still is the chance to enjoy a period of leisure at the end of your life.
There are plenty of Americans who cannot afford this type of retirement of course. Americans stranded by the collapse of company pension schemes who find themselves flipping burgers or waiting tables well into their seventies and beyond.
American lifestyle
But Lori Petersen who came to Sun City with her husband from Minnesota captured the essence of this lifestyle for those can afford it.
She told me that "It's the perfect beginning to the end of your life.
"When I was a kid we went to the playground every day in the summer and now I'm retired, I go to the playgrounds again, and I absolutely love it."
Sun City is proud of its status as the original retirement community
I got the same signal, too from the Barbershop boys, from the retired people in the gym and from just about everyone we met as we travelled through Sun City and it is a strangely cheering signal in an age where perhaps we fear ageing and death a little too much.
As Lori says, there is no reason why the end of your life cannot be the time of your life. [rc]
© BBC MMX
CHINA: Singing heals the brain
.
SHANGHAI, China / The Shanghai Daily / Health / February 23, 2010
By Randolph E. Schmid
SINGING and musical training enhances the brain's ability to do other things. New research shows music therapy may help some stroke victims speak and improve communication in children with dyslexia and autism. Randolph E. Schmid reports.
Words and music - such natural partners that it seems obvious they go together. Now science is confirming that those abilities are linked in the brain, a finding that might even lead to better stroke treatments.
Illustration courtesy: Electronic Beats
Studies have found overlap in the brain's processing of language and instrumental music, and new research suggests that intensive musical therapy may help improve speech in stroke patients, researchers reported last Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In addition, researchers say, music education can help children with developmental dyslexia or autism more accurately use speech.
People who have suffered a severe stroke on the left side of the brain and cannot speak can sometimes learn to communicate through singing, Gottfried Schlaug, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, told the meeting.
"Music making is a multi-sensory experience, activating links to several parts of the brain," Schlaug says.
Schlaug showed a video of one patient who at first could only make meaningless sounds learning to say "I am thirsty," by singing the words, and another was able to sing "happy birthday."
"If you have someone who is nonverbal and they can say there are hungry or thirsty or ask where the bathroom is, that's an improvement," Schlaug says of what is called Melodic Intonation Therapy.
As long as a century ago there were reports of stroke victims who couldn't talk but who could sing, he says. Now, they are doing trials to see if music can be used as a therapy.
But, he cautioned, the work is geared toward people who have had a severe stroke on the left side of the brain and the therapy can take a long time.
Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University, reported that new studies show that musical training enhances the brain's ability to do other things.
For example, she says, the trained brain gets better at detecting patterns in sounds, so that musicians are better at picking out the voice of a friend in a noisy restaurant.
"Musical experience improves abilities important in daily life," she says. "Playing an instrument may help youngsters better process speech in noisy classrooms and more accurately interpret the nuances of language that are conveyed by subtle changes in the human voice."
When people first learn to talk and when they talk to babies they often use musical patterns in their speech, she notes.
"People's hearing systems are fine-tuned by the experiences they've had with sound throughout their lives. Music training is not only beneficial for processing music stimuli. We've found that years of music training may also improve how sounds are processed for language and emotion," Kraus says in prepared remarks.
She says "the very responses that are enhanced in musicians are deficient in clinical populations such as children with developmental dyslexia and autism."
New studies of brain waves, she notes, mimic the patterns of sound that the individual hears. Whether speech or instrumental music is heard, it is actually possible to record the brain's electronic waves and play them back to hear the sound - which she demonstrated with a series of recordings.
Aniruddh D. Patel of The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California, says new studies show that music doesn't involve just hot spots in the brain, but large swaths on both sides of the brain.
"Nouns and verbs are very different from tones and chords and harmony, but the parts of the brain that process them overlap," he says. [rc]
Copyright © 2001-2010 Shanghai Daily Publishing House
Words and music - such natural partners that it seems obvious they go together. Now science is confirming that those abilities are linked in the brain, a finding that might even lead to better stroke treatments.
Illustration courtesy: Electronic Beats
Studies have found overlap in the brain's processing of language and instrumental music, and new research suggests that intensive musical therapy may help improve speech in stroke patients, researchers reported last Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In addition, researchers say, music education can help children with developmental dyslexia or autism more accurately use speech.
People who have suffered a severe stroke on the left side of the brain and cannot speak can sometimes learn to communicate through singing, Gottfried Schlaug, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, told the meeting.
"Music making is a multi-sensory experience, activating links to several parts of the brain," Schlaug says.
Schlaug showed a video of one patient who at first could only make meaningless sounds learning to say "I am thirsty," by singing the words, and another was able to sing "happy birthday."
"If you have someone who is nonverbal and they can say there are hungry or thirsty or ask where the bathroom is, that's an improvement," Schlaug says of what is called Melodic Intonation Therapy.
As long as a century ago there were reports of stroke victims who couldn't talk but who could sing, he says. Now, they are doing trials to see if music can be used as a therapy.
But, he cautioned, the work is geared toward people who have had a severe stroke on the left side of the brain and the therapy can take a long time.
Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University, reported that new studies show that musical training enhances the brain's ability to do other things.
For example, she says, the trained brain gets better at detecting patterns in sounds, so that musicians are better at picking out the voice of a friend in a noisy restaurant.
"Musical experience improves abilities important in daily life," she says. "Playing an instrument may help youngsters better process speech in noisy classrooms and more accurately interpret the nuances of language that are conveyed by subtle changes in the human voice."
When people first learn to talk and when they talk to babies they often use musical patterns in their speech, she notes.
"People's hearing systems are fine-tuned by the experiences they've had with sound throughout their lives. Music training is not only beneficial for processing music stimuli. We've found that years of music training may also improve how sounds are processed for language and emotion," Kraus says in prepared remarks.
She says "the very responses that are enhanced in musicians are deficient in clinical populations such as children with developmental dyslexia and autism."
New studies of brain waves, she notes, mimic the patterns of sound that the individual hears. Whether speech or instrumental music is heard, it is actually possible to record the brain's electronic waves and play them back to hear the sound - which she demonstrated with a series of recordings.
Aniruddh D. Patel of The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California, says new studies show that music doesn't involve just hot spots in the brain, but large swaths on both sides of the brain.
"Nouns and verbs are very different from tones and chords and harmony, but the parts of the brain that process them overlap," he says. [rc]
Copyright © 2001-2010 Shanghai Daily Publishing House
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