“These findings could help scientists to better understand and ultimately prevent a range of age-related diseases in humans.” according to Jesse Slome, executive diirector of the organization.  “When you live a long life however you are far more likely to need long term care.”

The research was conducted by scientists at the British Society for Research on Ageing at Newcastle University.

Working with the theory that cell senescence – the point at which a cell can no longer replicate – is a major cause of ageing the researchers set out to investigate what effect a restricted diet had on this process. By looking at mice fed a restricted diet the team found that they had a reduced accumulation of senescent cells in their livers and intestines. Both organs are known to accumulate large numbers of these cells as animals age.

Alongside this the CISBAN scientists also found that the telomeres of the chromosomes of the mice on restricted diets were better maintained despite their ageing. Telomeres are the protective ‘ends’ of chromosomes that prevent errors, and therefore diseases, occurring as DNA replicates throughout an organisms lifetime but they are known to become ‘eroded’ over time.

The adult mice were fed a restricted diet for a short period of time demonstrating that it may not be necessary to follow a very low calorie diet for a lifetime to gain the benefits the scientists found.

Researchers looked at parts of the body that easily show biological signs of ageing, suggests that a restricted diet can help to reduce the amount of cell senescence occurring and can reduce damage to protective telomeres. In turn this prevents the accumulation of damaging tissue oxidation which would normally lead to age-related disease.

Researchers report that drugs, called anticholinergics, block acetylcholine, a nervous system neurotransmitter, and are widely-used medical therapies. They are sold over the counter under various brand names such as Benadryl, Dramamine, Excedrin PM, Sominex, Tylenol PM, and Unisom. Other anticholinergic drugs, such as Paxil, are available only by prescription. 

Older adults most commonly use drugs with anticholinergic effects as sleep aids and to relieve bladder leakage problems.

Researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine conducted a six-year observational study, evaluating 1,652 Indianapolis area African-Americans over the age of 70 who had normal cognitive function when the study began. In addition to monitoring cognition, the investigators tracked all over-the-counter and prescription medications taken by study participants.

The scientists found that taking one anticholinergic significantly increased an individual’s risk of developing mild cognitive impairment .  Taking two of these drugs doubled this risk.

 Posted by the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance

According to the researcher, there is strong evidence base for bone health, cardio-respiratory fitness, physical function, balance, quality of life, fall prevention and psychological benefits all important for aging Americans notes Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance.  Slome recently returned from a visit to China.

Qigong is a very general term to describe exercises that will enhance qi flow or balance.  Tai Chi is much more specific, focusing on a series of 24 to 108 movements that have a long written history over 19 generations.
The research showed that simplified routines that are more practical for RCTs are in fact quite effective in health enhancement.  Of the studies analyzed 27 considered psychological symptoms, 23 looked at falls and related risk factors, 19 looked at cardiopulmonary effects and 17 evaluated quality of life. Other included studies looked at bone density, physical function and immune function. Participants’ average age was 55, and for studies that looked at balance, 80 was the average age.

The researchers found quite consistent evidence of several benefits from this particular category of exercise.

Tai Chi and Qigong have many health benefits and therefore should be considered a high priority when one is selecting an exercise to practice, they noted.

According to a research abstract presented at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies participants who reported a habitual daily sleep duration of eight hours or more including naps were 15 percent more likely to have metabolic syndrome. 

This relationship remained unchanged after full adjustment for potential confounders such as demographics, lifestyle and sleep habits, and metabolic markers. Removing participants with potential ill health from the analysis slightly attenuated the observed association. Although participants who reported a short sleep duration of less than six hours were 14 percent more likely to have metabolic syndrome in the initial analysis, this association disappeared after controlling for potential confounders.

Researchers noted that the most surprising aspect of the study was that long sleep – and not short sleep – was related to the presence of the metabolic syndrom.

The study involved over 29,000 adults, making it the largest study to assess the relationship between sleep duration and the presence of metabolic syndrome. Participants were 50 years of age or older. Total sleep duration was reported by questionnaire.

We can recommend that long sleepers reduce the amount of overall sleep they achieve, which may in turn have beneficial effects on their health one medical expert noted. Programs can be developed to modify sleep in an attempt to reduce the health burden on elderly populations, who are already at higher risk of disease.

“Millions of aging seniors suffer from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease,” explains Jesse Slome, director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance.  These conditions account for the longest and most costly causes for long term health care.

When a person ages they lose certain spines the researchers noted.  We did not know which ones and how their loss impacted cognition.  The new study shows which spines are lost and what their impact is on brain function, giving us a foundation to research treatment interventions to protect against age-related cognitive decline.

The research team studied six young adult and nine older rhesus monkeys as they participated in a delayed response test. The monkeys watched as food was baited and hidden, and then a screen was put in front of them so they could no longer see the location of the hidden reward.

At the beginning of the test, the screen was raised immediately and the monkeys were able to find the food reward right away. The subject’s memory was tested by increasing the time that the reward was blocked from view to test if the monkeys retained where the reward was placed over longer intervals of time. Aged monkeys performed significantly worse on the tests than young monkeys, especially as the time intervals increased.

The researchers determined that the older monkeys lacked the thin spines but retained the larger spines, indicating that the loss of the thin spines may be responsible for the monkeys’ inability to learn and retain information during the test. For the first time, the researchers determined that the large spines were stable, which provides a synaptic basis for the observation that expertise and skills learned early in life are often maintained into old age. 

The study is published in the June 2 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Telomeres are protective strips of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes and stop them unravelling, not unlike the plastic sheaths on the ends of shoelaces.  The researchers found that even a moderate amount of vigorous exercise appears to provide a critical amount of protection for the telomeres.

There is also growing evidence that short telomeres are linked to several health problems, including diabetes and coronary heart disease, as well as early death.

The researchers built on previous UCSF-led studies that found psychological stress causes overall wear and tear in the body at a deep level in cells by promoting cell aging through shortening telomere length.

According to the study as little as 42 minutes of vigorous exercise over a 3-day period, similar to levels recommended by federal health authorities in the US, seems to protect individuals from the effects of stress by reducing its effect on telomere length.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that adults undertake 75 minutes of vigorous, or 150 minutes of moderate activity, plus weight-bearing exercise, every week notes Jesse Slome, executive direxctor of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance.

The results confirmed earlier findings from research on premenopausal women that found psychological stress promoted immune cell aging through shortening of telomeres.

But when they analysed the results for the highly stressed women in terms of sedentary and inactive participants (the active participants included all those who met or exceeded the federally recommended 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week), they found only the sedentary high stress participants had shorter telomeres.

The active, high stress participants did not have shorter telomeres. In other words, it appears that high stress predicted shorter telomeres in the sedentary but not the active group.

The researchers suggested that for this group of older women, the CDC recommended level of vigorous exercise is enough to buffer the effect that psychological stress has on telomere length.

Researchers noted that this was the first study to do so in a much larger sample: previous studies have used data on up to 300 participants.  This study included over 700 individuals.

For the body measures they included: Body Mass Index (BMI), waist circumference, waist to hip ratio, and measures of abdominal fat (called visceral adipose tissue or VAT) determined using computed tomography (CT) scans. They also took into account other physiology measures such as insulin resistance.

As well as confirming the link between increasing BMI and lower brain volume they found a statistically significant link between abdominal fat and lower total brain volume.

During 12 years of follow-up, 125 husbands and 70 wives developed dementia, and both the husband and wife developed dementia in 30 couples. 

After adjusting for a number of factors, the researchers found that people with a spouse who developed dementia were six times more likely to develop dementia themselves than people whose spouses never had dementia. Men had a higher risk than women.

According to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance, conditions like Alzheimer’s Disease are the leading and most costly condition requiring long term health care among seniors.  The Association tracks research and reports on the leading long term care insurance companies.

On the positive side, the majority of individuals with spouses who develop dementia did not themselves develop dementia, therefore more research is needed to explore which factors distinguish those who are more vulnerable.

The study was published May 5 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

People with osteoporosis are at increased risk of fracture, even after a minor fall from standing height. A study presented at the World Congress on Osteoporosis 2010 reveals that among elderly men the risk of falling, and thereby breaking a bone, is influenced by age. Most significantly, it also suggests that ethnicity and environment play a role in the risk of falling.

The survey study analyzed the epidemiology of falls among more than 11,000 elderly men in Sweden, the US and Hong Kong. 

The results showed that although the frequency of falls increased significantly with age in each country, the risk of frequent falls (men who fell two or more times over the course of one year) did not vary significantly across the different age groups. 

The proportion of fallers in most age groups was highest in the US, intermediate in Sweden and lowest in Hong Kong. The proportion of frequent fallers showed a different pattern, being highest in Sweden, intermediate in the US and lowest in Hong Kong. The fall epidemiology did not differ when comparing Asian men living in Hong Kong or the US.

A limited number of studies have pointed to the possibility that optimal intake of vitamin D (the “sunshine” vitamin) might help keep our muscles strong and preserve physical function. 

To help understand this diet-health association, researchers at Wake Forest University studied the relationship between vitamin D status and physical function in a group of relatively healthy seniors living in Memphis, TN and Pittsburgh, PA. 

Researchers studied 2788 seniors (mean age: 75 years) for 4 years. At the beginning of the study, they assessed vitamin D status by analyzing each person’s blood for 25-hydroxyvitamin D, a precursor for activated vitamin D. 

At baseline and then 2 and 4 years later, the research team then determined whether circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D was related to the participants’ physical function. Specifically, they looked at how quickly each participant could walk a short distance (6 meters) and rise from a chair five times as well as maintain his or her balance in progressively more challenging positions. 

When the results were tabulated, participants with the highest levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D had better physical function. And, although physical function declined over the course of the study, it remained significantly higher among those with the highest vitamin D levels at the beginning of the study compared to those with the lowest vitamin D levels. 

The scientists were not surprised to learn that, in general, vitamin D consumption was very low in this group of otherwise healthy seniors. In fact, more than 90% of them consumed less vitamin D than currently recommended, and many were relying on dietary supplements. 

The good news: higher circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D is related to better physical function in seniors. But it’s impossible to tell from this type of research whether increasing vitamin D intake will actually lead to stronger muscles and preserve physical function. 

Will vitamin D research lead us to the fountain of youth?   ”Probably not,” says Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance.  . “But paying attention to how much vitamin D we get is likely important at every age and will help enhance the “quality” component of life as we enter our senior years. “