MEL WALSH--LIFE & HEALTH AFTER 60

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Mouse Messages: What Mice Tell Us About Staying Young

Mice must have tiny voices, but there are some up in Canada who recently spoke out loud and clear. This tribe of mice lived in the lab of Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Genetically altered, these little guys were bred to age prematurely. And so they did.

As recently reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by the age of one year, most of them had died after showing the typical signs of age. They grew frail, with diminished brain and muscle mass, patchy hair and shrunken gonads. (Even the sex organs aged prematurely.)

But Dr. Mark took some mice from this same group and at the age of 3 months---the human equivalent of 20 years--- had them exercising very briskly three times a week for 45 minutes. At 8 months, the unexercised mice were ready for Mouse Medicare. But the ones who were doing mini-marathons were still young, inside and out. Their fur was great and most of their muscle and brain mass was retained. Exercise had made the difference and a huge one it was. Though they were genetically programmed to age prematurely, they did not.

Dr. Mark admits the exact threshold of exercise needed to change the course of aging is not known, but anything is better than nothing. He also said his graduate students were very interested in the fact that the exercising mice had gonads that didn’t shrink.

Just sayin’.

Many other studies also show that exercise is an important key to remaining young so I will stop writing about messages from the mouse world and go out for a speed walk. Over time, I’ll see what shrinks and what doesn’t. 

Big thank you to Dr. Mark and his mice.

Photo and Crocheted Mouse by Wednesday Elf/Flickr

 

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A VERY FISHY TALE

How long has it been since you kissed a fish?

Never? Well, me neither, but both of us better get started. You kiss the mackerel  and I’ll do the salmon.

But why this demo of affection? Because more and more it looks as if the oils from fish are protective against the disease we all dread---Alzheimer’s Disease, known in the aging biz as AD. (AD, a brain disease, causes memory loss, personality change and in the bitter end, death.) So the good news is that research keeps piling up data indicating oils in fish are protective against AD. And there is no bad news about the fish oil-AD connection---which is why I am kissing the first fish I meet today.

 

So Why Are Such Important Facts Obscure?

You may not have heard much about fish oils preventing or delaying AD because fish oil is not a patentable drug. Nobody on earth invented fish and so no drug company can claim a patent which would corner the market. With no great financial rewards in sight, no drug company is going to advertise it on TV or spend the money to urge you to ask your doctor if fish is right for you.

What’s more, the fishing industry---the basic purveyor of finny critters and their oils---can’t promote health benefits in the US unless they conduct wildly expensive drug trials to satisfy the FDA. And then, after all the trouble and expense of trials to prove the efficacy of fish oil, they couldn’t patent the product either. So the fish industry is silent too.

But there’s good news: research is still being conducted, often funded by your tax dollars, at the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Here are some of the facts they have turned up thanks to the money we send them.

 

The Up-To-The Minute Research

            From the current issue of the Journal of Neuroscience comes the info that the omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) found in fish oil increases the production of LR11, a protein found at reduced levels in people with AD and “which is known to destroy the plaques associated with the disease”. So low levels of LR11 may be a factor in causing the disease. To me, this means I might go kiss a fish or rather eat it and maybe get some LR11 into my brain.   

Salmon and mackerel seem to be the oily fish most recommended by nutritionists which may give new meaning to the expression “Holy Mackerel’”. Anything that can delay or prevent AD is indeed holy.

Now the results in the journal above were achieved on rats and mice and I was curious to check out the results in the human world. What country eats the most fish? Japan by far---three times as much as North Americans. And what is the incidence of AD in Japan? Half of what it is here.

So while all the answers about AD are not yet known, the above is enough for me to grill up salmon more often---and, as the people at the Monterey Aquarium tell us, to make it wild salmon.

 

Words for the Wise

            There are many extra added attractions to fish which is why the American Heart Association tells us to eat fish at least twice a week. Some of the latest research focuses on mood. It indicates fish may help elevate mood and fight depression. One study at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that people with higher levels of omega-3 in their blood were “more agreeable.” 

            I'm sending some salmon to Congress.

 

THE MANY PRIME TIMES OF LIFE

            Hey there, tell me---are you in your prime, coming up on it or way past—with prime time in the rear view mirror of life?

            No matter what your answer is, I’m going to argue. Me, I think we are always in some kind of prime time. Yes, there is the physical prime of life, which we never notice until we’re past it. But there are other kinds of prime times and I think they decorate the entire life span.

            For instance, there is a prime time, not only for our physical selves, but also for our mental and emotional selves. Plus there’s a prime time professionally---when we really kick butt---and a prime time for wisdom---when we know the limits of kicking butt. There’s a prime time for money and there is surely a sexual prime time---that’s the era when you fooled around with Tantric stuff on Saturday nights. There’s even a prime time for practical know-how—life skills as they call it in school. (I used to know how to change a tire, fix a toilet, make puff pastry---all these skills now departed.) 

 From One Idea of Prime Time to Many

             It’s satisfying and fun to reflect on your various prime times. Here’s a beginning list to kick off ideas about the highlights of your own life course.

Physical: Though we are supposed to hit our physical high before 30, much depends on how we take care of ourselves. If, in retirement, you can hike longer and stronger than when you were a fixture at the office, today might be your physical prime time and it’s one you earned rather than one you were handed just because you were young.

Mental:  Though the stereotype is that older people lose brainpower, I see very few older people with bubblegum between their ears. We older adults know better than to worship Britney. I say the quality and breadth of thinking probably improves over a lifetime---making a long, long prime time for our brains. And no, I don’t care if you forget names. You forgot them at fraternity parties.

Emotional:  Older people are in their emotional prime time. They are more in control of themselves, less hormonal, less likely to waste steam-heated words on trivia, on the small irritations I call “cosmic dandruff”. Most older adults know when to brush things off. Exception: Politics---in which case all bets are off and a hotted up senior, high on indignation, can make no claims about enjoying the serenity of emotional prime time. But hotheads can re-claim the calm ground by the rationing of first-person opinions, by the vigorous use of the ballot, and then letting the drips fall where they may. Also, they can say ohmmm when the news comes on and not let CNN shake their chakras.

Money: Some lucky older people hit their prime money time now---they inherit, they cash out homes, they cash in on retirement savings. Other older people don’t have the material goods, but develop keen money management skills, making their way on Social Security and maybe a pension. Either way, older adults can enjoy a prime time when it comes to money: i.e., they finally have a nest egg or if the egg got cracked in this recession, they may become world-class clever about getting bang for the bucks they do spend.  If put in charge of the national budget, widows on a pension would run the US government into the black.

Kneeophilia: In Love with Titanium

Let us now praise titanium. And we shall not forget cobalt and chrome alloy. Then, of course, we shall also give thanks to ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene.

For these are the materials that new knees are made of and new knees can mean a new life. Knee replacements typically release people from pain (think bone-on-bone crunching) and from restricted mobility (think limping and cane.) It’s as if patients have had a successful trip to Lourdes without ever getting on a plane. About 95% of patients with a first knee operation have no pain anymore or very little of it.

Now it’s one thing to know the stats, but even more dramatic to see older people saved from a life of limping and too many pain pills. Most cheering of all is watching older people swing dance as they did at a recent local concert featuring the bright beat of Glenn Miller. Yes, some mid-life people took to the dance floor, but they were outnumbered by us swinging geezers. My mate, Cranky Pants, took to the dance floor just 18 days post-op with his new knee. (He has not yet named it, but I am lobbying for the name Fred---as in Astaire.)

OK, so my man didn’t swing me over his head, but he was dancing to celebrate his titanium and polyethylene and maybe even the substance that held the knee together and that would be methacrylate, a bone glue that is well worth dancing about. And I, his partner, a woman who had to go through airports in a wheelchair 10 years ago, was out there dancing with him. My dancing days are not over, but starting again. That’s due to my titanium hips, which get me searched, wanded and patted down at airports now, but a wanding is better than a wheelchair.

The Downside

            You already know there are risks to any surgery---risks associated with anesthesia and blood loss, plus the possibility of blood clots, infection and other bugaboos. But one way to ensure the best possible outcome is to find the most accomplished and experienced joint replacement surgeons. Our surgeon did 11 replacements in that one day.

Another is to do everything you are told to do---everything. Take the anti-clotting meds. Wear the anti-clotting stockings after surgery. This is no time to resist authority. “They” know more than you do.

            Still another way to ensure success is to go to a hospital or ward that specializes in joint replacement. Cranky Pants was at a center that did nothing but joint replacements. The post-op care was highly specialized and knowledgeable. Also, post-op classes and group rehab were done each day so the client and the designated family coach---think designated nagger---could not only meet and greet other patients, they were in a class that educated all there about fast recoveries and post-operative success.

Age seemed no barrier to surgery. In class, we met a 96-year-old woman with a new knee. She was tired of limping around her house and wanted to get out more. Volunteers even provided a buffet meal to encourage everybody to walk the corridors to the lunch room with their brand new replacements. All nice treatment, of course, but it was great to be out of there by the third day having just spent two nights in a hospital setting.

 

            Pain. Alas, some pain is part of post-op life, especially with knee replacements. As for the op itself, it’s always some form of la-la land, but the trick is to be smart enough to switch over to the post-op pain meds as the anesthesia wears off. So pay attention. Nobody knows your pain level better than you do. Speak up about it. Macho does not work as a pain reliever.

Worry about getting “addicted” to pain meds seems to have subsided in the medical community we encountered and the new thrust is---take what you need to get by without pain. Just be sure you are pain-medicated before those first tentative walks and before beginning those physical therapy exercise sessions.

Rehab

            Every joint replacement procedure has five stages: 1. Worry and pain. 2. More worry and pain. 3. The op itself. 4. The hospital/center stay. 5. Rehab, which means doing all the exercises recommended, overseen by a home-visiting therapist and later, by an out-patient therapist. If you don’t do these, you may not get sufficient range of motion in the new joint. So move it.

Words to the Wise

            Read more about knee and hip replacements at www.johntdearbornmd.com. Click on Patient Education and Research to get your questions answered and to find out more about less invasive surgery and the Washington Center for Joint Replacement. They also offer a good set of links to other sources of information. For specialty centers in your area, google: joint replacement clinic or orthopedic clinic. Also, local hospitals often offer education classes to the public about joint replacement options.

 

 

LAUGHTER AND CONFESSIONS

First, the confession: I have not been posting  because I've moved again, so I am still slightly Mayflowered out.

by Paolo Camera/Flickr

 

And then I also need to solve the mess I made as an avowed blogaholic---someone who makes blogs and makes so many of them loaded with so many posts that I no longer know which blog is which, where I should post or even why. (I do this excessively because it's fun. Go figure.)

As of this morning, I counted 13 blogs on Wordpress and Typepad along with too many domain names stored up at Network Solutions. I made blogs for Cranky Pants, my grandkid posse and my house, for my rebel side, my health writer side and the self who is a newspaper columnist. I also have one for business writing---Words 2 Go---that's my corporate communicator who is now ghost-writing business blogs---and though I have not yet made one for my plants, that might be coming.

As penance for going AWOL and as a plea for forgiveness, I hereby offer the humor of one T. Marni Vos, a speaker with a gilt-edged sense of fun. (If you like this compilation, check out her website---www.tmarnivos.com.) I know from experience that Marni can even make a dying man laugh. She mightily amused our friend, Fred,  shortly before he passed last December.

So heeeere's Marni's roundup on the recession....

The Recession hits everybody.....

I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

Wives are having sex with their husbands because they can't afford batteries.

CEO's are now playing miniature golf.

Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.

A stripper was killed when her audience showered her with rolls of pennies while she danced.

I saw a Mormon polygamist with only one wife.

If the bank returns your check marked "Insufficient Funds," you call them and ask if they meant you or them.

McDonald's is selling the 1/4 ouncer.

Angelina Jolie adopted a child from America ...

Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children's names.

My cousin had an exorcism but couldn't afford to pay for it, and they re-possessed her!

A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico .

A picture is now only worth 200 words.

When Bill and Hillary travel together, they now have to share a room.

The Treasure Island casino in Las Vegas is now managed by Somali pirates.

Congress says they are looking into this Bernard Madoff scandal. Oh Great! The guy who made $50 Billion disappear is being investigated by the people who made $1.5 Trillion disappear!

And, finally...

I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc., I called the Suicide Hotline. I got a call center in Pakistan , and when I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck.

From Mel--stay warm and happy... and know I am busy unclogging the blogs.

 

SABOTAGED BY SWEETENERS? THE DOC WHO THINKS SO

    This morning I got a new best friend. He doesn’t know it, but it’s Dr. Richard Daines, the State Health Commissioner of New York. I read that he is sticking his neck out, an unusual position for a public official, trying to get through a tax on sugary sodas. The proposed tax would presumably discourage the consumption of unhealthy drinks and also---I figured this one out myself---help the strained state treasury.

To understand why Doc Daines has a passion for this issue, you have to answer this question: how well do know your soda? Well, according to the Mayo Clinic, my go-to folks for medical info, if you take 8 teaspoons of sugar and add it to something liquid, you would approximate the sweeteners in a 12-ounce can of soda.  Think deeply on this image. Consider adding 8 teaspoons of sugar to your cup of coffee or tea. You wouldn’t do it, but with a can of soda, the soft drink industry does it for you---130 calories, 8 teaspoons.

Specifically, why does Doc Daines worry?

He and many others think that sugary soft drinks contribute to obesity, one of the imperative national health issues and certainly, for many of us, a private health issue too. The American Heart Association says that women should consume no more than 100 calories a day of added sugar----men, no more than 150 calories a day.

 But guess what we really do? Most Americans get more than 22 teaspoons a day of added sugar. That’s 355 calories and, as the Mayo Clinic report says, this “far exceeds USDA guidelines and the American Heart Association recommendations.” I would add that it takes 3500 excess calories to make a pound of weight gain, so drink a soda a day for ten days and voila, you have your weight gain right there.

Is diet soda an answer?

Well, it’s not a health drink and some studies suggest that drinking more than one soda a day---diet or regular---increases your risk of obesity and related health problems such as diabetes. Me, I’m trying to get off the soda bandwagon altogether. I have switched to---are you ready?---water, the original Garden of Eden beverage. I also drink teas and my own version of orangeade: ½ inch of orange juice in a glass and fill the rest with water. These actions can save on your calorie budget. Ditto for your household budget.

The culture that catches you and yours

We are surrounded with the siren calls and marketing snares of the soft drink industry. Entire aisles of supermarkets are devoted to soft drinks. Fast food places bundle soft drink specials with your burger and fries. Even gas stations are sugar sinkholes---whole walls of them devoted to sugary drinks. And that says nothing about the advertising or the fact that soft drink manufacturers have bought influence into the nutritional centers of universities, the source of many studies that underlie public health recommendations. Just last month the Yale School of Medicine accepted money from PepsiCo to do “nutritional science research”.

Now, if you think this sweet soda stuff isn’t your issue—you don’t drink them----remember, as Doc Daines does, that this is a public health issue, which means, among other things, that the public may end up paying one way or the other for the treatment of fellow citizens who are downing sodas as their mealtime drink, constant drinkholder choice, gas station watering selection and regular “treat”.

If you don’t believe any of this, when you go to the supermarket, notice the relationship between what people have in their carts and what those people look like. Lurk in the soda aisles. I won’t say more. Just try it. To me, that connection is both a warning and an inspiration.

 And if you see Cranky Pants with his cart, tell him this: Put those things back!

 

Digital Missionary Work: Converting Computerless Seniors

I feel sorry for people who are netless, webless and otherwise suffering from computer deprivation. What they're missing is immense—the world at their fingertips. Almost anything you want to know, see, read, watch---it’s there on the World Wide Web.

And yet, and yet---some older people who were not online witnesses to the birth of the Internet in the early 1990’s have not caught up or caught on to its magical powers.

What's needed are Internet missionaries---people (maybe you) who will try to convert the computerless into net surfers whose lives are lit up by three letters: WWW. Even people who never learned to type can learn how to download videos and browse YouTube.

But how do you motivate a skeptical older person to get a computer life? The most powerful motivator: Staying in touch with family---not being left out of the family circle. This means learning to how to use email and download photos and videos of the family or even to use Skype or Facebook. Bottom line: The promise of closer family ties certainly motivates most of us with adult children and grandchildren.

I find just showing the computer-suspicious what’s possible on my laptop can get them interested. Then telling them about the classes available at senior centers or community college shows them an open door to a new world. Volunteering to help out when they get frustrated or stuck---that’s another way to break through the fear barrier.

The other barrier is cost, but small Asus netbooks are under $400 now on Amazon. The warehouse stores and Walmart sell desktops for less than a weekend trip to a gambling casino. And it would be a generous act to help any neophyte set up the computer and the broadband service.

So that's the deal: If you want to add to the world of a valued older person, you could enlarge that world by a little computer missionary work. You will do good for sure. I don't know one person who ever regretted joining the Church of St. Digitalus. 

 

Sugar and Geezer Spice

    First, let’s do sugar….and take a quick look at the subject of pre-diabetes. Don’t run away now, because you may be pre-diabetic and don’t know it. An estimated 30 percent of Americans are pre-diabetic, which means their blood sugar levels are above normal, but have not yet reached the level of diabetes. Other names for this condition are metabolic syndrome, impaired fasting glucose and impaired glucose tolerance.

Risk factors include being overweight, inactive, over 45 and having high blood pressure. (Man, that describes a lot of us.) Excess fat and inactivity seem especially important as causes. Even inadequate sleep has been linked with the development of pre-diabetes: current recommendations are to make sure you get more than 5.5 hours a night.

Test indications

Your doc may have told you that you’re pre-diabetic if a fasting blood sugar test measured out at 100-125 mg/dL. If you test lower than 100, you’re considered normal, and if 126 or more, you are in blood sugar trouble.

The good news is that you can get those levels down and become post-pre-diabetic and yes, I made that name up, but it describes how you can reverse those bad blood sugar readings.

Getting back to normal

            It’s so simple to say and so hard to do: First, aim for 30 to 60 minutes of moderate activity a day. (The only way I get close to this ideal, other than walking, is to watch TV and dance around at the same time. A hilarious spectacle to be sure, but it works.) Second, if you are overweight, losing just 10 to 20 pounds will make a significant difference in your risk---so say the experts. Third, eat more healthy foods. You know what they are….the green leafies and other members of the plant kingdom, whole grains and lean proteins such as fish, unbreaded and unfried. (Can you say poaching, broiling or grilling?)

            As for treating pre-diabetes, you don’t have to over-worry about access to health care because you always have access to yourself and your own behavior---at least that’s what I tell myself. And here’s my other self-lecture as I look in the mirror:

            Health is the best health insurance.

So that’s pre-diabetes in a nutshell.

And now for something completely different…

The grand opening of The Geezer Dairies

            My job in this column is to write about health, but there’s so much more to say about adult life that I’ve started writing The Geezer Diaries on my blog. There’ll be at least a new column every week. This week there’s one entry about the stages of age and another about birthdays, yours and mine. And those curious about Cranky Pants can at last see him.  So visit when you can. Now would be good. I live at www.melwalsh.com or just google Mel Walsh to get there. The door is always open at The Geezer Diaries.