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Technically Speaking

by Dave Trecker

t's a tough duty getting old. You don’t walk eat 2.5 cups of beans, peas and lentils a week.
as fast. You don’t think as fast. Sometimes Other researchers say a variety of fiber-rich
I you don’t think at all, or so my wife says. Aging foods is important. For breakfast nothing beats
You’re warned about losing your balance, but oatmeal. A bowl of fruit is good for lunch. For
you fall down anyway. You hear a lot of baloney an afternoon snack, popcorn is okay, but with
about your Golden Years, but after a certain age little or no salt.
have some form of dementia. Half of those over in Place shown consuming 30 grams of nuts daily
Nuts provide real value. Research has
nothing gets better, not really.
Nearly 5 million Americans older than 75
reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and
the age of 65 are arthritic. Some 13 million protects against Type II diabetes. Almonds are
Americans are incontinent. There’s memory best because of their high levels of fiber and
loss, neurological problems and, good grief, erectile dysfunction. vitamins.
(Sorry, Viagra doesn’t help much anymore.) Nuts also have a lot of antioxidants, good for scavenging those
To complicate matters, medical advances are keeping us alive troublesome free radicals. The very best for antioxidant activity is red
longer. By 2034, U.S. adults 65 and older will outnumber kids 18 peanut skins.
and younger. Reduce Stress: No question, we oldsters worry more. That leads
So it’s instructive to learn how the experts say we should deal to stress and stress worsens health. To head off stress, Penn State’s
with aging. We can’t stop it, but we can ease the decline. There are Jennifer Graham-Engeland says increase your interactions with
some things we can do. other people, join groups and participate. It makes a huge difference.
Exercise More: It’s a tiresome adage, but it’s still number one on Other things help as well, among them adequate sleep and, of
the list of what helps most. Virtually all of the geriatric experts say course, exercise and diet. Not as obvious though is hearing. Hearing
exercise helps you live longer and live better. loss leads to social isolation. If that’s a problem, get and use hearing
And best of all, there are all kinds of ways to do it. aids. The technology today is quite marvelous.
Nothing beats walking. Cornell’s Mark Lachs recommends Get Ready For The Future: Coming down the pike is some
structured walking programs. Some of his patients actually measure real Buck Rogers stuff. For example, zapping the brain with electric
the number of steps they take each day or the minutes they spend current mimics neural activity that, in turn, boosts memory. Or so
walking. say researchers at Boston University. Here’s a futuristic scenario:
The Wall Street Journal, in a recent aging piece, collected various Have breakfast. Brush your teeth. Then put on an electrode-studded
recommendations, among them line dancing, aquatic classes, hat and blast away for 20 minutes.
musical calisthenics and, for those over 80, golf several times a week. Even more intrusive (and farther into the future) are brain
The worst thing you can do, according to Columbia’s Keith Diaz, implants. Though hard to believe, neurotech start-ups are
is to be sedentary, to sit around doing nothing, particularly after a experimenting with mini computer chips placed between the skull
cardio event. Diaz’s research showed that replacing 30 minutes of and scalp that translate brain signals into computer codes that alter
sedentary time with brisk walking or running lowered the risk of neurologic activity. At this writing, over a hundred people have had
more heart problems by 62%. implants installed.
Improve Your Diet: Here’s another no-brainer. Eat better. Though now used only for medical purposes, brain implants
What’s new is the push for much more fiber, shown to lower could see wide use for stemming cognitive loss of the elderly.
cholesterol and keep blood-sugar levels stable. The WSJ reports Morgan Stanley sees a $1 billion-a-year market
Purdue’s Heather Eicher-Miller says adults on average should by 2041. Will this put the skids on aging ?
Don’t scoff. It could happen.
Dr. Trecker is a chemist and retired Pfizer executive living in Naples.
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