E2
Health
CONSUMER REPORTS INSIGHTS
How to make the most of old age
Adopting healthful habits can
significantly alter the course of aging, even if you don’t start un- til you are middle-aged or older, growing research suggests. As more people live into their
80s, 90s and beyond, research- ers are increasingly asking what it takes not just to survive but also to thrive in later years. Here is Consumer Reports’ guide to successful aging.
Exercise your brain.
Your brain needs a workout just as much as your arms and legs. Education and an active work life when you are younger can help ward off dementia later, perhaps by building a cognitive reserve so that small losses in function are not as noticeable. It may be equally important to stay mentally engaged after retire- ment. A study of about 500 men and women 75 and older pub- lished in the journal Neurology in 2009 found that they could delay cognitive decline by partic- ipating in mentally stimulating activities such as reading, writ- ing and doing puzzles.
Strong social ties can also help.
Harvard researchers followed 16,638 adults 50 and older for six years. Those who volunteered the most and had lots of connec- tions to family and friends were least likely to show declines in memory tests.
Keep eyes and ears sharp.
Vision and hearing tests by specialists should be a regular part of your anti-aging plan. Sight-threatening diseases that are more common with age, in- cluding cataracts, glaucoma and macular degeneration, can be controlled or halted if caught early. Hearing loss, the third most common chronic condition in older Americans, can contrib- ute to cognitive decline, depres- sion and social isolation, and can even signal an increased risk of other health problems such as Type 2 diabetes or stroke. To reduce your risk of eye dis-
ease, avoid tobacco smoke, wear sunglasses, maintain a healthy weight and control high blood pressure and blood sugar levels. To reduce the risk of hearing loss, consider using earplugs in
BIGSTOCKPHOTO
Exercise, both physical and mental, has beneficial effects on people as they grow older.
situations noisy enough that you have to raise your voice to be heard.
Stay young at heart.
Undiagnosed vascular disease
— clogged arteries in the heart, brain or legs — may lead to dis- ability not only by triggering heart attacks and strokes but also by causing frailty, weakness and unplanned weight loss, ac- cording to findings from the Car- diovascular Health Study, which was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and involved about 4,700 people 65 and older. So work with your doctor to keep blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol lev- els under control even as you get into your 70s and beyond.
Guard your gut.
People turning 60 now may
actually face a higher risk of dis- ability than those who reached that age a decade or two ago, possibly because more people to- day are overweight. So if you are in your 40s, 50s or 60s, you should be especially vigilant against creeping weight gain.
Strengthen your back.
Back pain is the nation’s sec- ond-leading cause of disability, trailing only arthritis. Being able to stand straight and remain free of crippling lower-back pain in later years depends on maintain- ing the strength of the bones in your spine as well as the muscles that support them. Exercises that work muscles in the back and abdomen, such as abdomi- nal curls and trunk extensions, may also help prevent spinal fractures. And activities such as Pilates and yoga can help ease back pain.
Protect hips and knees.
Exercise is also a key to help-
ing prevent or alleviate arthritis and joint pain. Resistance train- ing doing calisthenics or using elastic bands, free weights or weight machines strengthens the muscles. That, in turn, pro- tects the joints and makes them more stable.
Stay steady on your feet.
The fear of falling often causes
anxiety, and with good reason: About 30 percent of people older
than 65 and half of those 80 and older have fallen at some point. Build strong legs by doing strength exercises two to three times weekly.
Sleep well, age well.
“The idea that people need and want less sleep as they get older is a myth,” says Harrison Bloom, a physician who is a sen- ior associate with the Interna- tional Longevity Center USA in New York. But it is true that the type of sleep they get often changes. “People may not sleep as deeply as they did when they were young, and they may awak- en more frequently,” Bloom says. That disturbed sleep increases the risk of conditions such as cardiovascular disease, depres- sion and hypertension. Health conditions that impair sleep, such as sleep apnea, are often independent problems that respond to treatment. Your physician should periodically question both you and your bed partner about your sleep habits at routine exams, referring you to a specialist if warranted.
Copyright 2010. Consumers Union of United States Inc.
The Checkup
6voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup
Adapted from The Post’s daily health blog.
The tangled tale of the Princeton rats
Princeton University recently circulated an article announcing a study finding that rats that consumed lots of high-fructose corn syrup became obese. The authors conclude, “Translated to humans, these results suggest that excessive consumption of HFCS may contribute to the incidence of obesity.” As might have been expected, the HFCS industry quickly responded. But others with less direct interest in the outcome have voiced criticism, too, notably Marion Nestle, a professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University and author of the Food Politics blog. In her entry about the study, she writes: “I can hardly believe that Princeton sent out a press release yesterday announcing the results of this rat study. The press release says: ‘Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.’ How they came to these conclusions is beyond me.” Among Nestle’s chief complaints: Though the study claims
that all the rats consumed the same number of calories, nowhere does it actually say how many calories. Plus, the whole thing seems poorly designed, with rats consuming different combinations of HFCS, sucrose and rat chow for varying periods, making straight comparisons difficult. I contacted Bart Hoebel, the professor at Princeton who
worked with the research team. Here are excerpts from the questions I e-mailed him, and his answers: Jennifer LaRue Huget: Can you explain how reliably
In partnership with
For further guidance, go to ConsumerReportsHealth.org. More-detailed information — including CR’s ratings of prescription drugs, treatments, hospitals and healthy-living products — is available to subscribers to that site.
More wellness coverage Thursday in Local Living
The MisFits explore the
simplest of exercises: walking.
Eat, Drink and Be Healthy
writes about Cooking Light magazine’s nutrition myths, including one that says you should avoid chicken skin.
LETTERS
health-science@washpost.com
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NIH Study Seeks Volunteers
ClinSeq™ is an exciting study that is looking at how genes may cause or contribute to common diseases, such as heart disease.
The ClinSeq™ study needs volunteers who: • are between the ages of 45 and 65, • have a personal history of heart disease (heart attacks, stents, bypass surgery or coronary artery disease)
• have a primary care physician • have not smoked in the past year • live in the metropolitan DC or Baltimore areas
Eligible participants will have an initial evaluation that includes several blood tests, an EKG, an echocardiogram and possibly a heart CAT scan.These tests are free of charge. Participants are asked to be part of the study for several years.
www.genome.gov/Clinseq or call 1-800-411-1222 TTY: 1-866-411-1010
BCDCOEAd
Speak, memory
In “The government is watch- ing me, because I’m so ordinary” [March 25], Justin Moyer writes a humorous article about what it was like to be a participant in the Monitoring the Future study. It begins, “Like most of my memo- ries in high school, this one is vague and indistinct.” As the di- rector of this ongoing national study of American young people, I feel obliged to modify a couple of his memories. The study is not government- run, but rather government- sponsored, initiated and con- ducted by the University of Michigan. Participants’ data are never ac- cessible to officials at any level of government, and there has never been a breach of confidentiality for any of the million-plus partic- ipants in the study’s 35-year his- tory. And likely Justin merged two different studies in memory, but our in-school study does not contain any of the questions about sexual behaviors that he re- called — a matter of considerable importance to some schools and parents. Finally, I would like to clarify the contribution of the co-found- er of the study, Jerald Bachman, who originated the idea for the multi-cohort design that we have followed.
LLOYD JOHNSTON
Ann Arbor, Mich.
Why go to a hospital?
Regarding “The plug that
didn’t get pulled” [March 9], I’ve waited for someone to ask the key question: If the elderly gentle- man being dropped at the emer- gency room did not want to be re- suscitated, why did the family bring him to the hospital? All they had to do was allow him to die in peace, at home, surround- ed by his loving family. Don’t
rat-study results translate to humans? Bart Hoebel: The rat is much like the human in regard to feeding behavior and basic metabolism. Rats evolved eating a diet something like ours; in some cases our own garbage. Thus the rat is a reasonable “animal model” of human feeding behavior in many cases. . . . The results do not apply directly to humans, but strongly suggest the need for more experiments along these lines. JLH: Marion Nestle criticized the study for not being clear about the rats’ calorie consumption. Can you speak to that? BH: She says: “Although the authors say calorie intake was the same, they do not report calories consumed.” We say: Caloric intake was reported in the Results section for Experiment 1. She says: “Nor do they discuss how they determined that calorie intake was the same.” We say: In the Methods section we explain that we measured HFCS, sucrose and chow intake daily. We computed the calories consumed, which is also described. She says: “This is an important oversight because measuring the caloric intake of lab rats is notoriously difficult to do (they are messy).” We say: We do not see any oversight. The drinking tubes had an anti-drip device built in and we collected spillage for the food pellets for accuracy. We reported the caloric intake and the standard error, which shows the variability in intake for a given group. JLH: Something about the way the study was written sounds as though researchers set out to link HFCS to obesity, not to determine whether such a link exists. BH: The study was designed to explore the comparison of HFCS with sucrose and at the same time to compare 24-hour access with 12-hour access, plus males with females. Keep in mind that this is research, and one does not know which will be the key results when starting out. We discovered that male rats drinking HFCS were heavier than the matched sucrose controls in Experiment 1 and heavier than the other groups in Experiment 2. Regarding females, again the HFCS rats were the heaviest; although the sucrose control group had sugar available for less time per day, we had reason to think this was not a critical variable. . . . Moreover the females, like the males, showed elevated triglycerides and increased fat deposits. This is all explained in the article for anyone who wants to study it carefully.
BIGSTOCKPHOTO
— Jennifer LaRue Huget
HEALTH SCAN
BEYOND SCIENCE
Voices from the heart of medicine
PULSE MAGAZINE
ADAM MCCAULEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
blame the parking arrangements.
ALEXANDER FRASER
Kensington
A new ankle? Not for me.
Over 20 years ago, I had severe pain in my right ankle due to lack of cartilage [“Hip or knee, fine. But try getting a new ankle,” March 16]. Painkillers were pre- scribed. A rheumatologist pre- scribed a medication with severe side effects. A surgeon proposed an ankle replacement with no guarantee of success. At last, through a friend, I learned about orthotics, shoe inserts that cradle your foot. Since first being fitted by a po-
diatrist, I have worn orthotics faithfully. I do not take any medi- cations and do not suffer ankle pain. I have given up high heels. I no longer play tennis, but I travel often and can keep up with tour groups on all-day tours. Most re- cently on a tour of the Black Sea, I climbed up a rough, steep path to visit an abandoned monastery in Turkey. I am 83 years old.
MARY B. VOGEL
Washington
Subscribers to the free online magazine Pulse (www. pulsemagazine.org) receive a weekly essay or poem about health care, such as last week’s story by Marilyn Hillman about coping with her husband’s dementia: “Dementia has certainly demolished Murray’s once-formidable planning skills. ‘What am I doing today?’ he asks me repeatedly,” Hill- man writes. “I grieve for . . . that gorgeous brain I found so compelling during our thirty-five years of marriage.” Paul Gross, a physician and assistant professor at the Albert Ein- stein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York, launched Pulse nearly two years ago, frustrated with the chasm between the scientific studies in medical journals and what it’s like to practice medicine on a daily basis. The miss- ing link turned out to be the voices of patients, providers and educators. The stories are very powerful but veer toward the depressing, include the desolate poem “In the Pediatric Ward” (“Something is eating the soft parts of Adam’s knee/ we know these things and we cry”) and “Confessions of a 75-Year-Old Drug Addict.”
COSMETIC URGENCY
New wrinkles and old
THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 29 ISSUE
In an article about wrinkle creams, Judith
Thurman plays a modern-day Ponce de León, but instead of scouring Florida for the fountain of youth, she explores the beauty aisle. “Worrying about wrinkles is imprudent, because it will prob-
ably beget more wrinkles,” Thurman writes at the beginning of the piece. This levelheadedness flies out the window when she finds an anti-wrinkle serum in England that is so enticing that Thurman slathers it on in the airplane restroom on her way back to New York. “The attempt to cheat death is vain in both senses,” she says, “yet the mystical ad copy of the skin trade channels a collective dream as old as the loss of Eden.”
— Rachel Saslow
HEALTH & SCIENCE
Editor: Frances Stead
Sellers • Assistant
Editors: Margaret Shapiro,
health-science@washpost.commckenna-deanes@washpost.com
KLMNO
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TUESDAY, MARCH 30, 2010
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