grow older better

Tag: lifespan

  • Women, Poverty, And Shortened Lives

    old and poorAn article, Get Rich or Die Younger: The Shrinking Lifes Spans of Poor U.S. Women, includes the following 2 conclusions…

    1. Among men older than 55, life expectancies are growing fastest for the rich.
    2. Among women older than 55, life expectancies are growing for the rich and shrinking for the poor.

    Being female, and being poor, is killing US women.

    The only groups decreasing in life expectancy are poor women. The poorest 40% of women all lose years, and the poorer you are, the shorter your life.

    No age group of poor men loses years, they may not gain, but they do not lose.

    Take a look at the chart as it easy to read.

    And with this scenario, the U.S. House wants to reduce aid to poor people!

    Another reason I want to help older persons earn more money. We cannot rely on Social Security – it is too tenuous in the current political arena.

    For more information on my ideas, go to Gray Wolf Productions.

  • Stop Sitting So Much – and So Badly

    sitting-at-desk

    Do you want to live longer and be healthier?

    Then sit less than 3 hours a day – and when you do sit –  sit with better posture.

     

    Recent research shows that sitting for long periods of time is unhealthy and that sitting for fewer than 3 hours a day may add up to 2 years to your life.

    A wave of new research indicates that sitting all day is actively damaging your health. By forcing a body designed for movement to hold a crushingly immobile position, sitting strains muscles, slows your metabolism, increases your risk of heart disease, and even shortens your life span. "Sitting is a health hazard on the order of smoking," says Marc Hamilton, PhD, a microbiologist at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

    Wow!

    From about the 1st grade on most US schools have kids sitting hours and hours a day. And often physical education or even outdoor recess time are among the first "extras" to go when budgets are tight.

    [Or when we teach to the tests.]

    Sitting badly

    Sitting itself is a problem as our metabolism slows to a halt when we sit – and then most of us sit in bad positions posture-wise when we do sit.

    Add to this that we sit more than 3 hours a day makes this sitting-issue a double-plus whammy.

    Get out of your chair and move around! work while standing and when you sit:

    Here is a better way to sit

     

    Comments? Thoughts? Thank you

  • Musings upon hitting the big seven-zero [70]


    I muse and I also just turned 70 – so this is a new [and very strange] topic for my musings….

    1 –  70 is an age I never thought about when I was “younger” because it seemed so “old.”  But then when I was in my 20’s I used to think 30 was old.  The mantra of the time being “don’t trust anyone over 30.”

    2 – Being 70 is still an odd thought.  I’ve been 70 for almost 2 months and I still feel strange about it and I’m not sure why; me, the developmental psychologist, who has been teaching about the lifespan since the 1970’s.

    3 – I’m still too new at this age to have deeper thoughts about MY being 70 – I can tell you more about those other persons who are 70 than I can tell you about myself.

    4 – I do wake up each day with the thought that I am 70 but happy I am still here and am very healthy.  I don’t remember having these kinds of thoughts when I turned 50 or 60.

    5 – I often stand at the mirror and see my various ages flying by – but then I’m very imaginative and do a lot work with photographs so I have 70 years of me available for viewing.

    To read more of my musings go to the full article musings on being 70

  • Heathiness

    I have recently been reading a lot of research on topics related to the lifespan – mainly as I am teaching that class.

    The ones that stick in my mind are those related to obesity. We are becoming such an obese country that the airplanes are widening seats and now children’s safety seat makers are having to make bigger seats for the bigger children. Then the newest research is that obese people do not even recognize that they are obese. Only 15 percent of people in this category view themselves as obese. And while the percent of women who are obese has stabilized, a growing percent of men and children are seen as obese.

    We are told that obesity leads to many health issues and worsens others…yet we eat away. For many it is a choice – is supersizing and calorie adding good for you just because it is advertised and can be a cheap add on?

    Do you know what a normal sized serving is? It’s about the size of your fist! So next you are eating a meal look at your fist and then look at your plate….and think about your health!

    And please start thinking more seriously about adding supplements to your diet. We do not get enough of the “good stuff” from our food anymore – especially what we need from fruits and vegetables. And also know that we need 5-13 servings of fruit and vegetables a day [depending on your “stay healthy” caloric intake] but we tend to eat only about 3 servings a day! So again – eat well but supplement!

    glyconutrients, healthy aging, growing older, aging, nutrition, exercise, eating properly,