Many studies have found that a person’s social environment can impact his or her health. In fact, numerous studies have found that lonely people suffer a higher rate of mortality than people who are not socially isolated.

Researchers from UCLA took things a step further in a 2007 study in which they examined the biological impact that social isolation can have on the human body. The study was published in a 2007 issue of Genome Biology and found a distinct pattern in immune cells of people that are perpetually lonely.

Steve Cole, one of the researchers in the study, says that “What this study shows is that the biological impact of social isolation reaches down into some of our most basic internal processes the activity of our genes.” The differences in immune cell patterns between those seniors that were socially engaged and those that were not was found to be independent of other risk factors such as health status, age, weight, etc…

What does this mean for seniors and their families? First and foremost it points to the benefits of proactively planning ways to keep homebound seniors engaged with friends, family and people that they genuinely enjoy spending time with. While homecare and caregivers are a great start, seniors can often feel socially isolated even with people around them. Elders need more than homecare, what they need are people that can engage them in meaningful conversation and activities. Engage As You Age works with families to ensure that their parents or partners are engaged and having fun in-between visits from family and friends.

Click here for more studies on socialization and click here for some ideas on activities for seniors that are homebound.

Engage As You Age believes everyone deserves social interaction and enrichment — especially those who can’t easily (or ever) leave their homes or retirement communities. That’s why we pair talented, caring and intelligent Activity Specialists with isolated or immobile seniors. Because we know how important it is to have access to meaningful conversation and enriching learning opportunities.

This month, Medicare is finally taking notice that physical health care also can be provided at home.

The new healthcare plan soon rolls out a new program, Independence at Home, that will send doctors and nurse practitioners to check up and treat 10,000 of the most vulnerable seniors for whom leaving home is impossible and even dangerous.

To be eligible for the project, patients must have multiple chronic conditions and be unable to perform normal daily activities like bathing and dressing. They must also have been hospitalized or needed other high- cost care in the last year.

Independence at Home was inspired by successful house call programs in several cities, which demonstrated that they can keep seniors healthier while saving on health care costs by avoiding hospitalizations and emergency department visits.

While we commend Medicare and health care reformers for recognizing the importance of sending medical professionals into seniors’ homes, it’s still a reactive effort — that is, waiting until seniors are so frail and unhealthy that a medical house call is necessary.

We believe all seniors — and their caring families — would be better off with a more proactive approach. Engage As You Age is proactive about aging by providing the kind of social engagement and cognitive stimulation that keeps people healthier and happier.

Today, the first ever international conference on the aging process begins in Red Wing, Minn. The First Annual Mayo Clinic Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging Conference will pair clinicians and researchers in a four-day forum that runs through June 20. The intention is to provide a space for clinicians and researchers to share best practices and collaborate with one another.

International experts will descend on the small Minnesota town to share recent findings on why and how we age. The physicians and researchers present have spent their careers discovering  why people become frail as they age.

It’s quite a specialty. According to the Mayo Clinic, there are only about 7,500 geriatricians in the U.S. – 9,000, if you include geriatric psychiatrists.  It’s considered a minor specialty when you figure there are over 815,000 practicing physicians in the country.

The Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging is one of a kind. The goal of the center is to discover ways to delay the onset of age-related diseases and disabilities and, if they do occur, to find ways to make them more manageable.

Engage As You Age is excited about such research, specifically the Kogod Center’s work with independent living and aging in place. Researchers are developing technologies that are keeping elderly individuals as independent as possible, for as long as possible.

Even though we’re comparatively low-tech — with personalized visits that foster old-fashioned friendships and inspire new interests — we like the sound of that.

A 2010 University of Michigan Health System study found that seniors with untreated visual disorders are significantly more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Mary A.M. Rogers, Ph.D., a research assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, said in an article appearing on the University of Michigan website that “Visual problems can have serious consequences and are very common among the elderly, but many of them are not seeking treatment.”

Rogers and her collegaue, Kenneth M. Langa, M.D., Ph.D., professor of internal medical at the University of Michigan Medical School, used Medicare data for their study and found that seniors with poor vision who visited an opthalmologist at least once for an exam were 64 percent less likely to develop dementia.

More specifically, the study found that surgery to correct cataracts, glaucoma treatments and retinal disorder treatments were all significantly helpful in lowering the risk of dementia amongst the elderly.

It makes sense that this study found seniors receiving treatment for visual impairments and conditions were less likely to have dementia. An article summarizing the study in the University of Michigan website says that “proper vision is a requirement for many of the activities that have previously have been found to lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.” Many of these studies can be found on the Engage As You Age website’s “Why Engage” page.

Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, is something that Engage As You Age is very familiar with. Our social visits to seniors that live in assisted living facilities in San Francisco (and other parts of the San Francisco Bay Area) or those Bay Area seniors that want to remain in their own homes are a great way to keep an elder engaged.

In a study that tracked the emotions of 340,000 adults, Arthur Stone, a professor of psychiatry at Stony Brook University, recently found that happiness drops off in someone’s 20′s and increases again beginning in someone’s 50′s. Stone’s study was based on self report via a Gallup phone survey. His findings factored in the employment, marital and parental status of the participants and found a u-shaped pattern to happiness and aging.

Stone’s finding is in line with Stanford University Professor Laura Carstensen’s theory that younger people make decisions with a forward-looking, aspirational perspective. In a nutshell, young people are goal focused and not focused on your current well being. As you age, according to Carstensen, you shift from looking forward to focusing on smaller things in life like spending time with friends, family and engaging in volunteer work or hobbies. This shift in thought and energy tends to elicit more immediate satisfaction.

In an NPR interview about his study, Stone said that “you are least satisfied with life in middle age or around the 50s and that you are most satisfied in the 20′s and in the 70′s and early 80′s.”

At Engage As You Age we’ve found that Carstensen’s theory holds true with many of the seniors that we work with. The one thing we’d add is that sometimes the introduction of a new activity or conversation partner or friend makes a huge difference. That’s where we come in.

There will be up to 6 million centenarians in the world by the middle of this century! According to Dr. Walter M. Bortz II and Randall Stickrod, most of these centenarians will be healthy, functional and largely independent.

The Roadmap to 100, Bortz and Stickrod’s new book, utilizes new science and a thirty-year longitudinal study of centenarians and finds that:

• genetics play a smaller role in aging than previously thought
• senility, dementia, and other diseases of the elderly, are largely preventable (and not an inevitable consequence of aging)
• engagment, through sexual relationships, SOCIAL INTERACTION, and professional activity, is a KEY FACTOR in long, healthy lives
• physical fitness can recover at least 30 years of aging

At Engage As You Age we’re not at all surprised by their finding that social interaction for seniors is a key factor in living a longer and healthier life. Go to our website if you’d like to learn more about our social visits for seniors and also for more studies that highlight the benefits of social engagement for elders.

Bortz, the former co-chairman of the American Medical Association’s Task Force on Aging has also presided over the American Geriatric Society and published the book Dare to Be 100. In fact, Bortz is a great example of a senior engaging as they age. He recently ran his 40th marathon at the age of 80! His co-writer, Stickrod, is the founding executive publisher of Wired magazine.

The Roadmap to 100 recommends a steady diet of exercise and social engagement to make it to 100. They stress that while exercise can help you live longer, it is social engagement that allows you to live well. They find that meaningful relationships and a sense of purpose are common factors amongst centenarians.

Go to the LA Times for a more detailed book review or go to Amazon.com to buy a copy.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area you can go to Engage As You Age’s website to connect your mother, father, aunt, uncle or partner to someone that shares their passions.

Lyndsay Green’s new book You Could Live a Long Time: Are You Ready? features the insights that she gleaned from interviewing 40 seniors who were identified as “role models for aging” by the people who know them.

The 40 seniors interviewed in the book were Canadians ranging in age from 75 to 100. They were living in Victoria, Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, Kingston and Halifax. We’re pretty positive at Engage As You Age that her findings in Canada would be found south of the border in the United States and certainly throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Green’s main message in the book is that the key to happiness for elders lies not in the amount of money they have in their bank accounts but in the friendships that they cultivate and nurture. She adds that getting old shouldn’t be avoided but rather it should be embraced. Friendships are key for seniors that are widows, living alone or even those living with a partner.

Age is seen by Green to be not just a loss of youth but a new stage; a new opportunity.

A great quote by Green in an interview in The Globe and Mail says that “You can sit in a very nice, well-financed retirement home and be completely miserable because you don’t take the time to develop friendships and interests and engagements beyond yourself.”

At Engage As You Age we wholeheartedly agree with Green and believe that our social programs for homebound seniors that may reside at assisted living facilities or their own homes (wanting to age in place) help seniors connect with new friends that share their interests. Go to www.engageasyouage.com to learn more about Engage As You Age and feel free to contact us if you have any questions about Lyndsay Green’s book or any other books that address ways to age positively or programs for retirees.

The Washington Post recently published “A Guide for Making the Most of Old Age.” What stood out for us at Engage As You Age were the first two items in the guide:

1. Exercise your brain
2. Strong social ties can also help

For the brain fitness or exercising your brain section of the article it cites a 2009 Neurology journal article that studied 500 men and women over the age of 75. The elders or senior citizens (depending on which term you’re partial to) in the study that engaged in mentally stimulating activities like reading, doing puzzles or writing delayed cognitive decline compared to those that didn’t participate in activities like the aforementioned ones. We’re not clar on the specific article. Please get in touch with us if you’ve got a link to it. We’d love to read it!

For the strong social ties for seniors section of the article it cites the Harvard study (also referenced on Engage As You Age’s “Why Engage” section of our website) of the 1990s that found that those who were more socially engaged with family, friends and volunteer work were least likely to show declines in memory tests.

While this article doesn’t highlight any new findings, it does point towards the benefits of seniors being socially engaged with stimulating people and activities. That’s why Engage As You Age was created. We’d love to hear from anyone that can point towards a study that highlights the benefits of non-seniors engaging with elders in socially stimulating activities and conversation. Please contact us if you know of any studies that highlight that. We hear it every day from our activity specialists but haven’t read it in a scholarly article.

There are over 5 million Americans that are living with Alzheimer’s disease. A just released report from the Alzheimer’s Association, 2010 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures, finds that African-Americans and Hispanics are at the highest risk of developing the disease.
The Alzheimer’s Association found that African-Americans are nearly twice as likely as Caucasians to develop the disease while Hispanics were found to be 1.5 times more likely.

According to the study, much of the nationwide increase can be attributed to increasing blood pressure and diabetes nationwide (which increase the odds of developing Alzheimer’s in all populations).

“African-Americans and Hispanics are particularly vulnerable, because the proportion of these two risk factors is higher even still,” says Maria Carrillo, the Senior Director of Medical and Scientific Relations at the Alzheimer’s Assocation. “We can actually do something about this increased risk with better management of the conditions.”

The study also found that there will be 500,000 new cases of Alzheimer’s diagnosed this year.

One of the most striking findings of the report was that for every $25,000 the federal government spends on care for people with Alzheimer’s and Dementia, it only spends $100 on Alzheimer research.

Alzheimer’s is a type of Dementia. Below is a video that explains what exactly Alzheimer’s is:

On February 11, 2010, the monthly Silicon Valley Positive Aging Forum Series will takes place at Avenidas (located in Palo Alto, California). It will feature Dr. Laura Carstenson, a Stanford University Professor and the Founding Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. The topic of her lecture is A Long Bright Future.

This lecture is part of a series that is designed to highlight key issues about the “Age Wave.” This is a great event for San Francisco Bay Area residents interested in aging who might reside in Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.

This series is recommended (by the hosts) for:

• Business Owners, Non-Profit Managers and Corporate Executives
• Elected Officials and MUnicipal Staff
• Planning, Housing, and Senior Commissioners
• Urban and Transportation Planners
• Gerontologists and Senior Service Providers
• Faculty & Students in the Fields of Aging, Social Sciences, Economics and Medical Services
• Interested Members of the Public who might be “reverse parents,” not sure of how to take care of aging parents or senior citizens and baby boomers.

Click here for more details on this event.

Click here for more details on Dr. Laura Carstenson, PhD. This is her bio from the Stanford Center of Longevity.

This February 11th event takes place at 450 Bryant Street, Palo Alto, California (at Avenidas).