NewRetirement Retirement News Digest : Leisure and Lifestyle

Sleep Disturbances Improve After Retirement

jberman — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:40:00 GMT

Science Daily, November 1st, 2009

A new study in the journal Sleep shows that retirement is followed by a sharp decrease in the prevalence of sleep disturbances. Findings suggest that this general improvement in sleep is likely to result from the removal of work-related demands and stress rather than from actual health benefits of retirement.

Results show that the odds of having disturbed sleep in the seven years after retirement were 26 percent lower (adjusted odds ratio of 0.74) than in the seven years before retiring. Sleep disturbance prevalence rates among 14,714 participants fell from 24.2 percent in the last year before retirement to 17.8 percent in the first year after retiring. The greatest reduction in sleep disturbances was reported by participants with depression or mental fatigue prior to retirement. The postretirement improvement in sleep also was more pronounced in men, management-level workers, employees who reported high psychological job demands, and people who occasionally or consistently worked night shifts.

Lead author Jussi Vahtera, professor in the department of public health at the University of Turku in Finland, noted that the participants enjoyed employment benefits rarely seen today, including guaranteed job stability, a statutory retirement age between 55 and 60 years, and a company-paid pension that was 80 percent of their salary.

"We believe these findings are largely applicable in situations where financial incentives not to retire are relatively weak," said Vahtera. "In countries and positions where there is no proper pension level to guarantee financial security beyond working age, however, retirement may be followed by severe stress disturbing sleep even more than before retirement."

For a Healthy Retirement, Keep Working

jberman — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:27:00 GMT

The New York Times, October 19th, 2009

Many people view retirement as a time to stop working. But new research shows that people who take on full- or part-time jobs after retirement have better health.

The finding is based on data collected from 12,189 men and women over a 6-year period. The participants, who were from ages 51 to 61 at the start of the study, answered questions about their employment history, experiences after retirement and their physical and mental health.

Researchers from the University of Maryland found that men and women who kept working after retirement had fewer major diseases or disabilities than those who quit work, according to the study published this month in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. Retirees benefited whether the work was a full- or part-time job, self-employment or temporary.

Doctors have long known that staying active during the older years is associated with better health. But the question is whether working keeps older people healthy, or whether the people who continue working are able to do so because they were healthier to start with. But the new study controlled for health before retirement and found that post-retirement work had a distinct effect on health. Notably, the hours a person worked didn’t matter, showing that both part-time and full-time employment are beneficial after retirement.

While working after retirement is good for you, the data also suggest that retirees shouldn’t take on just any job. Among those who kept working, the retirees who found work related to their previous careers had the best mental health. The study authors speculated that working outside a person’s main area of expertise might lead to more stress, explaining the lower mental health for people who worked outside their main career field. Switching careers after retirement may also be a sign that the person had to find some form of work to cope with financial problems.

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Retirement Living TV Premieres 'Not Fade Away' September 21st to Honor World Alzheimer's Day

jberman — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:56:00 GMT

Reuters, September 16th, 2009

As the baby boom generation moves through
retirement, the number of people affected by Alzheimer's is likely to well
exceed 11 million by 2040.  In recognition of World Alzheimer's Day,
Retirement Living TV (RLTV), the only network dedicated to adults 50+, will
air an exclusive television special, "Not Fade Away" on September 21 at 8PM
(EDT). 

To View the Trailer: http://podcast.rl.tv/21814small.html

Working in partnership with the National Cable & Telecommunications
Association (NCTA) and the Blanchette Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute
(BRNI), RLTV's documentary special features stories from people diagnosed with
the disease and explores its grave impact on the victims and their families,
such as Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, mother of Senator Jay Rockefeller
(D-WV), who died of complications from Alzheimer's in 1992.  Never before has
a documentary sought to unveil "what it feels like" to have the disease.
Equally important, this original program from RLTV uncovers some of the latest
findings in the search for answers and a cure. Highlights include the
groundbreaking work underway at BRNI.  Scientists there believe they have
discovered a biomarker for early detection of Alzheimer's and are especially
excited about a test drug that appears to have the remarkable power to not
only treat damaged neurons but regenerate growth. 

"I applaud such a strong commitment by RLTV and the cable industry to help
raise awareness of Alzheimer's disease," said Senator Rockefeller.  "Not Fade
Away reminds all of us of the devastation that this disease inflicts on
millions of people each day and the families who must provide long-term care
the people they love.  Of special importance, the program also instills great
hope by highlighting BRNI's research - that I'm very proud will one day find a
cure.  This research makes it clear that we can do something to prevent the
loss of cognitive functioning later in life and that one day lost memories
will be found again."

Beth Ashley and Rowland Fellows

jberman — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:54:00 GMT

The New York Times, September 12th, 2009

ROWLAND FELLOWS still owns two oil lamps from the summer cottage in the village of Five Islands, Me., where his family vacationed in the late 1930’s.

Mr. Fellows, 84, converted those lamps to electricity for use in his house in Greenbrae, Calif. “They still work great,” he said, “and they bring back such fond memories. ...”

He was 13. Beth Ashley was 12. They spent their days in Five Islands talking and swimming, fetching water from rain barrels and the communal well, racing to the dock to meet the morning mail boat and fishing off the wharf.

“We had no electricity or running water, but we had a great time,” said Mr. Fellows, who was also friends then with Ms. Ashley’s big brother, William. “In our cottage, we had a pump organ and a windup Victrola, but most of the real fun was outdoors.”

While Mr. Fellows had an interest in exploring the Sheepscot River in his 14-foot catboat, Ms. Ashley had a deeper interest: Mr. Fellows.

“I thought he was very, very cute,” said Ms. Ashley, 83. “I kept wishing he would kiss me and become my boyfriend. It was a little girl crush, but it was very serious on my part.”

That entire summer of 1938, and three more that followed, Ms. Ashley waited for that kiss. Rain barrels filled and emptied, mail boats came and went, but the long-awaited kiss never arrived.

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Older, Wiser, Slower

jberman — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 05:25:00 GMT

The Wall Street Journal, September 2nd, 2009

During Sunday's Chicago Triathlon, I kept my heart rate low, cut my pace at every hint of muscular or cardiovascular pain and crossed the finish line about half an hour behind my personal record in that race. It was exhilarating.

What I accomplished is a goal I once considered unreachable, not to mention undesirable: I raced without competing. My ranking among the more than 4,200 participants in the Olympic-distance triathlon couldn't have mattered less to me. More important, I ditched the notion of competing against oneself. That had been an appealing concept at age 40, when I was fitter, faster and trimmer than I'd been at age 20. But at 50, the triumphs of the last decade—the time I flew past most of the few-and-proud at the Marine Corps Triathlon—are far behind me, and anyway my cardiologist is urging moderation since the discovery of an aneurysm in my aortic root. "Race all you want," he says, "but keep your heart rate below 120," far lower than most peak workout targets.

Amid ever-rising calls for more exercise in America, there isn't much guidance on cutting back. As the baby boomers who fueled marathon and triathlon crazes enter their 50s and 60s, their unquenched competitiveness can become a threat to their stiffening joints, rigid muscles, hardening arteries and high-mileage hearts. And it doesn't help that nearly every exercise message they hear emphasizes more. It's as if nobody wants to acknowledge that exercise isn't the fountain of youth.

"The no-pain-no-gain mentality suggests that you can keep making gains if you just work harder," says Mark Allen, a 51-year-old athletic coach once known as the world's fittest man for winning six Ironman Triathlon World Championships. As co-author of a new book called "Fit Soul, Fit Body," Mr. Allen argues against fighting age with more hours on the treadmill. "If you can't let up on the competitive part of it, if you have to go as fast at 50 as you did at 20, you will grind yourself into the ground and become stressed out, bitter and unhealthy," he says.

A growing number of exercise scientists are questioning the more-and-harder philosophy of fitness, and not only for aging athletes. A study published last year in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine reinforced other recent research showing that intensity tends to diminish the view of physical activity as pleasant. "Evidence shows that feeling worse during exercise translates to doing less exercise in the future," says Panteleimon Ekkekakis, an author of that study and a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State University.

Older Americans On The Go: How Often, Where, and Why?

jberman — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:41:00 GMT

Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, August 31st, 2009

The lore on whether older Americans move is mixed. On the one hand, the stereotype of retirement is that people flock to a warm climate such as Florida or Arizona. On the other hand, researchers have found that the home equity of older Americans changes very little over time, suggesting that they tend to stay put. To date, researchers have seldom directly addressed the migration patterns of older Americans. Understanding such patterns can be useful in assessing the social and economic circumstances of the elderly. Therefore, this brief – the first in a two-part series – uses the Health and Retirement Study to examine how often older households move, where they move, and why they move.

The brief is organized as follows. The first section covers the prevalence of moving and the geographic locations of the moves. The second section analyzes the reasons that households give for moving and explores whether these reasons suggest different types of movers. The third section concludes by setting the stage for the next brief, which will explore the determinants and consequences of moving.

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For Older Athletes, Drug Question Emerges

jberman — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:44:00 GMT

The New York Times, August 18th, 2009

In his apartment outside Philadelphia, Frank Levine pulled a list of prescription medications from his refrigerator, his hands shaking slightly. There was metformin HCl and glipizide for his diabetes; lisinopril for his blood pressure; and Viagra.

“I need it,” he said recently.

Mr. Levine, who is 95 and has had operations on both knees, in June set the American record in the 400-meter dash for men ages 95 to 99, only to see it broken at the U.S.A. Masters Outdoor Track & Field Championships a few weeks later. “Nothing counts unless you’re first,” he said.

Mr. Levine belongs to a generation of track and field athletes who are breaking records for speed, distance and endurance at ages once considered too old for competition. In a sport tarnished by doping scandals, the older athletes raise anew the question of what constitutes a natural body for people who are at an age when drugs are a part of life.

“Who’s 75 years old and not taking medications?” asked Gary Snyder, national chairman of U.S.A. Track & Field’s masters committee, which will oversee more than 100 competitions this year for athletes over age 30.

Most drugs like Mr. Levine’s are not banned for competitors, but some common treatments for asthma, menopause and inflammation contain steroids that can disqualify athletes if they do not get written medical exemptions.

“I’m sure there are folks taking something like Manny,” Mr. Snyder said, referring to Manny Ramirez, the baseball player for the Los Angeles Dodgers who this year was suspended 50 games for violating the sport’s drug policy. “But most are using drugs for medical reasons.”

Ray Feick, 77, said he suspected “two or three” peers of using steroids to enhance their performance, including one shot-putter who suddenly was able to beat him. “My buddies and I talk about it,” he said. “It’s not fair to the age bracket and not fair to their body. And one by one, they drop out.”

U.S.A. Track & Field, the sport’s governing body, has a zero tolerance policy for doping but does not test for drugs at masters events because it is too expensive — about $500 per athlete and an additional $10,000 to take a testing organization to the meet, Mr. Snyder said.

But there is testing at the World Masters Championship, which took place this year in Lahti, Finland, in late July and early August. In 1999, the American sprinter Kathy Jager, 56, was stripped of her medals and barred from competition for two years after she tested positive for anabolic steroids, which she ascribed to her use of a popular menopause treatment called Estratest HS.

“When we set records, the Europeans look at us like, ‘Oh sure, so-and-so is taking stuff,’ ” Mr. Snyder said.

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Not Your Grandfather's Retirement

jberman — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:14:00 GMT

CBS News, May 17th, 2009

John Bauer was a high school teacher in Michigan before retiring to Asheville, and getting a part-time job as a tour guide at the Biltmore Estate.

"Why do I wanna keep on teaching when I can retire financially and I can try something completely different?" he asked.

Americans just aren't retiring the way they used to ...

"We don't want to just sit down and vegetate," said Jim Wyatt.

And you don't have to go very far from the Biltmore Estate to see how they're redesigning the whole notion.

Nancy Long spent her career writing for newspapers and magazines. Now she's a volunteer docent at the Asheville Art Museum.

Long and her husband, Al, were attracted to Asheville, N.C., because for a small city, it has a lot going on culturally.

But the big selling point was the fact that they could live right downtown and walk everywhere, a growing trend among retirees.

The Longs live in a compact loft in an old commercial building, but here's the kicker: When they retired, they actually lived in Florida … and moved away.

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What Are Friends For? A Longer Life

tsaleen — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:38:00 GMT

The New York Times - April 20, 2009

In the quest for better health, many people turn to doctors, self-help books or herbal supplements. But they overlook a powerful weapon that could help them fight illness and depression, speed recovery, slow aging and prolong life: their friends.Researchers are only now starting to pay attention to the importance of friendship and social networks in overall health. A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends. A large 2007 study showed an increase of nearly 60 percent in the risk for obesity among people whose friends gained weight. And last year, Harvard researchers reported that strong social ties could promote brain health as we age.

“In general, the role of friendship in our lives isn’t terribly well appreciated,” said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. “There is just scads of stuff on families and marriage, but very little on friendship. It baffles me. Friendship has a bigger impact on our psychological well-being than family relationships.”

In a new book, “The Girls From Ames: A Story of Women and a 40-Year Friendship” (Gotham), Jeffrey Zaslow tells the story of 11 childhood friends who scattered from Iowa to eight different states. Despite the distance, their friendships endured through college and marriage, divorce and other crises, including the death of one of the women in her 20s.

Using scrapbooks, photo albums and the women’s own memories, Mr. Zaslow chronicles how their close friendships have shaped their lives and continue to sustain them. The role of friendship in their health and well-being is evident in almost every chapter.

Two of the friends have recently learned they have *** cancer. Kelly Zwagerman, now a high school teacher who lives in Northfield, Minn., said that when she got her diagnosis in September 2007, her doctor told her to surround herself with loved ones. Instead, she reached out to her childhood friends, even though they lived far away.

“The first people I told were the women from Ames,” she said in an interview. “I e-mailed them. I immediately had e-mails and phone calls and messages of support. It was instant that the love poured in from all of them.”

When she complained that her treatment led to painful sores in her throat, an Ames girl sent a smoothie maker and recipes. Another, who had lost a daughter to leukemia, sent Ms. Zwagerman a hand-knitted hat, knowing her head would be cold without hair; still another sent pajamas made of special fabric to help cope with night sweats.

Ms. Zwagerman said she was often more comfortable discussing her illness with her girlfriends than with her doctor. “We go so far back that these women will talk about anything,” she said.

Ms. Zwagerman says her friends from Ames have been an essential factor in her treatment and recovery, and research bears her out. In 2006, a study of nearly 3,000 nurses with *** cancer found that women without close friends were four times as likely to die from the disease as women with 10 or more friends. And notably, proximity and the amount of contact with a friend wasn’t associated with survival. Just having friends was protective.

Bella DePaulo, a visiting psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose work focuses on single people and friendships, notes that in many studies, friendship has an even greater effect on health than a spouse or family member. In the study of nurses with *** cancer, having a spouse wasn’t associated with survival.

While many friendship studies focus on the intense relationships of women, some research shows that men can benefit, too. In a six-year study of 736 middle-age Swedish men, attachment to a single person didn’t appear to affect the risk of heart attack and fatal coronary heart disease, but having friendships did. Only smoking was as important a risk factor as lack of social support.

Exactly why friendship has such a big effect isn’t entirely clear. While friends can run errands and pick up medicine for a sick person, the benefits go well beyond physical assistance; indeed, proximity does not seem to be a factor.

It may be that people with strong social ties also have better access to health services and care. Beyond that, however, friendship clearly has a profound psychological effect. People with strong friendships are less likely than others to get colds, perhaps because they have lower stress levels.

Last year, researchers studied 34 students at the University of Virginia, taking them to the base of a steep hill and fitting them with a weighted backpack. They were then asked to estimate the steepness of the hill. Some participants stood next to friends during the exercise, while others were alone.

The students who stood with friends gave lower estimates of the steepness of the hill. And the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared.

“People with stronger friendship networks feel like there is someone they can turn to,” said Karen A. Roberto, director of the center for gerontology at Virginia Tech. “Friendship is an undervalued resource. The consistent message of these studies is that friends make your life better.”

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Plan Mentally for Retirement Not Just Financially

tsaleen — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:12:00 GMT

Chron Business News - March 9, 2009

Many people entering retirement envision a life of fun and relaxation, but the opposite can be true. Without the social contacts that come from reporting to an office everyday, some retirees feel isolated. Others feel depression from an emptiness that comes with sudden idle time.

Psychologist Nancy Schlossberg's latest of nine books, "Revitalizing Retirement: Reshaping Your Identity, Relationships, and Purpose" says you should spend as much time preparing your psychological portfolio as you do your financial one. In today's recession, which is leaving millions of workers suddenly jobless, her tips also can help unemployed workers develop a plan for moving on.

Schlossberg is professor emerita of the College of Education at the University of Maryland and co-president of TransitionWorks, a consulting company that focuses on helping people adjust to life changes in Adelphia, Md.

Q: Your book discusses the need to develop a psychological portfolio for retirement, what exactly does that mean and why is it important?

A: For many workers, the psychological adjustment to retirement is as difficult as the financial one. I make the case that people go to a financial adviser and consult often yearly, sometimes more frequently. They go to a physician to get a checkup. But no one is checking up on their psychological portfolio because they didn't really have one. It's important, not just for retirement, but for every major change in life — career changes, marriage, divorce. Those things change the way you define yourself, your relationships and often change your sense of purpose.

The more people I interviewed, the more I began to realize three common issues — identity, relationships and purpose — arise when people retire. These issues make up the psychological portfolio that I refer to and should be honestly assessed and managed if one is to be happy.

Q: For many people psychological issues aren't as concrete as financial decisions. Can you explain how to go about assessing these areas and managing them?

A: The major thing people realize after they retire is that their identity has been compromised. While working, they knew who they were — a roofer, a bricklayer, a college professor, an accountant. They had a tag, an identity. People don't think about that. They don't realize that after retirement, the issue of identity is critical.

Finding interests that help you focus on who you are is the key. The book illustrates points with real life examples including a police officer who couldn't figure out who he was after retirement. He was divorced and directionless until he agreed to work in a temporary job helping a family member manage a hotel. The job gave him a new identity and new working relationships. He remarried and 10 years later is still doing the job.

Q: How about relationships and finding a new purpose in retirement. Why are these important issues?

A: Many people feel an intense vacuum after leaving the workplace because their social network of co-workers is gone. They need to find a substitute for work colleagues. Many people find a part-time job that gives them interaction with others. Some find fulfillment in volunteering with a community organization or becoming involved with a church group. They must be sure to find some community of people.

It's also likely that they'll have to renegotiate the relationship with their spouse or life partner. Many men and women find it very trying when they first retire because they're not ready to be with one another 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Finding a new purpose is integral to the happiness of many retirees. Many people must feel as if they matter and often lose that sense when they no longer work every day. They must place themselves in situations in which they feel appreciated and depended upon. People need to look in their communities for places where they feel they matter. Giving back is one of the best ways to do this — working at a soup kitchen or in some other capacity in which they're helping others.

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Moving to Depreciated Area Could Restore Nest Egg

tsaleen — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:44:00 GMT

Dallas News - March 8, 2009

If you are in your 50s or early 60s, you're in the Peril Period. And the Worst-of-All-Possible-Worlds appears to be happening. Everything – home value, 401(k) and job – is going down the drain just as you're getting really serious about retirement.

How would you like to restore your suffering retirement savings in a single step?

It's possible. Maybe, just maybe, the collapse of housing prices is an opportunity.

How do you turn disaster into opportunity? You move from a high-cost area to a lower-cost area. You move from a somewhat depreciated area to a much-depreciated area.

Let's see what can happen if you can accept disappointment in the sale of one house but buy another at a bargain price. Can you use the difference to restore a shattered retirement? Some back-of-the-envelope figures indicate that you can.

Let's imagine George and Gina Mover. They're about 60. They live in New England. They had hoped to retire soon.

But then the housing crisis came along. It took 7 percent to 20 percent off the value of their house. Then the financial crisis came along. It took at least 25 percent off the value of the retirement savings accounts.

Mixing lemonade

Finally, the recession came along. It may take their jobs. This would force them to retire.

How do they turn all these lemons into lemonade?

They make the traditional retirement move to a warmer climate.

If they owned a median-price house in the Boston area, for instance, it was worth about $400,000 in 2006 but is worth only $336,000 now. But if they're among the many homeowners over 50 who have no mortgage, they can sell the house and move to any number of places where the median home price is lower. Then they can add the liberated home equity to their retirement portfolio.

Anyone who lives in a relatively high-price area can do this.

Some readers will be shocked by the idea that many 50-plus households have no mortgage, but the data come from a recent study by the AARP Public Policy Institute.

If the Movers went to Miami, where the median home price has declined from $371,000 to $234,000, they could add $102,000 to their nest egg.

They could liberate still more by moving to Orlando, Fla., where the median home price has fallen from $270,000 to $175,000. This would liberate $161,000 for investment.

Or they could move to the struggling Cape Coral-Fort Myers area of Florida, where home prices have plummeted from $268,000 to $111,000. That would allow them to add a hefty $225,000 to their retirement nest egg.

What if the Movers don't like Florida?

No problem. They can move to Las Vegas, one of the most distressed housing markets in America. They can buy a median-price home there for $182,000, and they'll add $154,000 to their nest egg.

In fact, they don't even have to move to a distressed area.

According to National Association of Realtors figures, the Austin-Round Rock area has actually appreciated since 2006. So it isn't considered distressed – even though it has an abundant supply of builder close-outs, other bargain deals and a growing number of short sales.

If the Movers buy a median-price $185,000 home there, they'll add $151,000 to their nest egg.

Start playing with the possibilities for a move – city, state, possible changes in home size or moving to a no-income-tax state such as Florida, Nevada or Texas – and geographic arbitrage starts to look like a positive plan. Cut your expenses and increase your savings in a bum market.

Repairing the crack

Will liberating home equity restore the retirement nest eggs of older workers?

It's very likely. Only a minority of older workers have ever had more than $400,000 in their retirement savings plans. The moves discussed here could restore nest egg losses ranging from 25 percent to 50 percent.

Is moving easy? No. It's a major hassle.

But it's an action you can take. The prime mover behind this action will be George and Gina Mover. It won't be the economy. It won't be the government.

George and Gina are a much better bet than those other two.

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Gadgets for Growing Old at Home

tsaleen — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:45:00 GMT

The New York Times - January 13, 2009

At the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, I stepped onto an ordinary-looking white bathroom scale. The scale sent a signal via Bluetooth to a control box, which read my weight aloud.

It was my first time on the scale. We had no relationship. I was just data. The machine was just a disembodied voice.

Then Mikael Hvid, application manager at Tunstall Healthcare A/S, which makes the box, stepped onto the scale. After telling Mr. Hvid his weight, the voice compared the figure with previous readings.

Then it got inquisitive.

“Are you more tired than usual?” it asked.

Mr. Hvid was. (This was Las Vegas, after all.) He pressed a “yes” button.

“Are you having trouble sleeping at night?” Ditto.

Mr. Hvid’s weight and answers were all harvested by the box’s software, which stood ready to make them available electronically to whomever he gave access: his primary care doctor, family members, perhaps a pulmonologist, maybe the administrators at his assisted living community.

The control box also works with gadgets measuring blood pressure, oxygen level, activity level and other markers of health. If the person on the scale were my mother, I might instruct the box to alert me if her weight rose or fell by a certain amount, or if her answers to questions suggested trouble. Other devices in the exhibition hall tracked whether a user fell, opened a pill bottle, made coffee, used the bathroom excessively at night or wandered out of the home.

In a nutshell, this was the big idea about aging at this year’s C.E.S.: how to use mostly simple technologies to gather information and detect warning signs, thereby allowing older people to remain in their own homes with fewer trips to the doctor’s office and less need for supervision in a skilled nursing facility.

I imagined my mother’s doctors all having a single report that showed how a change in her medication coincided with changes in weight, blood pressure, mood, sleep pattern and gait, then being able to discuss that information with one another, family members and my mother. That would be a big step forward for her and for many like her.

But then I imagined my mother living with a half-dozen electronic boxes beeping for attention and me getting alerts every time one of the measurements was skewed — me, without the medical expertise to sort the blips from the real problems. I’d call her doctor and become ensnared in a voicemail loop that asked if I was more tired than usual and if I was having trouble sleeping at night.

Yes, and heck yes. With technology like this, I might never sleep again.

These devices were unveiled at a day-long program called the Silvers Summit, the first forum at the C.E.S. dedicated to aging. Participants included hospitals, nonprofit groups, retailers, insurers and dozens of entrepreneurs, many of whom got involved after personally experiencing what it is like to care for an elderly relative in decline. Presenters said the technology is aimed not at old people but at their children.

“The fact that we’re in C.E.S. and we’re not just one booth means we’re getting somewhere,” said Eric Dishman, the global director of product research and innovation at the Intel Digital Health Group. “Seven or eight years ago, no one even talked about aging. Something tipped.”

Topics ranged from mental exercise programs for fending off dementia to phones for people with diminished hearing and dexterity. Most of the devices shown were not covered by insurance, and either in prototype or not widely used.

“Our society does not reimburse for prevention,” said David Stern, chief professional officer for Living Independently, which produces a home monitoring system called QuietCare that is used in assisted living communities. “But there’s a recognition now that people need technology and that if you can keep someone living at home, it costs a lot less than having them in a nursing home.”

Mr. Stern could not say how much QuietCare cost because each facility programs different features into it. Another system on display, GrandCare, costs $2,300 for the basic equipment, then $25 to $50 a month for the company to manage the flow of data. With GrandCare, relatives can upload photographs, appointments or messages to a device in an elder’s home that looks like a television with a touchscreen.

Mr. Stern said the home monitoring technology answered competing needs: “An older person in assisted living wants to maximize independence. But the expectations of family members and state regulators are that she is going to be made secure 24/7. How do you do both? Technology is the answer. It’s the only way they can be secure and independent without someone coming in and checking up on them.”

All vendors said their products were not meant to replace human contact with doctors or family members. But technology has unintended consequences. For some older people, the experience of having blood pressure checked can be the only human touch of the day. An automated home device can take the blood pressure and save the health care system hundreds of dollars, but it does not replace a living, breathing visitor or conversation with fellow patients during otherwise annoying doctor visits.

At one of the forum presentations, Dr. Hyung Tai Kim, a vice president of research at Ascension Health, a Catholic hospital system, identified two potential stumbling blocks for the devices. They called for doctors trained to treat patients in person to make judgments based on data gathered remotely. And current insurance programs do not compensate the doctors for these analyses.

Some of these gadgets will prove useful. Many others will become the home treadmills of the future — developed and purchased in good faith, but in practice unused. Mr. Dishman of Intel described a pillbox that alerted users every day at the same time that they needed to take a pill, even if they had already taken it. As a result, people didn’t use it, he said.

“No one wants to be nagged or be embarrassed by something that makes them look like they can’t take care of themselves,” he said. “We switched to one that was more responsive to whether you already took the pill, and we quadrupled compliance.”

“Those little tweaks go a long way,” he added.

The prototypes are now out there. Let the grumbling and tweaking begin.

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Starting Over, With a Second Career Goal of Changing Society

tsaleen — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:05:00 GMT

The New York Times - December 12, 2008

Harvard kicked off a small but ambitious experiment this week that it hopes will become a new “third stage” of university education. For the student-fellows in the program, most in their 50s and early 60s, the goal is a second-act career in a new stage of life.

The 14 fellows have résumés brimming with achievement — including a former astronaut, a former senior official at the United States Agency for International Development, a physician-entrepreneur from Texas, a former public utility official from California, a former health minister from Venezuela and a former computer executive from Switzerland.

They gathered at Harvard on Thursday to begin the yearlong program intended to help them learn how to be successful social entrepreneurs or leaders of nonprofit organizations focused on social problems like poverty, health, education and the environment. Their interests include sickle cell anemia, women’s education in Africa, health care quality and water conservation.

The opportunity, the fellows say, is to pick up new knowledge, skills and professional relationships in a new realm. To Charles F. Bolden Jr., one of the fellows, it has the potential to be as life-changing as his selection to join America’s space program nearly three decades ago. “The Harvard program feels sort of like that,” said Mr. Bolden, 62, a retired major general in the United States Marine Corps and a veteran of four space shuttle missions.

The program, called the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, is a collaboration among five of the university’s professional schools — business, law, government, education and public health. It is seen as a next stage for universities, beyond undergraduate and then graduate and professional schools.

If successful, Harvard professors say, it can serve as a model for schools at other universities, creating case studies and course material.

“This is about deploying a leadership force to have an impact on major social problems,” said Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at the Harvard Business School who heads the program. “We want to make the case to the world that experience matters.”

The recession, to be sure, is going to make things tougher for social entrepreneurs, as it has for profit-seeking start-ups. Vivian Lowery Derryck, 63, a former A.I.D. administrator for Africa, had incorporated a new nongovernmental organization earlier this year, before joining the fellowship program. Her organization’s purpose, she said, would be to forge government and corporate partnerships to address social issues in Africa, like education. This summer, Ms. Derryck said, she spoke to multinational corporations that expressed an interest in contributing. But after the financial collapse, she worried that money might be scarce.

Still, the nonprofit sector tends to hold up reasonably well in recessions, experts say. The demand for social services grows in bad times, and while contributions will surely drop over the next year or so, they expect the long-term trend of growth to return eventually. In addition, experts say, a shortage of experienced leaders and management is a chronic problem in nonprofit organizations as they become larger and increasingly complex.

Nonprofit organizations face a collective “leadership deficit” over the next decade of more than 600,000 senior managers, the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit organization that advises foundations and nonprofit groups, has estimated.

The Harvard program is aimed at the upper tier of that leadership gap. “This initiative is path-breaking and has enormous potential if it is done properly,” said Thomas J. Tierney, the chairman of Bridgespan.

The Harvard experiment is part of a larger effort to help find productive “next” careers for a coming flood of retiring baby boomers — more than 75 million people born from 1946 to 1964. Many of them resist the traditional retirement ideal of leisure and travel.

Indeed, more than five million Americans who are 44 to 70 are already engaged in a stage of work after their first careers that has a social impact, mainly in education, health care, government and other nonprofit organizations, according to a survey this year by Peter D. Hart Research Associates.

Such later-in-life, second acts have been called “encore careers,” “postcareers” and “engaged retirement.” No matter the name, the concept seems to have considerable appeal, encouraged by celebrity role models like Bill Gates and Bill Clinton.

Half of Americans age 50 to 70 want to find work that has a social impact after their primary career ends, according to a poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates.

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A 73-Year-Old Gives Basketball a Second Shot

tsaleen — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:31:00 GMT

The New York Times - December 9, 2008

JACKSON, Tenn. — Before Sunday’s basketball game, Coach Yogi Woods gathered the junior varsity at Lambuth University. Watch out for 73 on the other team, he said. He did not mean the player’s number. He meant his age.

The visitors, Roane State Community College, had a septuagenarian guard, Ken Mink, college basketball’s oldest player, who has started a second career after his first ended a half century ago with a mysterious shaving-cream incident.

If the 6-foot Mink was good enough to play, he was good enough to be guarded, Woods told the Lambuth players. Then he turned to the freshman Kendrick Coleman and said: “If he goes in for a layup, don’t let him have it. If he scores on you, we will never let you forget it.”

This mixture of curiosity and macho dread has greeted Mink all season at colleges throughout Tennessee. After all, how do you defend a guy whose peers are generally pumping iron to supplement their blood levels, not to build their muscles? On Nov. 3, the junior-varsity coach at King College told one of the Roane players, whom he had coached in high school, “If the old guy scores, we’re walking home.”

Late in that game, Mink entered and found himself open in the corner. He gave a pump fake, and the defender ended up draped over him like raccoon coat. Calmly, he hit both free throws. The Hack-a-Mink strategy had failed.

“I thought some teams would play along, humor him,” said Randy Nesbit, the coach of Roane State, located in Harriman, Tenn. “No, they’re not like the Washington Generals. They’re like sharks sensing blood.”

At home games, Mink has been a crowd favorite. Attendance, usually about 100 per game, has on occasion swelled to 400. Mink’s wife, Emilia, 68, wore a retro cheerleader outfit to the season opener, complete with saddle shoes and a poodle skirt. She held up a sign that said, “Ken Can, He’s Our Medicare Man.”

No one has been happier than the guy who runs the Roane concession stand.

“He even put a new item on the menu, polish sausage with peppers and onions,” Nesbit said. “It was just plain hotdogs before.”

For a guy Mink’s age, two-a-days are a likely reference to multivitamins, not double practices. But while shooting around in a neighbor’s driveway in the summer of 2007, he realized he still had his shooting stroke. So he sent e-mail messages to eight tiny colleges near his home in Knoxville, Tenn. Perhaps a small school could use a guy with an old-school push shot.

“You do realize you’re 72?” Emilia Mink asked her husband. “Do you think you can convince someone you’re not?”

Nesbit, the Roane coach, grew intrigued. A former point guard and coach at The Citadel, he kept himself in terrific shape at 50. He was curious about the possibilities of athletic performance at an age when Gatorade has been replaced as the sports drink of choice by Metamucil. Still, he wanted to meet Mink before offering him a spot on the team.

“I think he wanted to make sure Ken wasn’t out on a weekend pass,” Emilia Mink said.

Ken Mink told Nesbit a story of unfinished business: he had played at Lees College in Jackson, Ky., only to be expelled from the then-Presbyterian school in 1956 as his sophomore season began. His crime? Mink said he was accused of soaping the coach’s office with shaving cream, slathering the lights and even the coach’s shoes.

He denied it. “I don’t even shave,” he said he told the university president. Apparently, his alibi was not as smooth as his baby face.

“It’s been eating at him all these years,” Emilia Mink said. “Ken likes to finish what he started.”

Marcus Mullins, a student manager on that Lees team, said he remembered Mink as a “good, hard-nosed player, a big raw-boned kid.” (“I used to be 6-2,” Mink said.) While he was not certain of the facts, Mullins said, the university president at the time was a stern man who did not tolerate prankish misbehavior.

“I know there was an incident, and suddenly he was gone,” Mullins said of Mink. “I’m sure he’s telling the truth.”

Mink said he joined the Air Force in November 1956 and played regularly in military tournaments for four years. He then went on to a career as a newspaper editor, continuing to play basketball in recreation leagues. Since retiring in 1999, he and his wife said, Mink has kept active by playing golf, walking, hiking, skiing, even hang gliding. He has published a book, “So, You Want Your Kid to be a Sports Superstar,” and along with his wife, edits an online travel magazine.

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Titanic survivor sells mementos to pay for care

tsaleen — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 04:59:00 GMT

Yahoo News - October 16, 2008

LONDON – Millvina Dean was only 2 months old when she was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat from the doomed Titanic. Now 96, the last survivor of the tragic sinking is selling mementos of the disaster to help pay her nursing home fees.

Rescued from the bitterly cold Atlantic on that April 1912 night, Dean, her 2-year-old brother and her mother were taken to New York with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Before returning home to England, they were given a small wicker suitcase of donated clothing, a gift from New Yorkers to help them rebuild their lives.

Now, Dean is selling the suitcase and other Titanic mementos to help pay her nursing home fees. They are expected to go for $5,200 at an auction of Titanic memorabilia Saturday in Devizes in western England.

Among the items are rare prints of the Titanic and letters from the Titanic Relief Fund offering her mother one pound, seven shillings and sixpence a week in compensation.

But the key item in the sale is the suitcase, said auctioneer Andrew Aldridge. "They would have carried their little world in this suitcase," he said Thursday.

Dean has lived at Woodlands Ridge, a private nursing home in the southern city of Southampton — Titanic's home port — since she broke her hip two years ago.

"I am not able to live in my home anymore," Dean was quoted as telling the Southern Daily Echo newspaper. "I am selling it all now because I have to pay these nursing home fees and am selling anything that I think might fetch some money."

A spokeswoman for Woodlands Ridge said Dean was too tired Thursday to speak to The Associated Press.

She said rooms at the nursing home cost between $1,000 and $1,550 a week, depending on the level of care the resident needs, but declined to discuss Dean's situation, saying it was a private matter.

Although Britain has a free health care system, private providers offer more comprehensive services for a fee. In the case of nursing homes, state-run facilities are available and cost much less than private ones. But they are more spartan and offer fewer amenities, such as shared rooms and no private TVs.

Local authorities often pay a portion of the costs of private nursing home care based on an individual's assets; anyone with more than $39,000 in assets has to pay their own fees.

In 1912, baby Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean and her family were steerage passengers emigrating to Kansas City, Mo., aboard the Titanic.

Four days out of port, on the night of April 14, 1912, it hit an iceberg and sank. Billed as "practically unsinkable" by the publicity magazines of the period, the Titanic did not have enough lifeboats for all 2,200 passengers and crew.

Dean, her mother Georgetta and brother Bertram Jr. were among 706 people — mostly women and children — who were rescued by the steamship Carpathia and survived. Her father, Bertram Dean, was among more than 1,500 who died.

Dean did not know she had been aboard the Titanic until she was 8 years old, when her mother, who was about to remarry, told her about her father's death.

She has no memories of the sinking and said she preferred it that way.

"I wouldn't want to remember, really," she told The Associated Press in a 1997 interview.

Dean said she had seen the 1958 film, "A Night to Remember," with other survivors, but found it so upsetting that she declined to watch any other movies about the disaster, including the 1997 blockbuster "Titanic," starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet.

Dean began to take part in Titanic-related activities in the 1980s, and was active well into her 90s. She visited Belfast, Northern Ireland, to see where the ship was built, attended Titanic conventions around the world — where she was mobbed by autograph-seekers — and participated in radio and television documentaries about the sinking.

The last American survivor of the disaster, Lillian Asplund, died in 2006 at the age of 99. Another British survivor, Barbara Joyce West Dainton, died last November at 96.

Aldridge said the "massive interest" in Titanic memorabilia shows no signs of abating. Last year, a collection of items belonging to Asplund sold for more than $175,000.

"It's the people, the human angle," Aldridge said. "You had over 2,200 men, women and children on that ship, from John Jacob Astor, the richest person in the world at the time, to a poor Scandinavian family emigrating to the States to start a new life. There were 2,200 stories."

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