Final Reflection

1. What is your personal definition of succesful aging? How has this definition changed from the beginning of the semester?
Successful aging involves living a life that you are satisfied with. After taking this course, I consider successful aging to include both mental and physical characteristics. One can be extremely fit physically but if the person is unhappy with life, it's not a situation that I consider to be conducive to successful aging.

2. What was one topic or fact that you found to be the most interesting throughout the semester?
I found the topic of centenarians to be fascinating. Watching the Georgia Centenarian Study and listening to Dr. Martin was very worthwhile.

3. What is one aspect of successful aging that you would like to continue learning about?
How to age successfully throughout every stage of life. This is especially hard with currently being a college student living with a lot of stress but hopefully things will change after I finish school!

4. Has any of the information that we've discussed in class change your perspective about successful aging?  (i.e. Are there any behaviors that you will or will not do as a result of learning about aging?)
I found it pertinent that starting a healthy life routine early may help increase longevity. The fact that a majority of the centenarians had the personality characteristic of persistence was also surprising. Possibly being more persistent will help with better aging? Just a thought. I'm not sure if I would actually attempt this or not.

Overall, this seminar was very interesting and I learned a lot about aging. It has been one of my favorite seminars at Iowa State University.

Gardening and Aging

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-03/asfh-wmz031711.php

I found a write up from Texas A&M about a survey of older adults regarding gardening. Avid gardeners reported feeling more optimism, more energy, and being more physically active compared to those who did not garden. Larger numbers of individuals who garden also report feeling younger and appeared to have goals compared to those who do not garden.

This article reminded me of the Blue Zones that we watched in class. Gardeners are active, performing manual labor, and getting outside to get their daily dose of Vitamin D like some of the individuals profiled in the Blue Zones. Many individuals seem to hold onto something though their later years and gardening is one hobby that many elderly can take pride in. I was not surprised by the findings in this study because I have many relatives who also enjoy gardening in retirement. With spring right around the corner this article is inspiration for us all to get out and play in the soil!

Financial Aging

I found the calculator on financial aging to be an interesting way of thinking about aging. The factors considered by the calculator were far fewer than the aging calculator we did an activity with a few weeks ago. Granted I do understand the difference between guessing how long you're actually going to be alive versus how much money you are going to have. In my opinion, it seems that predicting lifespan or retirement savings are both hard to do based upon how much one does not know looking into the future.

There were a few different things I tried while playing around with the calculator such as salary, slight changes in age, marriage status and the time I would like to retire. The percentage that I needed to save did not seem to vary greatly by more than 1% with any of the varying answers. One thing that would be interesting to add into consideration when creating a calculator like this is the individual's lifestyle. Is this person a saver or a spender? This ties in well to what we talked about in class today with how lifestyle can influence the longevity of retirement savings.

Overall I found this to be an interesting calculator but I am unsure if it is as simple as it sounds to save the suggested amount.

Georgia Centenarian Study

Watching the Georgia Centenarian Study provided an interesting viewpoint for looking at the aspect of living to one hundred years old. I found the documentary to be very worthwhile and thought provoking. Below I have answered some of the question posed in class.

Content:

How does this information related or connect to other information that we've covered or you've read?

The Georgia Centenarian Study found that many individuals contained genes linked to Alzheimer’s yet many of these individuals still contained enough cognitive ability to take part as participants in study. This related to how environment plays a role in aging like we have talked about in the part. These individuals are all genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s yet only a few of the individuals experienced an onset of the disease. Something about the environment where these individuals reside (or have resided) probable influenced the expression of these genes that either enhanced or negated the predisposition present in these individuals. Even in this study, environment and lifestyle played a large role in whether or not individuals were affected by the disease coded in their genes.

Self:

What impact does this information have on you?

Watching the Georgia Centenarian Study provided a different outlook to later life that I have not always pictured. The majority of my elderly family members have been impacted with chronic illness or cancer. I found it very interesting how there actually are people out there that are over one hundred years old that are able to function each day without any large issues. Granted, this reflection corresponds more with Phase I of the study which focused on centenarians with decent levels of cognitive abilities. However, simply seeing these individuals with their outgoing attitude about life was very inspiring.

World:

Who else needs to know this information? What are potential implications?

Caretakers and those with families would benefit from watching this documentary. While caring for a small child requires a lot of effort, there are many readily available resources to help individuals face the challenges of providing this form of care. Caring for the elderly can be much more difficult than caring for newborns due to the lack of innate knowledge that we have regarding caring for older individuals. Drawing the boundaries between aiding the elderly and invalidating their purpose of living (by not allowing them to do anything or overstepping the boundaries of simply assisting with tasks) is something that varies for each individual needing care. Watching in the Georgia Centenarian Study, they noted that grandchildren are even proud of their centenarian relatives. The information regarding individuality from this study could be useful for everyone possibly facing the situation of caring for the elderly at some point in time.

Practice:

How can you use or apply this information?

With how individual each of the study participants were, it may be useful to remember that information when making life choices. While the government has dietary guidelines essentially condemning fried chicken and whole milk, many of the individuals in this study were found to eat those items on a regular basis. This is one thought provoking scenario that can provide support for individuals making dietary choices, possibly not following the dietary guidelines set out by the government religiously will still enable you to live as long as someone who did choose to follow these guidelines.

Is there anything else you want to know?

Did these individuals have any siblings or other family members that experience great longevity?

How are elderly individuals cared for in other cultures around the world?

Age Expectancy

The age calculator used for this week produced some surprising answers. At this point in time, I am satisfied with the age my answers generated. The questions asked were reasonable and they encompassed several aspects of aging (daily activities, family history, etc).


After taking this quiz I started to wonder about a few things. As things change (e.g. I have children) would the life expectancy change? Will changes in eating and exercise routines affect this expected age?

The last thing that surprised me was regarding the vitamin questions. I do not take vitamins daily yet the suggestions on how to prolong my life did not include anything regarding beginning to take nutritional supplements.

Genetics and Aging

For this week, I looked in a few different places to find an article. Eventually I stumbled on this article from Time magazine that is a fairly easy read regarding a genetic link to aging that scientists found. This article is about a year old so this isn't exactly news to some.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1963637,00.html

In this article, the concept of telomere shortening was linked to aging. Telomere shortening is a phenomenon that I have heard thrown around before in connection with aging. While I do think that telomere shortening may have something to do with aging, I don’t believe it is the only genetic basis behind aging.  As the article notes, environmental factors do appear to influence cell aging rates. Most mutations caused in genes by environmental factors are repaired before they become a larger issue. Telomere shortening may be linked to the decrease in a cells ability to repair mutations caused by environmental factors. This is just an idea but it will take years of research to discover if there is any relationship between telomere shortening and cell repair processes.

The article also says there is no quick fix for telomere shortening and if there is a fix, we may trade heart disease for a high risk of cancer. I am starting to believe that any “solution” for aging comes with a price tag and that maybe there is a reason humans possibly have a definitely life span of approximately 100 years for a reason we have yet to find.

What is responsible for aging?

What we need to survive is exactly what helps us progress towards our senescence? That is the question that kept running through my head as I read the reading for this week. Oxygen and glucose are essential for sustaining human life, but more specifically they are needed for proper brain function. A few minutes without oxygen, or a very low level of blood glucose, causes the brain to shut down (which in turn leads to death). Biologically, the ideas of rusting and browning discussed in the chapter make quite a bit of sense.

Science has brought us to the point of understanding some processes that can be thrown in to swim amongst the countless other things that are thought to contribute to aging. Throughout the chapter, the authors insisted that looking at only one scientific process provided only one view on aging and that viewing one aspect leaves other things being overlooked. The ideas that humans are prone to rusting like the Tin Man and browning like a steak on the grill provide simple analogies regarding aging. While the Tin Man and steak represent two different processes, there are countless other processes that can be associated with countless other analogies regarding aging.

In class, we discussed the point of how one views aging with the knowledge their background and expertise has provided them. The most striking example what how an Evolutionary Biologist would define aging, depending on what parameters had been set by the inquiring party. At this point in time, with the varying view points, hundreds of theories and countless analogies we have encountered, I have thought of a visual representation of these varying viewpoints.

Depending on one's background, looking into the globe at the concept of aging will give a different picture. Like the infinite number of ways to look into a globe, there will always be infinite ways to look at aging because we see what we believe. After all, as the author says "with our focus on longevity and survival so far, it is easy to forget that some aspects of aging have little to do with staying alive" (pg. 144).