This hour of Radiolab: is death a disease that can be cured?
We filter the modern search for the fountain of youth through personal stories of witnessing death -- the death of a cell, the death of a loved one...and the aging of a society.
Mortality
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Medicine's generation gap
In 30 years, as Baby Boomers retire, there will be as many people over 80 as there are under 5. And there's another disturbing trend: The number of students entering geriatric medicine is dropping. As America ages, who takes care of the grandparents? Guest: Dr. Jessica Colburn, chief resident at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, is veering from the money-making path in medicine. She's preparing to become a geriatrician.
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Physicians weigh federal panel's suggestion to end prostate exams at 75
Guest: Tara Parker-Pope, The New York Times
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Calling all infants: National Children's Study begins 21-year health mission
The largest children's study ever undertaken in the United States kicks off in 2009. Researchers plan on tracking 100,000 kids from the womb to the age when they can legally crack open a beer. Scientists hope 21 years worth of hair, urine and environmental samples will reveal why the incidence of childhood disease is on the rise.
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My old man: The truth about men's biological clocks
Women have long battled with their biological clocks, but with men like Tony Randall cranking out kids in their seventies, many men don't really think about their biological clocks. In the wake of new studies, though, that might change. Lisa Belkin, New York Times Magazine contributing writer, makes the case in this week’s Magazine that there’s now even more evidence that when it comes to making babies, men have a sell by date.
Lisa Belkin's article will be available in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday.
Lisa Belkin's article will be available in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday.
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Is Fired the New Retired?
The latest unemployment numbers are out, and as expected they rose. The unemployment rate is now at 10.2 percent, and 190,000 jobs were lost in October. The numbers are surprising and reveal that the recovery on Wall Street is not reaching most of America. But buried in those data are startling numbers of older workers who are being hit hard by the rise in unemployment. Louise Story, business reporter for the The New York Times, brings us the story. The Takeaway's correspondent Femi Oke went to the New York State Labor Office yesterday to talk to older workers among the job hunters there.
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Health Reform: Helping Pay the Costs of Elder Care?
We're talking about the costs of caring for Grandma, and whether they're going to get any cheaper with health care reform. The CLASS ACT– short for 'Community Living Assistance Services and Support' – is a section of the Senate's health care bill. It was introduced by the late Senator Edward Kennedy to lower the cost of long term care for sick or aging family members, and would allow people to collect daily cash benefits of about $50 to $70 a day to pay for home care, adult day programs or nursing homes after paying premiums for five years. The goal is offer a voluntary long term care alternative to Medicaid and private nursing home insurance.
Takeaway Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich tells us how likely it is the CLASS ACT will remain in any final bill. Then Paula Span, author of "When the Time Comes: Families with Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions
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Tech for the Elderly and the Risk of a Robot Takeover
In honor of all the silver foxes out there (and the people who love them), we dedicate this week's tech segment to assistive technologies for older people.
Dr. Nick Terrafranca, medical director of MediSens (a spinoff of the UCLA Wireless Health Institute) develops inventions to increase independence and safety for seniors. He joins us to explain some of his inventions, including the SmartShoe, which uses fighter jet technology to help older people maintain their balance.
And Dr. Sherry Turkle is an MIT professor who researches robotics and their impact on people's lives. She's the author of "Simulation and Its Discontents." She tells us about what kinds of assistive technologies are the best and worst, in her opinion (hint: robots that replace eldercare workers rank low on her list).
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Setting Long-term Health Priorities: The Three And Half Things You Need to Know
Whether you’re worried about high blood pressure or diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis or heart disease, there are just four steps you need to significantly cut your risk and improve your health. (For reasons I explain below, I like to think of them as just three and half steps.)
Step one: Stop smoking. One out of five Americans still smoke, even though smoking results in over 44,000 deaths per year, according to the National Cancer Institute, and contributes to countless chronic illnesses. It’s understandable: nicotine is incredibly addictive. If you do smoke — even as few as 100 cigarettes over a lifetime — make quitting your first priority.
Step two: Eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. A serving is the size of a tennis ball, so a big green salad for lunch or dinner will help knock out 2 or 3 servings in one sitting. On the program this morning, Celeste talked about the importance of fresh produce. While fresh is great, what’s most important is getting in these servings any way you can. If that means canned, frozen, or dried, that’s ok, too. In fact, a study from UC Davis found that fresh, frozen, and canned vegetables all had similar amounts of nutrients.
Step three: exercise for thirty minutes a day. You don’t have to do it all at once: a new study shows that just ten minute bursts result in an hour of metabolic benefits.
Step four: maintain a healthy BMI. Here’s where the half comes in. As I said on the show, the above three steps are action items: specific healthy changes you can make right away. This last step seems like a result — a potential outcome of some of these steps. It’s also, as Dr. Price says, not a prerequisite to health. Many people find that they eat well, exercise, but still have a high BMI. So in my mind, the top three items should be the focus of any health priorities.
But depending on what stage in life you’re in, there are other steps needed to optimize health. This week, NEWSWEEK devotes a special double issue to healthy living at any age. For each of the groups listed below, we’ve compiled both the necessary medical tests and health goals, as well as a reasoned look at the biggest health controversies for each life stage.
- For babies under two tips include: Tooth brushing twice a day is essential as soon as the first teeth begin erupting. Parents should also start weaning children off pacifiers at age 1.
- For children aged 2 to 12 tips include: Parents often misclassify their child's weight status. Between the ages of 3 and 8, children naturally tend to slim out, says Dr. Eliana Perrin, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; some parents mistakenly think they need to be fattened up.
- From 13-18 tips include: Get a meningitis vaccine, if you haven't already, before going to college,
- From 19-34 tips include: In 2000 alone, six preventable deaths occurred each day among adults ages 25—34 due to lack of insurance.
- From 35-49, tips include: If you're a woman, your bone density peaked at 30, so the CDC says you should get 1,000mg of calcium per day.
- From 50-65 tips include: At this stage in life, risk for gum disease has increased. As a result, flossing is especially important. Keep brushing twice a day and go to the dentist regularly (at least every six months).
- For those over 65, tips include: The USTPF recommends an ultrasound test for abdominal aortic aneurysm (an abnormally large or swollen blood vessel in your abdomen) for men between the ages of 65 and 75 who have ever smoked.
Those are just a few suggestions; a full look at the health needs of each age group can be found by following the links. Need some inspiration when setting these long-term goals? Visit our gallery of Super Seniors, photos of record-setting elders who have defied expectations.
Kate Dailey is the health and lifestyle editor for Newsweek.com. Visit her blog for a take on how health journalism can unintentionally exclude numerous readers. (http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-human-condition/2010/06/20/healthy-living-at-any-wage-the-disparities-of-service-journalism.html)
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The Strange Science of Immortality
Immortality has always been a dream of humanity, though in movies and books, we are often told that our mortality is somehow integral to the human experience. If you could live longer – much, much longer than our expected 79 years — would you want to? Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Jonathan Weiner examines the science of longevity in his new book, Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality
According to Weiner, our life expectancies are increasing by about two years per decade. But he considers the possibility, with the help of gerontologists all over the world, that we eventually might be able to live hundreds or even thousands of years longer. We just need to solve some pesky problems associated with how we tend to die right now.
Would you want to live a thousand years longer?
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Gay and Gray in America: Getting Older as a Gay Man or Woman
What is it like getting older when you’re part of the first generation of gay people to live fully out of the closet? And who cares for you as you exit the world?We explore these issues with Laurie Young,aging policy analyst at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Brenda Austin, a retiree in her late sixties, who lives in New York and has been out of the closet since the 1950s.
Gay seniors are twice as likely to age alone and four times less likely to have children than their straight counterparts. Laurie Young says this is particularly challenging in a country like ours, where primary care-giving is provided mostly by children and families. Essentially, if you don't have kids, you worry about who will take care of you and who to put in your will. Brenda Austin is familiar with these issues as she faces a future without a partner and without close family.
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Stay Hungry
Brian Delaney, president and director of the Calorie Restriction (CR) Society International and the co-author of the book The Longevity Diet, talks about calorie restriction as a means to a longer life.
What would you give up to live to 100? Would you severely restrict your calorie intake? Let us know!
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Is It Worth Knowing Alzheimer's is Coming if There's Nothing You Can Do About It?
We're following a new development about research into Alzheimer's treatment and prevention. On Tuesday, drug manufacturer Eli Lilly stopped two late-stage clinical trials of a treatment after researchers found an experimental drug was actually making Alzheimer’s symptoms worse. The news is just one more setback in a long series of setbacks for attempts to cure or prevent the deadly disease.
However, there was some good news recently: determining who will get Alzheimer's. Researchers reported a few weeks ago that a spinal test can predict — with 100 percent accuracy — whether people who are experiencing severe memory loss will get the disease. However, there is nothing medically that can be done, even if you know it's coming.
We’re asking, is it better to know if you're going to get Alzheimer's, or is it easier to stay in the dark? Do you have a relative with Alzheimer's? What would you have done differently if you'd had known it was coming?
We speak with Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, professor at Duke University and co-author of "The Alzheimer's Action Plan," as well as Susan Crowson, the daughter of a patient with Alzheimer's disease.
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The Many Roles of Martin Landau
Some people know Martin Landau as the debonair master of disguise in TV history — from his role on “Mission Impossible.” Some remember him best as the groundbreaking, sexually ambiguous henchman in “North By Northwest.” However, most people remember him fondly as Bella Lugosi in “Ed Wood” — a role that garnered him an Academy Award.
But the magic of Martin Landau is that, to a certain extent, many of us don’t remember him at all. Rather, we remember the characters he plays – each with his own unique desires, language, and history. Landau virtually disappears into each one.
So far, Landau has appeared in over 125 feature films, and worked alongside a Who’s Who of Hollywood’s greatest names - from Cary Grant, Gregory Peck and Barbara Stanwyck, to Robert DeNiro, Edward Norton and Johnny Depp.
Landau’s newest film, “Lovely, Still,” opened this past weekend. We talk with him about what it was like acting alongside fellow-Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn in the film, love stories, and what other roles he's been disappearing into lately.
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Is it Time to Cut Your Aging Parents Loose?
We frequently talk about retired people living on limited budgets. But what about their adult children?
It turns out that many people with aging parents are struggling financially, and even facing professional setbacks. But are their sacrifices really for the best? And is there a time when they should just cut their aging parents loose to fend for themselves?
Beth Kobliner believes, as cruel as it may sound, there is such a time. The Takeaway’s work and personal finance contributor, she’s also the daughter of retired parents.
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Elder Abuse is on the Rise
The Jewish Association for Services for the Aged has noticed more than a twenty percent jump in financial abuse cases of elders over the past two years. City lawmakers and advocates say it's a growing problem.
Mara Schecter is the organization's director. "We see clients where their children move in with them because they're unemployed and then they do not contribute to household expenses," she says, "And even more than that, they exploit the older adults limited income. They take their social security money, they away take their ATM."
Schecter says this trend coincides with the recession.
According to initial findings of a study released by the the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, financial abuse is the leading form of abuse against older adults.
At at City Council hearing Monday, advocates talked about challenges to stopping crimes against seniors. Councilwoman Jessica Lapin, who chairs the Aging Committee, says many victims don't come forward because the perpetrators are usually family members.
"They are ashamed, they feel like they somehow failed in raising that child -- they don't necessarily want to put their own child behind bars.”
The City Council is allocating $800,000 dollars to programs dedicated to the prevention of elder abuse in its current budget.
Victims are encouraged to call the Elderly Crime Victims Resource Center which can be reached by dialing 311.
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Reverse Aging?
Dr. Ronald A. DePinho, director of the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and professor of medicine (genetics) at Harvard Medical School, talks about a recent discovery that has reversed the aging process in mice.
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Walter Mosley: Deal with the Devil
Walter Mosley, author of literary fiction, science fiction, political philosophy, and two series of mysteries, discusses his new novel The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, which explores aging and loss through the story of a 91-year-old's Faustian bargain.
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'Never Say Die': A Motto Americans Live By?
In her new book, "Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age," author Susan Jacoby sets out to debunk the myths that it's possible to avoid the hardships of old age. At the same time, she argues, by accepting death and aging it is easier to retain one's dignity.
What do you think? Is living longer always better? How do you define successful aging?
The first wave of baby boomers turns 65 this year and they will find themselves confronting some of the difficulties of aging in a culture that says that the only way to age gracefully is to stay as young as possible. Susan Jacoby shares her perspective on getting old.
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How We Age
Dr. Marc Agronin, adult and geriatric psychiatrist and author of How We Age: A Doctor's Journey into the Heart of Growing Old, explores what aging means today and how well we do - or don't - understand the process.
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