Forget someone's name? Don't panic...

It's common for seniors to struggle to recall a word that's on the tip of their tongue, a new study shows.
University of Michigan researchers found that this type of memory lapse occurred in 61 percent of 105 healthy, highly educated older adults aged 65 to 92.

The participants filled out a checklist of the memory errors they made in the previous 24 hours and underwent several other tests. About half of them reported making errors that may be related to absentmindedness, such as forgetting where they placed an item or having to reread a sentence because they forgot what it said.

The study was published online in the journal Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition.
The findings may help brain-training programs target memory problems that older people experience in daily life, rather than those that occur in laboratory tests, said senior study author and psychology professor Cindy Lustig.

"We wanted to identify which errors still occur despite changes people might be making in their environment and routine. That's where it may be especially important to change the person," she said in a university news release.

Lustig stressed that occasionally forgetting a name or word does not meant that an elderly person is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease or another type of dementia. "Everybody forgets," she said.
"However, our findings suggest that certain types of memory errors may be especially important to monitor for increases, which then should be discussed with a clinician."

Even a little physical activity helps...

A new study provides more evidence that physically active seniors may have a better overall health outlook.

Out of 893 people around 80 years old, researchers found that the most active seniors had a lower risk of dying over the four-year study compared to those who moved the least.

"It's another strong piece of evidence that all seniors should be participating in physical activities," said Dr. Catherine Sarkisian, director of the Los Angeles Community Academic Partnership for Research in Aging.

Sarkisian, who was not involved in the new study, told Reuters Health this does not prove exercise makes people live longer. It could be that people who were healthy enough to exercise are the ones who would have lived longer anyway.

However, she said there is enough evidence to suggest that people who are more physically active are less likely to lose their memory or have to go to a nursing home, for example.

To see whether activity levels make a difference in lifespan, researchers led by Dr. Aron Buchman, a professor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, measured the daily activity level of local seniors, most in their late 70s and 80s, over 10 days.

The participants wore a small device on their wrists to record how much they were moving throughout the day.

The researchers then followed the group for about four years, during which a quarter of the seniors -- 212 -- died.

The seniors who were most active had about a 25 percent lower chance of dying compared to those who were least active over the four years, according to results published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Buchman and his colleagues wrote that the link between physical activity and a lower risk of death remained even after taking into account traits that may have affected both seniors' exercise routine and chance of dying, including mental ability, chronic health conditions and symptoms of depression.

"This suggests if you're increasing your activity -- even in your home -- it has some advantages," said Buchman.

Sarkisian thinks there is a stereotype that seniors are too old to learn new habits, but she said past studies have shown the opposite.

"Physical activity is one of the most important things that seniors can do to improve their health for the rest of their lives," she added.

People are motivated to exercise for different reasons, said Sarkisian. Some may want to exercise after seeing a friend die, become ill or fall. Others may want to exercise because of the immediate physical benefits, such as improved mood.

Older adults can check their local senior centers for exercise programs or talk to their doctors or a physical therapist for ideas, Sarkisian said. There are also programs tailored for people with physical limitations, such as those who are wheelchair bound or at an increased risk for falling.

Buchman,said it can also be as simple as an older person increasing their activities around the house. "If you can do light activity, do light activities."

85 and older outpacing all other age groups in America

The 65+ senior population in the United States has outpaced the growth of all other age groups over the course of the last decade, and Census data released Wednesday indicates that the trend toward an aging America—including for the country’s “oldest old” population—is continuing.
The most recent Census data finds that there were 40.3 million people who were 65 years or older as of April 2010, up 15% from 35 million a decade earlier. As of April 2010, that population represented 13% of the overall population in the United States.

The aging of the baby boom bulge is “unprecedented,” said Carrie Werner, statistician, Age and Special Populations Branch, Population Division at the U.S. Census Bureau, in a call with members of the press Wednesday.
Of older Americans, the 85- to 94-year-old age group showed the greatest increase at near 30%.

Regionally, the Census shows that the South contains the greatest number of people 65 and older, but the percentage of those who are 65+ in the Northeast is greater than in any other region. Of 21 counties that saw their 65+ populations double over the past decade, five were located in Colorado, five in Georgia and five were in Texas. Additionally, the older population is more likely to live inside a metropolitan or micropolitan statistical area.

Senior Helpers = Heat Helpers

As the nation wilts during an especially brutal summer, warnings have gone out to the elderly to try to stay cool. The problem is, many seniors hear the message but don’t think it applies to them — because they don’t see themselves as old. Deciding who counts as elderly is a tricky business. The United States Older Americans Act, for instance, targets people aged 60 and older, but it's a rare 60-year-old who considers himself or herself elderly.

Younger adults, too, call 60 the start of old age, but baby boomers are pushing that number back, according to the Associated Press-LifeGoesStrong.com poll. The median age they cite is 70. And a quarter of boomers insist you're not old until you're 80.
But no matter how you define elderly, or how healthy a senior is, high temperatures can be deadly, experts say. That’s because our bodies lose the ability to deal with heat as we age.
From the time we’re born until age 25 to 30, all our organ systems are growing and developing, explains, Dr. Neil Resnick, a professor and chief of geriatric medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Then at age 30 every body part starts to decline at a rate of about 1 percent per year.

“The good news is that when we’re developing we end up with four to six times more capacity in every organ than we need,” Resnick says. “So if we lose half of that capacity, we’ve still got two to three times more than we need.” Unless it’s really hot.

In extreme heat, blood is redirected to the skin to help cool us down. To make up for that, the body needs to make more blood so that the heart, brain and other organs will get enough. But that takes a lot of water, which may be in short supply when a person has been sweating a lot.
Older people may not even realize that they need more water because the sense of thirst diminishes with age so people don’t always know they're dehydrating. Making matters worse, older kidneys aren’t as good at keeping fluids in the system.

Add to that the host of medications taken by seniors — some of which can impair sweating and the heart’s ability to pump harder in response to these heat-related demands — and it's a recipe for disaster on days when the mercury skyrockets.
“The bottom line,” Resnick says, “ is that older people have less of a physical reserve to count on when they’re challenged by high temperatures."

Older folks who think they’re as tough as they were in younger days should think again.
If you’re exercising hard on a hot day, you might dehydrate so much that you end up with too little blood flow to essential organs — like the brain and heart. Worst case scenario, Resnick says, is “you could go into a coma if your brain isn’t getting enough blood supply or you could have a heart attack or kidney failure if those organs don’t get enough blood.”

The consequences can be dire even if you’re not working out hard, says Peter Ross, chief executive and co-founder of Senior Helpers, a company that provides in-home care for seniors.
That's the group that called new attention to a 2006 Kent State University study of more than 900 people aged 65 and older in six Northern American cities: Dayton, Ohio; Phoenix, Ariz.; Philadelphia, Penn., and Toronto, Canada.

Seniors who dehydrate enough to get dizzy run the risk of falling and breaking bones, Ross explains.

Ross'company has designed a program, called Heat Helpers, to educate the elderly. Seniors are advised to limit strenuous activities on hot days to stay cool and to pay extra attention to getting enough to drink.
“You have to understand that as you age, your body is changing,” Ross says. “And you have to listen to your body.”

The Greatest Generation meets Generation Me

As more seniors opt to live closer to their alma-mater or various
college towns across America, new concepts are sprouting on how those
seniors will interact with the students on campus. According to a WSJ
article this week entitled, “Making Sure Athletes Go to Class”,
the University of Kansas has tapped a group of local seniors who are
tasked with keeping tabs on the student athletes to ensure they attend
class.

In a tale filled with sweet talk and bribes, the article outlines a good example of the importance of keeping seniors active in their community and how it leads to building bonds with the "younger generation".

Boomers and seniors digging into savings for housing

Baby Boomers and seniors in the United States are taking a more pragmatic approach to their housing choices as an effect of the economic downturn according to a new study released today. A joint study by the 50+ Housing Council of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and the MetLife Mature Market Institute reveals that home design considerations have taken a back seat as financial matters have been more prominent in home purchase process for 55+ buyers.

The new study, "Housing Trends Update for the 55+ Market,", explores households living in active adult communities, either age-qualified active adult communities where at least one resident must be age 55+, other non-age-qualified 55+ owner-occupied communities (not explicitly restricted to 55+ households but nevertheless occupied primarily by people age 55+), or age-restricted rental communities.

"By the year 2020, as Baby Boomers move into this age bracket, almost 45 percent of all U.S. households will include someone at least 55 years old," said David Crowe, NAHB’s chief economist. "The number of those households seeking housing better suited to their changing needs will therefore rise dramatically."

NAHB predicts that 54,000 housing starts are projected in 55+ communities this year, a 30 percent rise from estimated 2010 levels and that number is expected to increase another 46 percent to roughly 79,000 housing units in 2012. The average price of homes in the active adult segment were $319,000 in 2010 with buyers having an average income of more than $80,000 per year.

The survey finds that 55% of new age-restricted adult home buyers used the proceeds from the sale of their previous home as down payment where 45% used cash or savings as their down payment on their new home in 2009. This represents a significant change in prior years when over 90% of buyers in 2005 and 2007 used proceeds from the sale of their homes for down payments. The survey still finds that seniors want to be close to friends and family as well close to work.