Also, Dr Meredyth Daneman of the University of Toronto at Mississauga, said that while we may assume that older people’s minds are slowing down, research show that may not be the case: several studies comparing cognitive and hearing ability among younger and older adults have found that more often it is hearing and not cognitive decline that gives older adults problems in understanding language.
However, being healthy in old age is not just about what happens when we are old, it also starts when we are very young, said Carstensen who referred to a compelling and growing amount of research that shows even small increases in education can make a difference to the quality and length of people’s lives.
“Independent studies agree that even one additional year of education very likely increases life expectancy by more than a year,” said Carstensen who had this advice for people who want to prepare for old age now:
- Create a vision of how you want your old age to be: imagine enjoying the years ahead, what does it mean for you to be healthy, happy and alive at 100?
- Then re-engineer your social, physical, financial and other aspects of your life (your home, what you eat) so that every day you are making it more possible to reach that vision.
- Avoid putting all your social investment in your spouse, children or job: diversify your expertise and activities.
Researchers speaking at an international psychology conference said there was evidence that people get happier as they age, and that older people are better at controlling their emotions and avoiding things that make them unhappy. This does not include people with dementia or who are trapped in situations of high stress that they cannot escape from, such as caregiving.
The researchers were speaking at the 117th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association that took place from 6 to 9 August in Toronto, Canada.
Dr Laura Carstensen, a psychology professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA, and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, said:
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“Now that we’re here, we have to keep adapting. We are in the middle of a second revolution and it’s up to us to make adulthood itself longer and healthier,” she added.
Carstensen said by 2050 there will be twice as many people over the age of 65 in the world as there are today. And the segment of the population that is growing faster than any other, is the over 85s.
Susan Turk Charles, from the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior at the University of California, Irvine, in a separate presentation, talked about several studies on aging and mental health that she had reviewed. Excluding people with dementia and related diseases, the evidence supports the idea that, on the whole, mental health improves with age.
Charles referred to a study that followed three groups of people at different life stages for 23 years and found emotional happiness increased as they got older.
She said research also shows that older adults are better at controlling their emotions than younger adults, and this helps them avoid negative situations, or at least limit the emotional damage they can cause. One study she reviewed asked younger and older adults to report what they were thinking and feeling just after hearing personal criticisms by other people. The results showed that the younger adults tended to dwell far more on the comments and demanding information about their origins than the older adults whose reports were less negative overall.
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Charles said that work by Carstensen and others suggests older people are increasingly aware that life is finite and the time they have left is shrinking.
“They want to make the best of it so they avoid engaging in situations that will make them unhappy. They have also had more time to learn and understand the intentions of others which help them to avoid these stressful situations,” she added.
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A spokeswoman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she and fellow California Sen. Barbara Boxer have “communicated their concerns to the (Obama) administration” that a way be found to preserve the Fremont factory.
A White House official said Wednesday that the administration has been “urging the old GM and Toyota to engage with all parties on this issue.”
All this occurs at a time when the United Auto Workers, which represents workers at the Fremont factory, is negotiating a contract renewal with Nummi that will have a big influence on efforts to keep Toyota interested in the plant.
“There is a willingness to make wage concessions,” Betty Sall, a rank-and-file union member said. “Most people are hopeful we will have a union contract and that Nummi will continue.”
The fate of Nummi, which employs 4,500 people and supports 35,000 peripheral jobs, has been in doubt since June, when General Motors quit the 25-year-old partnership with Toyota that has run the plant.
A letter obtained by The Chronicle puts no overall value on a combined federal, state and local aid package to keep Toyota in Fremont, where 80 percent of the cars built last year carried its brand.
Toyota has said it will decide soon about the plant, the only auto manufacturing facility on the West Coast.
Nummi officials have said they have orders from Toyota that will keep the plant busy at least through October.
The letter, co-signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, says the Legislature is working on a bill to designate Nummi an enterprise zone, one effect of which would be to let Nummi carry forward current operating losses to offset future profit for up to 15 years.
That designation would also waive sales taxes on $20 million a year in plant machinery upgrades.
Other proposals would create a special utility rate to let Nummi buy electricity at lower prices.
Men who eat healthier diets may also have healthier sperm, new research from Spain shows.
“A healthy, well-balanced diet is not just important for preventing diseases like diabetes, high cholesterol, or hypertension, but it may be useful for preserving or improving your reproductive health too,” Dr. Jaime Mendiola of the University of Murcia, the lead researcher on the study, told Reuters Health via e-mail.
A number of studies have suggested that there are links between consuming certain nutrients and male infertility, Mendiola and his team note in the journal Fertility and Sterility. They had previously investigated the relationship between consumption of certain foods and semen quality, and found that men who ate more dairy products and more meat, and less lettuce, tomatoes, and fruit, were more likely to have poor semen quality.
That investigation didn’t look at specific nutrients. But in this one, Mendiola and his team compared the nutrient content of the diets of 30 men with poor semen quality and 31 men with normal sperm. All were attending fertility clinics.
The men with poor semen quality had low sperm counts and relatively high percentages of abnormally formed sperm. All of the men provided at least two semen samples.
For years, Nancy and Rufus Tracy’s Woodside property housed four generations of their family – including her mother, their daughter and son-in-law, and their grandchildren.
The Tracys have lived in their home for about 50 years. In the 1980s, after graduating from college, their daughter moved back to the Bay Area. “She said, ‘You can make the back of the house an apartment and I can be your first tenant,’ ” Nancy Tracy recalled.
The one-bedroom, one-bath unit was detached from the main house. When their daughter married, they added a second bedroom. As the newlyweds became parents to three children, a larger structure was built on the property.
The youngest of the three kids moved out just a few years ago to attend college. During their childhood, Nancy Tracy’s mother also resided in the main house
Nearly 13 years ago, Peter Clark approached his wife Jane’s parents, Richard and Ann Dorst, with an idea: Combine their resources and buy a property in the Peninsula where they could all live comfortably – the Clarks with their three daughters in the main house, and the Dorsts in the pool house.
“The key thing was, we had always gotten along, and we were already a close family,” said Peter Clark. “But we didn’t want to be on top of each other. We wanted our own space, our own lives.”
On a recent Sunday afternoon, they gathered around a table by the pool that sits between their homes. Of the Clarks’ daughters, only Christie is currently living at home; she returns to UC Santa Barbara in the fall. Now 21, she has an appreciation for growing up with four adults in residence. “It was fun having them around,” she said of her grandparents. “And I think we learned a lot about etiquette and respect because they were here.”
n 2002, Jesse and Ben Ladomirak returned to her childhood home. Two years later, they bought the place from her parents. (In her book, Graham Niederhaus emphasizes the importance of drawing up legal and financial agreements. The Ladomiraks and Fletchers did just that, bringing in lawyers and accountants to handle their transaction.)
The young couple – who own Teevan, a restoration and construction firm in San Francisco – converted two spaces into one larger unit and reside there. Her parents fulfilled their dream of living in the backyard cottage. “It feels like the perfect place for us,” said Marguerite Fletcher. “We have privacy, yet all of the communal benefits, especially with our granddaughter knocking on our door.”
Shortly after Llew was born, Ben Ladomirak’s mother, who is retired, moved out from Pennsylvania.
