Consumer Reports has recently issued a “guide to successful aging” that details healthful habits older adults can adopt to improve their physical and mental health in old age. Growing old is passive, but growing old gracefully is active – it requires action on your part. Following are the 9 points according to Consumer Reports Health.

1. Exercise your brain. This one shouldn’t come as a surprise to those involved with aging services. People have been advocating this for a while. Exercising your heart, limbs, etc. is important, but equally important is staying mentally sharp. Your brain is like other muscles in older age – use it or lose it! Exercising your brain isn’t as easy as doing crossword puzzles (learn more on that). Staying mentally fit may require working in an unfamiliar field that requires new knowledge; it could be learning a new language, learning to play an instrument for the first time, or all of the above. The trick is to keep your brain challenged. Be a lifelong learner.
2. Strong social ties can also help. I’ve seen this firsthand in elders I’ve served. The ones that volunteer, go out with friends and stay active with family have a more engaged, fulfilled lifestyle than those that don’t. Research indicates that older adults with strong social ties are less likely to show declines in memory tests. I think people that have strong social ties are generally more outgoing and active in nature, which contributes to being a lifelong learner.
3. Keep eyes and ears sharp. This item was added to their list, because vision and hearing are senses particularly subject to declining in older age. Whether it’s hearing loss, glaucoma, macular degeneration or cataracts, all are best addressed if caught early. Advice for keeping eyes and ears sharp: protect your hearing and eyes with earplugs and sunglasses when appropriate, maintain a healthy weight and get regular hearing and vision tests.
4. Stay young at heart. The Consumer Reports piece speaks to keeping your physical heart healthy through exercise, weight loss, etc. My view is that it’s equally important to stay spiritually young at heart. Everyone grows old, not everyone grows old and keeps their adventurous spirit fed.
5. Guard your gut. Watch weight gain – it’s critical to the rest of your body’s health.
6. Strengthen your back. According to the Washington Post piece on this subject, back pain is the nation’s second-leading cause of disability, trailing only arthritis. They recommend exercises that strengthen the back and abdomen and include Pilates and yoga for easing back pain.
7. Protect hips and knees. Exercise is again key. Perhaps the Consumer Reports guide should have just included one point – exercise.
8. Stay steady on your feet. Risk of falls is a major concern the older we get. Bones become brittle, so when balance becomes unstable and an individual falls, bones will often break and then complicate other areas of health.
9. Sleep well, age well. People may not sleep as deeply as they did in their youth, but sleep is still critical to healthy aging. So ready . .  set . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Adults aged 65 and older are not among the population groups recommended to get early doses of the 2009 H1N1 vaccine according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC lists two reasons why seniors are not recommended to get the initial vaccine doses:

1. people over the age of 65 are the least likely to get sick from the virus, and
2. there are limited doses available at first, so those are recommended for the highest risk population groups.

The CDC points to an analysis that indicates those 65+ are only likely to have an H1N1 infection rate of 1.3 persons per 1,000:

Laboratory tests indicate that older people likely have some pre-existing immunity to the H1N1 flu virus, likely the result of exposure to previous, similar strains years ago. Initial vaccine doses are recommended for more high risk groups:

• all children and young adults 6 months through 24 years old,
• pregnant women,
• adults aged 25-64 who have health conditions,
• caregivers of children younger than 6 months in age, and
• health professionals.

Older adults will be able to get the vaccine, however. The U.S. government has ordered plenty of doses, but for older adults, the seasonal flu vaccine is a higher priority.

All of this being said, as you can see in the following chart, when older adults do contract H1N1, they are more likely to become seriously ill:

For this reason, people 65 years and older are prioritized for treatment with antiviral drugs if they do become sick.

For more information see the CDC’s site: www.cdc.gov/flu/

You can exercise all you want, but in order to feel your best, you must also monitor what goes in your mouth; but the older we get, the more our appetite and dietary needs change. For example:

• Food doesn’t taste like it used to
• You may experience a loss of appetite
• There may be trouble with chewing

There are reasons for this. With aging we gradually lose our sense of smell and taste. Medications may also change our ability to taste, and may certainly affect our appetite. Extra spices may help, but you should also speak with your physician about other medication options if they’re causing a loss of appetite. If you’re having trouble chewing, your dentures may need to be checked for a proper fit.

Your sense of thirst may also be compromised as you grow older. Don’t wait until you’re thirsty to drink. Your body tells you too late. This advice applies to people of all age. Don’t stop drinking if you’re having urinary incontinence; address the incontinence in other ways. Your body NEEDS water! Water also helps move fiber through your body, something else you’ll likely need more of the older you get.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) daily dietary recommendations for people over the age of 50 are as follows:

• Fruits: eat ‘em, 1.5 – 2.5 cups; ½ cup of fruit is about the same as a medium sized whole fruit or ¼ cup of dried fruit
• Veggies: yummy, 2 – 3.5 cups; two cups of uncooked leafy vegetables is about the same as one cup of cut up veggies
• Grains: tasty, 5 – 10 ounces; one ounce is the equivalent to one roll, muffin or piece of bread
• Meat or Beans: cook ‘em, 5 – 7 ounces; alternatively, one egg, ¼ cup of beans or tofu, or ½ ounce of nuts or seeds is about the same as an ounce of meat
• Milk: drink it, 3 cups of skim or low-fat; your other option is 1.5 – 2 ounces of cheese or yogurt will yield the same as one cup of milk

The USDA suggests that you avoid empty calories, meaning food and drinks with many calories, but little nutritional value. Think soda, chips, and “junk food” in general. This should come as no surprise.

Naturally the more active you are, the more you’ll want to eat; but if you eat more calories than your bodies needs you’ll gain unwanted weight. Eating a variety of foods is essential. Otherwise you’re not getting a variety of nutrients.

So how many calories should someone over the age of 50 eat every day? A woman who is not active needs about 1,600 calories, somewhat active = 1,800, and very active = 2,000 – 2,200. A man who is not active needs about 2,000, somewhat active = 2,200 – 2,400, and very active = 2,400 – 2,800.

Eat correct portions, select wise food choices, and exercise to whatever extent you’re able. This advice goes a long way toward improving quality of life for people of all ages.

There’s a new style of martial arts training sweeping the nation amongst older adults called Cane-Fu Fighting. Perhaps it’s more accurate to describe it as old techniques finding new popularity as the nation’s population gets older each day and more people become interested in active lifestyles and personal safety. What exactly is it? It’s personal defense using one mighty weapon – the conventional cane.

Long known by martial artists, but less known by the general public, the cane, when in the hands of someone trained in its use, is an exceptionally effective tool for self-defense. The sport, exercise, or whatever you’d like to call it has become so popular that the Wall Street Journal even wrote about it in an article entitled Everybody is ‘Cane-Fu’ Fighting At Senior Centers, So Watch Out.

While any cane can be used, the best canes for self-defense are made of hardwood, because they don’t break on impact and they deliver a hard hit. Read this from the WSJ article:

Most of the seniors who take cane classes rarely wield them against anyone. But Bill Carter, a 56-year-old who took a class from Mr. Shuey in Florida a few years ago, says the instruction came in handy one day in April last year when he walked into his house in suburban Jacksonville to find an intruder in his kitchen taking TV dinners from the freezer. As the man approached him, “I popped him on the kneecap,” Mr. Carter says, and “hooked him behind the neck, and was able to guide him to the door.”

You can also watch this video on the subject:

Whether you are interested in self-defense or simply want some exercise, Cane-Fu Fighting can be a great way to become active and socially engage with others, and who knows – it just might save your life.

The results of a Medicare cost saving project that tried to successfully manage older adults with chronic diseases was, if you’re reading this MSNBC article, a failure. I’ll beg to differ with the article’s assessment in a moment, but here is what happened:

• Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) selected 15 test-site programs in 2002 that tried keep sick, aging patients out of hospitals and cut costs
• The sites developed their own programs, enrolling a total of 18,309 fee-for-service Medicare patients
• About half received standard care, and the rest received managed care with a nurse available to advocate, encourage, and educate the patient
• Many patients had more than one chronic disease
• Only two sites cut the number of times patients were hospitalized
• None saved Medicare money

So the goal of the project was not met, but does this mean all was lost? I think not, for what it illustrated is the difficulty in trying to change patient behavior. The project’s failure was not the delivery of effective case management, but the patients’ inability or unwillingness to adopt a healthy lifestyle.

The article states:

“The only way you can really do it is by changing patients’ behavior and by changing physicians’ behavior, and both things are really hard to do,” said study author Randall Brown, a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research Inc., in Princeton, N.J., which was hired to evaluate the programs.

Often, these patients need to stop smoking, or lose weight, exercise more, eat healthier foods — a challenge even for generally healthy people. Those changes are especially tough for sick, older patients who often are set in their ways.

The story cited one success story within the various projects, however. A 74-year old retired man from Pennsylvania followed the case manager’s advice, ate healthy meals and exercised. He lost 60 pounds, his blood pressure and cholesterol improved, and his pre-diabetes evaporated.

The results of this study then begs the question: How does one get another to change his/her lifestyle for him/herself AND for the system supporting everyone?