Linking Mental Fitness and Healthy Aging
Life is a continuum from conception until death, with different stages of development and aging occurring simultaneously and continuously.
- Sandra Cusack and Wendy Thompson
A new study by Sandra Cusack and Wendy Thompson of Simon Fraser University, BC, has linked seven mental fitness practices to healthy aging.
They are:
- setting personal goals
- power thinking
- creativity
- learning and memory
- speaking your mind
- positive mental attitude, and
- willingness to risk.
The Mental Fitness for Life Program
Based on these seven practices, the researchers developed the Mental Fitness for Life Program consisting of a series of eight intensive workshops where participants learn how "ageist" attitudes and beliefs about declining mental abilities restrict their potential for a vital, healthy old age. People learn how to set and achieve meaningful goals, to change negative beliefs into positive ones, to think creatively, to appreciate diversity and different perspectives, and to take risks that enrich their lives.
The program was offered to people in a seniors' center on the west coast of Canada, who were concerned about memory and wanted to improve their mental abilities. The participants ranged in age from 50 to 92 years and came from diverse employment and educational backgrounds.
The findings show significant improvement in participants' level of fitness, confidence in mental abilities, setting and achieving goals, optimism, creativity, flexibility, memory and ability to speak one's mind as well as reduced depression.
Learning Benefits that Last
Follow-up monthly seminars offered for those who took the introductory course showed the seminars functioned much like a booster shot that enabled graduates to maintain mental fitness as they aged. This finding echoes other studies that suggest learning can serve as a vaccination against late-life brain diseases.
Mental Fitness for Life: 7 Steps to Healthy Aging by Sandra Cusack & Wendy Thompson is published by Key Porter Books.
New Diabetes Care Card Welcomed
Natalina Fragale pulls out her wallet and shows 70-year-old Abedeen Ramtulla, the Diabetes Care Card she received from her niece that morning. Like Natalina, Abedeen, has diabetes. Natalina has filled in the card and is planning to keep it with her.
The Diabetes Care Card for older adults is the brainchild of the Canadian Ethnocultural Council (CEC), a non-profit coalition of national ethnocultural umbrella organizations playing a leading role in the study, publication, and development of resources dealing with Type 2 Diabetes. You can check out CEC's many resources at www.ethnicaging.ca.
The Diabetes Care Card is a pocket-sized creation that you can fill out and keep with you at all times. In case of emergency, this handy card will inform others of your condition. The cards are currently being translated into 9 languages. To request a card, contact Dr. Susan Eapen at 613-230-3867 ext. 225 or by email at sucyeapen@yahoo.com
Are You Making the Most of Your
Thirty-Year Life Bonus?
Today, our average life span has increased so tremendously that we are, in fact, experiencing a longevity revolution. The result is that those living in modern advanced societies are having something like a thirty-year life bonus.
In The Third Age, sociologist William Sadler presents the underlining research, and describes the four ages of life's new map:
- First Age - a long period of growing up
- Second Age - a period organized around productivity (jobs, income) and settling in (family, organizations, community)
- Third Age - a period that sets the stage for a different kind of experience of middle age, giving rise to second growth and renewal. "Instead of tacking your bonus years on to the end of life, think of inserting them in the middle years," Sadler says.
- Fourth Age - a period of successful aging with the goal to live young while growing older and to die young as late as possible. Decisions made in the middle years are critical in shaping the later years, according to the author.
The Third Age: 6 Principles of Growth and Renewal After Forty by William A. Sadler is published by Perseus Books.
The Challenge Facing Fiftysomething Women
Once women pass fifty, if they can avoid the temptations of the eternal youth purveyors, the sellers of natural thinness and cosmetic surgery, they may be able to tap into the feisty girls they once were. And if, at adolescence, the importance of their own convictions had been reinforced, they might, at fifty, be ready to take on risk, display a newfound vitality, and bid goodbye to conventional limitations.
- Carolyn Heilbrun, The New York Times Book Review
Will the Baby Boomers Transform Aging?
In the 1960s, the Americans created the Peace Corps to mobilize the spirit and generosity of a young generation. Now the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is hoping the Boomer Corps will help mobilize the potential of 76-million baby boomers and transform aging into a source of individual and social renewal.
The Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, has developed a blueprint calling baby boomers to service and rewarding them for their contributions. The PPI outlined its four-point program in its 2004 policy report: "Boomer Corps: Activating Seniors for National Service:"
- Create a Boomer Corps for recent retirees to serve 25 hours per week for one year or more in innovative, grassroots civic projects focused on: 1) home care services and coordinated care; 2) tutoring and mentoring work and educational innovation initiatives; and 3) efforts to organize and coordinate the volunteer activities of additional older adults in these community projects.
- Provide service members with a tax-free stipend of $400 pre month to supplement their retirement income during their year of service, and the choice of either a $4,000 education award that can be used for their own continuing education or to send a child or grandchild to college, or a $4,000 health care voucher.
- Reach the maximum number of recent retirees by including Call to Service cards with information on joining the Boomer Corps with every American's first Social Security cheque.
- Scale up this new national service program to 1 million members by 2012, so that more than one in every five baby boomers will be able to mark their transition into an active retirement through national service. Recruit 12 community volunteers for every Corps member, so that an additional 12 million older adults will continue to serve five hours per week or more as part of an active retirement.
The cost of the Boomer Corps is projected to be $9 billion annually.
On the Web
THE NATIONAL ADVISORY COUNCIL ON AGING is made up of members from all parts of Canada and all walks of life. The members advise the federal Minister of Health, his colleagues and the public on the situation of seniors and the measures needed to respond to the aging of the Canadian population.
The Council's bulletin, Expression, is published fours times a year. Each edition focuses on a specific theme. The fall issue explored "Successful Aging."
In this issue, University of Manitoba researchers report twenty different meanings of successful aging given by a large group of older Canadian men. Besides good physical and mental health and engagement in life, these men felt success included things like loving relationships, graceful acceptance of change, moderate living, having goals and a sense of humour (one man in the study quipped: "I don't know yet, I'm only 85.")
The bulletin is available on the NACA website: www.naca.ca
Findings show Patients and Families Not in Agreement
on Disclosure of Health Information
The nuts and bolts of disclosing patients' health information continue to fuel debate in Canada and elsewhere.
In an attempt to shed light on the topic, researchers from the universities of Toronto, Calgary and British Columbia recently conducted a series of interviews with professional care providers, persons with early-stage dementia, and family caregivers.
Researchers discovered that patients and their families were not on the same page when it came to sharing information.
Here are the findings:
- Professionals reported valuing disclosure both to colleagues and family caregivers on the basis of its being in the patients' best interests
- Patients valued inter-professional exchange, but sought strong control over disclosure to family members
- Family caregivers valued being kept informed of the patient's condition, even without the latter's consent.
What can you do?
"In such a case, the conflicting values of patients and family must be prioritized," says Dr. Margaret A. Somerville, Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, at McGill University.
She suggests the following:
- Priority be given to the competent patient's decision and, to the extent possible, to the incompetent patient's wishes regarding disclosure.
- When some values cannot be honoured because they conflict with others that are given, justification must be given for the decision made.
S. Tracy, et al., (Fall, 2004). To Tell or Not to Tell? Professional and Lay Perspectives on the Disclosure of Personal Health Information in Community-Based Dementia Care. Canadian Journal on Aging, p.203-215.
Somerville, M. A. (Fall, 2004). "Doing Ethics" in the Context of Sharing Patients' Health Information. Canadian Journal on Aging, p.197-202.
Learning Is the Best Medicine
Feeling under the weather, down in the dumps? Try learning.
That's the advice of the writer T. H. White, author of The Once and Future King, a book transformed into the musical Camelot. Learning, according to White, is the one cure for all kinds of sadness.
Advice to Arthur
"The best thing for disturbances of the spirit," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night, listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love and lose your moneys to a monster, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of base minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing the poor mind can never exhaust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you."
- T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Subscriber's Corner
In our next issue, look for a report on a recent international conference held in London, England to explore the challenges and possibilities offered by population aging and the changing landscape of retirement. Coming soon also, SUBSCRIBER'S CORNER, a special section dedicated to your ideas, comments and suggestions. Please send your comments to Ruth at info@AgingHorizons.com
