Aging project

This is the handout outline of a talk that was given on March 12, 2013. In time I will flesh out the outline with supporting details.

I.        Broad issues to be discussed

1. 1. a.      Issues that are relevant to aging but have broader implications (How do we make decisions based on knowledge, beliefs, valuations?)
   2. b.      Science evidenced based knowledge about aging (from mice to men)
   3. c.       Normal vs. pathological aging (how do we tell the difference); mechanism of mental functions and how they can break down
   4. d.     Life conditions (and life style)  that interact with the aging process
   5. e.      What are some things we can do that will blunt the impact of aging?
   6. f.        Your questions and comments
2. II.     How do we make decisions about our lives?
   1. a.      What is the role of knowledge vs. unsupported beliefs?
   2. b.      What is the basis of the value we place on anything at all and how does time play a role in our valuation. Future discounting (and we start as children doing just that). Marshmallow experiment 40 years later.
3. III.   The science of aging
   1. a.      A TON of scientific findings provide a detailed picture of many of aging. The findings come from; developmental/longitudinal epidemiological/cross sectional studies (including comparisons of normal elderly to clinical populations.
   2. b.      Studies of the genetics and epigenetics of aging
   3. c.       Studies of aging at the level of cells
   4. a.      Loads of animal studies. Here is just one example published two weeks ago. The subjects were mice and the target of the study was the brain NMDA receptor (well known to be involved in forming memories). It turns out that it is harder for aging brain (in the mice studied) to make new memories because of a problem in the NMDA subunits called NR2A and NR2B. These subunits, when damaged as in aging, make it hard to sculpt the memory clean of junk, (much like cleaning a hard drive of stored garbage).
4. IV.  Normal age-related changes in mental functions and pathological cognitive failure (you can get to Brooklyn in many ways)
   1. a.      A cognitive function can fail for many different reasons (mechanisms); Memory can  fail because of attention, poor processing of information, retrieval failure, consolidation failure
   2. b.      Comparing dementia to amnesia to normal aging
   3. c.       Can simulate pathology with drugs…which also provides clues for drug that may help impaired cognition
   4. d.     In normal aging lots of systems become less effective (attention, different kinds of memory, perception). Everything is correlated …Baltimore longitudinal study of aging
   5. e.      Genetics and the environment (what have we learned). Do you want to go to a Greek island near Turkey and live to 120?
   6. f.        Factors that can interact with aging that can amplify our problems and these include; social isolation, hearing loss, hypertension, depression
5. V.    Some evidenced based interventions that can blunt aging effects?
   1. a.      Role of active lifestyle (like exercise). It has a substantial and reliable effect on aging.
   2. b.      Challenging cognitive activities (well beyond cross word puzzles)
   3. c.       Don’t ignore depression, hypertension, when you are old. Treat it aggressively (will provide rationale)
   4. d.     Plan pleasurable activities
   5. e.      Do not be a loner (very important) and that includes having a significant other or two in your life.
   6. f.        Avoid aging

Some passing thoughts that were not very funny in the eyes of my fellow oldies that work out with me at the gym.

On aging 

The snow stopped and what remained are a few flurries. The streets are empty of cars except for occasional ones creeping and sliding along. I see Harry P hesitating before stepping over a small snow drift and then backs off muttering and is he saying ‘this is too much for me’? I know he is a bit unsteady and also know he is younger than I am. Am I going to catch up with him tomorrow?

It is starting to happen more and more often and I finally think I got it but don’t like it and make believe it is not happening. Yesterday a young woman was walking along a few feet to my left. We were strolling, or was that just me, past shop windows on Wisconsin Avenue and while I was not in a hurry I thought I was motoring at a decent pace. I past a shoe store and, without stopping, glanced at the display then looked up and she wasn’t there but rather a few yards ahead and then the gap got wider and wider and then she was way ahead. Is she jogging, but she is not. I tried to quicken my pace and that was a strain at the edges so I almost kept up with her but it was also clear that, unlike me, her pace was effortless. Once again it hit me.  I am slower than I used to be … one more aging brick in my body along and add that to what my buddies talk about, struggling to remember a word a name and what was my old girlfriend’s brother’s name? The words don’t flow, the ones needed to complete my thought, or never mind…and that is it never mind, my mind, what is happening?

It is impossible to not let aging register in the locker room of the gym. You are surrounded by rear ends that have slipped down the back of legs, skin, flesh, hanging in place, and then the grumbling, the easy irritability and the announcements of ailments and doctor’s appointments, and then there are the drop outs, the gym buddies that don’t come anymore because they are no more including the ones that were in great shape and could lift a ton of weight and it doesn’t feel right not to have L.T. around anymore, and he died needlessly, accidentally (forgetting to turn off his car in the garage went upstairs, went to sleep and died of carbon monoxide poising) and Don (the ex-marine) dropped dead and now his  widow hasn’t been seen again at the gym or around the center. And so it goes.

Should all my aging compatriots put $100 dollars into a money pool and the last one standing keeps the money? What about the length of hair growing out of our ears? Who has the must productive crop? No one liked the idea that I shared with the group, the one about all of us writing our own obit, circulating what we wrote for comments and rejoinders

We still notice the young sweeties working out and comment to one another about the era gone by when our eyes and appetites were in sync with the rest of our body. Some of us still get too excited about the new day, the surprises even as we continue to sweat and groan and complain. Happily there are things we can do to keep our zest alive and we do them. We take pleasure in our company, the people in our lives but if that fails us then the pity of it all. It would be awful to merely count down the days, waiting, regretting, wishing for the youth that won’t return, waiting for what?

No, it is not like the last frames at the movie house, the ones with the credits that no one sees that go on an on as the people get up shuffling down the aisles mumbling to one another “I didn’t like the part where….”