Seniors and Lifelong Sexual Health
BY ABBY TALLMER
Here’s an alert: Readers, this will I promise be a cheery column. In keeping with the theme of this month’s issue of Thrive — Gratitude — be assured that all of the items you are about to read — or most of them, anyway (we must after all save room for some realistic not-quite-as-pleasing news) — will leave you feeling refreshed, thankful for your health, thankful for your blessings, and, most of all, thankful for life in general, something which too many of us tend to take for granted.
Enough of the sermonizing, and on with the show:
U.S. life expectancy reaches record high
Certainly that headline ought to bring a smile to the face of even the most dour of pessimists. And no, I didn’t make it up just for this issue. According to new government figures, the life expectancy of the average American is now nearly 78 years, the highest ever in U.S. history. The federal life- expectancy report, released by the National Center for Health Statistics this past September, analyzes 99 percent of the death records of all 50 states and the District of Columbia for 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available. This nearly 78-year life expectancy (77.9 to be precise) eclipses the previous high of 77.8, set in the Center’s analysis of 2004 death records. Contrast this with 1995, when U.S. life expectancy was logged at 75.8, or with 1955, when the average American lived till just 69, and it becomes more plainly evident just how sharp this rise is.
Interestingly, this longer life span seems — at least to this reporter — to be somewhat if not wholly attributable to, or related to. the rise in life expectancy among African-Americans. While researchers found that life expectancy for white Americans in 2005 was 78.3, the same as the year before, African-American life expectancy rose from 73.1 in 2004 to 73.2 in 2005 (which is, however, still troublingly nearly five years shorter than the average figure for white Americans. (Disturbingly, African-American life expectancy has consistently lagged behind that of whites ever since the government began compiling this data.)
On another consistent track, the life expectancy of American women continues to be five years greater than that of men, a fact that no doubt will provide fodder for endless debate and speculation at cocktail parties or other social gatherings should one manage to ever-so-casually drop it into conversation.
There is even more good news from this data: Deaths from strokes and heart disease — two of the nation’s leading killers — dropped in 2005. In 2004 there were 217 fatalities from heart failure per 100,000 population, but only 210 such deaths per 100,000 in 2005. The stroke rate fell from 50 per 100,000 to about 46.5, and the actual number of stroke deaths decreased from 150,000 in 2004 to 143,500 in 2005. “If death rates from certain leading causes of death continue to decline,” statistician Hsiang-Ching Kung wrote in a statement accompanying the report and quoted by CNN, “we should continue to see improvements in life expectancy.”
So amidst the ever-rising price of prescription drugs, Medicare premiums, and the contentious, perhaps never to be settled, debate over national health care, there is cause for celebration after all.
For more on the newly released report, go to:
http://www.cnn.com
In the glass-half-filled category:
Medicare premiums to rise less than usual
Speaking of things to be grateful for, here’s one for the let’s- be-grateful-for-small-favors pigeonhole: The Associated Press reports that “[e]lderly and disabled people will see their Medicare premiums rise 3.1 percent next year to $96.40 a month — the lowest rise in six years.”
Currently, as no doubt most of you know, the U.S. Medicare program pays for most of the health care received by approximately 43 million seniors and disabled people in America.
That’s the good news.
But hey, the topic is after all Medicaid, and we are after all living under the rule of the Bush administration, which most recently (a few days ago as of this writing) saw fit to veto funds for a government program that would have taken huge sums of money from tobacco sales and diverted them to provide health coverage for millions of poor and chronically ill uninsured children across the U.S. But I digress …
Now for the not-so-hot news: The projected lower cost in Medicare premiums is, of course, only temporary — although neither the U.S. government nor the wire services were offering estimates on just how temporary as of Thrive press time. Or as the AP puts it: “The formula used to calculate the [lower than expected] premium assumes that physicians will take a 10 percent cut in their reimbursement rates next year, an unlikely occurrence.” To say the least. “If, as expected, Congress acts to offset some of that pay cut or to eliminate it, premiums in future years would go up to reflect the additional expense.” Oh well, it was good while it lasted.
The best is yet to be
Since I promised you a maximum of cheer and a minimum of doldrums, let me quickly transition to another genuine kick-up-your-heels bit of news. According to the Centers for Disease Control, as quoted by Meriter Health Services, “New research … suggests that the older you get, the happier you become.”
This finding is, of course, absolutely contrary to all of the brainwashing we have all received about old age being times of gloom and doom, and it is an invigorating departure from that tired old message.
The results are based on a study conducted by the University of Georgia, which compared two sets of interviews with the same subjects, the first when they were ages 59 to 80, the second 14 years later. Here’s how Meriter Health Services summarizes the findings: “In the earlier set of interviews, the largest percentage [of study participants] chose their 50s as the most satisfying period of their lives. An additional 18 percent picked their 60s and 70s. The childhood and teen years emerged as the unhappiest times; the 30s produced nearly equal feedback as being the best and worst years. When the same people were surveyed 14 years later, many of the responses remained the same. But 8 percent now said their 80s were their best years.”
Take that, Generation X, Y, and Z.
For more on the study, go to:
http://meriter.staywellsolutionsonline.com/RelatedItems/1,624 or to Judy Foreman’s article from Boston on page 28.
Growing old, robotically, in Japan
Among the final things-to-be-thankful-for as of this writing, there is this: Many if not most Japanese seniors now rely on robots — that’s right, robots — rather than actual people or — God forbid — their children to take care of them later in life.
An AP headline, “Robots may aid aging Japanese population” — standing out in a sea of science/health items — sufficiently intrigued this reporter to actually read it. And to learn that advanced technology has already introduced a staggering range of space-age aids for Japanese seniors, also that the market for these products — and consumer response — has been, to put it with considerable understatement, strong. Which in turn has fueled the fast-paced development of ever more new and novel gadgets by technologically savvy companies, a trend that is expected to climb rather than fall or level off in the near future.
And what are these sci-fi self-help gadgets? Let AP do the talking:
“If you grow old in Japan, expect to be served food by a robot, ride a voice-recognition wheelchair, or even possibly hire a nurse in a robotic suit [more on this below] — all examples of cutting-edge technology to care of the country’s rapidly graying population.
“With nearly 22 percent of Japan’s population already aged 65 or older, businesses here have been rolling out everything from easy-entry cars to remote-controlled beds, fueling a care-technology market worth some $1.08 billion in 2006, according to industry figures.
“At a home care and rehabilitation convention in Tokyo this week [October 4, 2007], buyers crowded round a demonstration of Secom Co.’s My Spoon feeding robot, which helps elderly or disabled people eat with a spoon-and-fork-fitted swiveling arm.
“Operating a joystick with his chin, developer Shigehisa Kobayashi maneuvered the arm toward a block of silken tofu, deftly getting the fork to break off a bite-sized piece. The arm then returned to a preprogrammed position in front of the mouth, allowing Kobayashi to bite and swallow.
“ ‘It’s all about empowering people to help themselves,’ Kobayashi said. The Tokyo-based company has already sold 300 of the robots, which come with a price tag of $3,500.
“ ‘We want to give the elderly control over their own lives,’ he said.”
And the nurse in the “robotic suit” mentioned earlier? It consists of a “massive contraption” powered by 22 air pumps which helps nurses lift patients onto and off their beds. Sensors attached to the wearer’s skin detect when muscles are trying to lift something heavy. and signal the air pumps to kick in. “Though the suit makes its wearer look a little like a Robocop, a student who was easily lifted off a table in a demonstration said he felt comfortable during the test.” the AP reported. “It doesn’t at all feel like I’m being lifted by a robot,” the student declared. “This feels so comfortable and very human.” Okay, bud, if you say so.
Other products include a rubber and nylon “muscle suit,” developed by the Tokyo University of Science, that helps keep seniors active by providing additional support for the upper body, arms, and shoulders; an “intelligent wheelchair” from Fujitsu Ltd. and Aisin Seiki Co., with a positioning system that enables automatic travel “to a preset destination, and uses sensors to detect and stop at red lights, ,and to avoid obstacles”; another wheelchair, designed by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, which responds to oral commands like “forward,” “back,” “right” and “left.”
The best — at least in my book — is a newly introduced line of cars called the Welcab series, from Toyota Motor Corp. They are designed for easy entry by seniors who have difficulty walking, and/or those confined to a wheelchair. The brilliant ad slogan for this senior-friendly vehicle? “A car that’s more patient than your daughter.” Need help? Don’t pick up that phone and make up with, beg, or grovel to your ungrateful, guilt-inducing son or daughter (though it nearly kills you to do so). Just go to the store (or even online) and buy a problem-free replacement that comes with perhaps a steep price tag but none of the additional emotional baggage. If that isn’t the coolest thing to be grateful for, I don’t know what is. No word on when these products will be available to American consumers, but hopefully they will have graced our shores by the time I myself will be needing one, which will be, I fear, sooner than I would like to think.
For more on the whole story, go to:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071004/ap_on_sc/japanrobot_helpers;_ylt=AlaPj8qQ.a6JPW7YusSJ1QSs0NUE
Gratefully that’s it for this month.Gg
