Bad me : - )

I have been so busy writing about politiks and aging - that I stopped posting to some of my other blogs...

I'd say I'll post more regularly - but then I will only feel guilty if I don't ...so I'll ust say I will try.

I am in a writing mode anyway as I want to get a few books out...and since one is on aging - this blog can be a place to post some of that prose...

Here is a question - what is mid-life or middle age?

Most books use the time frame of 34 to 60 for middle age...

For starters - what do a 34-year-old and a 60-year-old have in common? Why are they in the same category? Like other age based divisions I am betting that in a few years there will be so much research on people over 35 that chapters will be broken down into the 30's, 40' and 50's, etc.

The USA culture is age and calendar based - especially when dealing with child rearing issues. But now I think that we use ages and calendars for all our developmental divisions as well.

What if we used more of a transition definition for moving from one stage to another? I’m not sure how it would look or what the parts would be called - but I am working on it. Age divisions are so easy to use since we do not need to name them except by number.

But - now that families are having children into their 40's and even 50's [and 60's] it changes the idea of a common type of “middle” adulthood. Nowadays, careers for those in this age “range” are put on hold for many reasons, new careers are started; and in the last 5 or so years, jobs have disappeared, grown “children” have moved back home and what was once considered the “prime” of life can be a very different matter in this current century.

Added to all the above, people in this age range may have parents who are still alive and who may need their attention.

One reason the research has to change is that If you don’t know what to ask or look for - you keep expecting and then finding the same things. We expected older people to be gray haired, walking with walkers, sad, reflective, almost ready to die.....so that was what was found. But now we know older people who are active, in school, working and doing much the same as people in the 40's, 50's and 60's.

We "older" psychologists are still around, still mentally alert and some of us ski, kayak, sail and bike : - ) - a far different picture of an "older" person than what was portrayed not that long ago...

Food Safety

Eeks

This has been a week of "bad" food news. Bad peanut butter, bad cooked packaged chicken breasts, tainted cantaloupe and recalled bad baby food are all in the news this week.

I'm glad I am older and eat my supplements ... food is undergoing a serious challenge these years. We have few family farms and the big conglomerates own the farm land, mass produce unhealthy "stuff" by over using fertilizer, pick the "stuff" before it is ripe, ship it off to far away places...and then tell us it's good for us...

Field ripened food is the food that contains the good things we need - ripening with chemicals or in the truck does not make for good nutrition. Have you ever noticed what the birds and bugs eat from your garden? It's the ripened things - the unripened stuff is not even attractive to the pests. My dog awaits ripe strawberries before he goes to the plants - only then do I have to put up a barricade to keep him away...he knows...

Today's fruit has so little nutrition value we would need to eat 53 peaches today to get the nutritional value of what we got from 2 peaches back in 1951!

The more we process the farms and the food, the less nutritious the food, or the more contaminated it is...and "they" want us to eat genetically modified food? Trust the big food corporations? Not me....

Vitamins

For those who have been regular readers of this blog, you know I prefer "real" food to products with unpronounceable names in them....It's why I have been taking a daily vitamin that is food based - and not one "made" in a lab with who-knows-what in it.

I was alerted to an article about vitamins - which you can read it here

In short it's an article about food-based vitamins v. synthetic ones and contained information I was not aware of concerning the synthetics and the idea of talking in terms of milligrams.

It's worth a read if you take vitamins.

Healthy happy new year

Healthy living for the 21st Century

When we were young we heard what are called "old wives tales" about health and food...We rolled our eyes and looked at our mothers as if they were aliens...Now we are learning that our mothers were correct.

Maybe they knew what Hippocrates said:

"Leave your drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food."
"Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food."

Or maybe they read Maimonides:
"Let nothing which can be treated by diet be treated by other means."

Or maybe they knew this Chinese proverb:
“He that takes medicine and neglects diet, wastes the skill of the physician.”

Whatever knowledge they had - those old wives - our parents and grandparents - they seemed to know a lot about nutrition.

My mother was adverse to seeing a physician unless absolutely necessary - something I took note of as she lived to 95. She believed in eating well and letting one's body take care of itself. She fed us well and grew most of the vegetables we ate. But - and it's a big BUT.... the soil was in better shape when I was a kid.... and that was in New York City!

Today we have depleted the soil and no matter how organic our food - it is missing what it used to have way back when - and what is missing are many essential nutrients. The environment is more toxic than it was, food is more processed, and it is usually picked before it is ripe and very often cooked to death.

If the soil and environment have worsened, is there anything we can do to grow older better? Yes - we can supplement our diets with glyconutritional products.

“Glyconutritional products will play a leading role in the 21st century's emerging wellness industry. The driving determinant will be the growing realization that optimal cell-to-cell communication is one of the most critical functions of the life process and is fundamental to immune system health."

And if our cells do a better job of talking to one another, who knows what they can start talking about! So listen to your body now - it talks to you and tells you what it needs - and it can do a lot more communicating if given the appropriate equipment.

Newer equipment

I'm a skier so let me use a ski analogy. Skiing can be tiring and it's even more so with older bodies and older equipment. When I first skied we had leather boots with laces and very heavy long skis with heavy bindings. But I was a lot younger then - in my 20's and I hardly noticed how tiring it was - it was too much fun. As I aged - into my 50's - I began to think there had to be a solution to all the work the skiing knees do and I fell in love with what were called shaped skis or parabolic skis. I was the first I knew to buy a pair and it made all the difference for my body. The skis do the work! I'm into a newer shorter pair these days and will continue to monitor newer models of skis as it makes more sense to let the equipment do the bulk of the hard work.

At the same time I learned of the new ski equipment, I also came across new inner body equipment - glyconutrients. For sports fans, think of glyconutrients as the nutritional version of shaped skis, lightweight bikes or titanium softball bats. It's all about that new equipment helping us do what we do better and to doing it as we age.

The ingredients in glyconutrients are not "new" - they have been around probably forever and used to be found in our daily food - but no more. The ingredients have been re-discovered and combined into products; products that protect and nourish our cells and regulate our organs and organ systems.

Way back when we were in school the up-to-date science of the time was adequate for then but it was missing a lot of information we now know about. I know from my own field of Developmental Psychology that advances in technology lead to advances in developmental knowledge. The same is true of all sciences, including glycobiology. In this new field, over 20,000 articles have been written in a few short years. Why so many and why so fast? "This breakthrough discovery exposed the missing link that has the scientific community, health researchers, and pharmaceutical companies scrambling to get up to speed on this incredible science. "

Science and medicine have long tried to break the code by which the cells of the body communicate with one another in order for its complex functions to occur. Just as biochemistry is the chemistry of life, this mysterious code is the language of life. For years, scientists focused on proteins as the primary communication molecules. Early in this century however, a theoretical mathematician at the Weisman Institute calculated the number of molecular configurations possible with protein molecules and the number of known chemical command signals needed to run the body. She concluded that there were not enough protein configurations possible to supply all the messages. Another code was required - a sugar code.

Of the 200 monosaccharides [sugars] that occur naturally in plants, eight are known to be components used in cell-to-cell communication. These eight sugars are glucose, fucose, mannose, galactose, xylose, N-acetylglucosamine, N- acetylgalactosamine and N-acetylneuraminic acid. Only two of these, glucose and galactose, are commonly found in the foods we eat. The others need to be put into our bodies in the form of nutritional supplements.

Glyconutritional products will play a leading role in the 21st century's wellness industry. The driving determinant will be the growing realization that optimal cell-to-cell communication is an important function for the life process and is fundamental to immune system health. And - it is what will allow us to be healthier as we age.

An issue for many of us

Saw this article in the Times about caring for infirm parents: click here

It was sad and made me ask: do we have "real" discussions with our children about caring for us when we get infirm?

I have only one child and he is in college - he had been in the military....He jokes that I need to stay in perfect health for at least another 10 years so he can have a life...also he was born when I was 39...another factor to take into account these days. many of my friends had kids when they were near or over 40 - meaning that our kids are still young when we are getting old....

I do know that if I were to be infirm, he'd do what he can to take care of me - and the dog and the cat - [he knows how attached I am to my animals] but it would be a burden to him....so we just joke about it. That's easy to do as we are both very healthy right now.....

It is a lifespan issue and one that is not well researched. But....as I asked are we ready? For me"no" is the true answer....


Happy New Year to all

Shortening the span of life for our kids

We are entering a new generation of obesity and now it's not just adults who are obese - it is expected that the number of children who are obese will hit 20% by the year 2010 - that's only FOUR years from now.

I heard or read somewhere that we are reaching that stage in obesity where this or the next generation of children will NOT have a longer life span than the parents...

Not only is obesity bad in and of itself, it makes all other medical problems worse....

I've been blogging about health and nutrition for a while now and hope the readers of this blog are among those who will not have obese children or grandchildren...It is something parents have control over during the child's early years...and good nutrition early on can never be a bad choice...

Please watch what your children and grandchildren eat and make sure they get exercise....

Life span lengthening

Well - 10 bridges and 36 miles of pedaling can be done! I left the starting point about 7:30 and crossed the finish line about 4 hours later.... took some photos and stopped for water and fruit along the way. After crossing the finish line I went over to the grass and took off my very wet shoes and socks - then met my son and celebrated with that beer! Exercise is good for the soul and for the body....keeps us keeping on .. I passed by many who were years younger than me....and now I am planing to do this again next year,,,and every year that I can.

Here are some photos:










































boy did that beer hit the spot

Summer

Well - it took some time - but my son and I have both settled into doing our own thing... It was hard for both of us to adjust to spending so much time near each other - different eating, sleeping, waking and TV habits. So I now have 2 TV's - one in his room, one in the living room....Meals are often done separately - and thankfully we each have a car....and we've worked out a 'mommy needs time to work' thing - just like when he was young : - )

Had a strange few weeks though of my going through some medical tests as I had passed out - it was worrisome to both of us - but it seems to have been dehydration and nothing more....but it did make both of us realize that we are each other's only family....and so the caring, reliance and worry do not get shared with other family members.

I'm fine and life goes on....but the relief is palpable

Trying one of the new features of aging : )

My son, who has not lived at home in almost 10 years, is here for the summer between semesters. We had our obligatory arguments and actually we got his "space" organized his way. Luckily I have a separate structure known as a tenderhouse and he is happily settled in there. And now he is working part time and looking for more work to do.

I think I am lucky that we get along so well - but our long winded conversations - mainly about politics - have kept me up beyond my normal bedtimes and I am very off my exercise/work/fun schedule. I think we are past our rough spots and it will be fun and okay. But it's a learning experience. I teach about the lifespan and one newer topic is about grown children returning home. I shall have first hand experience about a piece of this - but I know it helps us both that there is a limited term to this arrangement. He will leave in mid August.

Having a child when you are older has some good points to it - I do things most others my age do not - because we had done them together - like skiing, working out, eating well..all the things have previously mentioned about how to grow older better. Although I read of women in their 50's and 60's getting pregnant; it is not anything I would suggest. If you did not have a child in your late 30's or in your 40's....find a child to play with - teens are okay but well they are teens - or find a young adult and go biking - hanging out with youth will help you grow older better....

Healthiness

I have recently been reading a lot of research on topics related to the lifespan - mainly as I am teaching that class.

The ones that stick in my mind are those related to obesity. We are becoming such an obese country that the airplanes are widening seats and now children's safety seat makers are having to make bigger seats for the bigger children. Then the newest research is that obese people do not even recognize that they are obese. Only 15 percent of people in this category view themselves as obese. And while the percent of women who are obese has stabilized, a growing percent of men and children are seen as obese.

We are told that obesity leads to many health issues and worsens others...yet we eat away. For many it is a choice - is supersizing and calorie adding good for you just because it is advertised and can be a cheap add on?

Do you know what a normal sized serving is? It's about the size of your fist! So next you are eating a meal look at your fist and then look at your plate....and think about your health!

Life goes on

As I am back to teaching lifespan development online- I was posting there and not here - ahhhhh.

The U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that we are living longer and that the over 65 population will double in the next 25 years. We will see lower rates of disability in this population as compared to now.

Other findings were that more over 65ers are still working - because they want to - not necessarily because they have to. Granted many work because they need the salary and the benefits but many work because they like what they are doing.

I read somewhere that more people over 65 are taking up new careers - turning hobbies into businesses or going to school to learn a new profession. Why not? You might have another solid 20 or more years to do your "new thing."

When in my late 40's I went back to school I was not the only older person there - many of us were into our 2nd, 3rd or 4th careers.

With the possibility of living a much longer life than our predecessors, we can have a few careers in one lifetime.

I am worried

This is not my politikal posting - those can be found at lynnrants or illegitimis nil carborundum aka don't let the bastards wear you down - but I am worried about how people who are just being born or who are young are going to be able to afford to live a long healthy life.

Yes they have a longer life expectancy than those who are older but with the US debt growing as it is and with this administration cutting funds for education and research [among other things] I have serious concerns about anyone being able to afford to eat and have a house over their head - and I hate to think about those who might need medications or more than minimal health care....or surgery... Everyone of us now owes over $150,000 as our part of the US debt!!!!

For those of us who have already finished our education, own property and have jobs, it's still a whopping amount to owe - imagine a newborn - he/she owes as much and the debt will become due in that child's lifetime - even the USA can not keep borrowing forever.

Poverty, debt, poor housing, and lack of education are all factors affecting our quality of life which in turn affects our span of life. Congress is looking at a budget - so my worry increases!

Numbers

Life by the numbers? I just had a birthday - decided that at my "age" they do not count anymore unless they end with a 5 or a 0 : ). With each year that I have surpassed the age at which my father died, I do think more about lifespans. My father died at 56; my mother at 95.

My mother and father both lived through the influenza epidemic of 1918 - 1919, the one that killed 675,000 Americans. How quickly we forget that what we now call "the flu" was a leading cause of death. Back in 1906 - 1907, when my parents were born, the life expectancy of a child born then was about 48 years. By the time I was born life expectancy was about 65 and for children born in 2001 [ the most recent government stats] it is about 77.

As our life expectancy increases, what we can do with and in our lives expands. Back when people such as Alexander the Great were around, life expectancy was about 35 and so you got into your life's work very early - in what we now call childhood - and did your "thing" in your late teens and 20's. Alexander became king at 20 on the death of his father and died when he was 32! So he had 12 years of doing his grownup "job." Of course he had been in training since he was a child and ruled in his father's absence but the major war campaigns were in his 20's.

There was no period of finding oneself - there wasn't any time. Adolescence is a "stage" that came about as our lifespan grew. Now we can spend time in school figuring out what we want to do when we grow up - and some, and I do include myself, are still figuring out what we will do when we grow up.

With our growing spans of life - we can keep learning and changing. Or we can stagnate - the choices are ours.

Ages? Stages? Behaviors?

How is it that our lifespan gets defined?

We used to speak of childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Now we have prenatal, early postnatal, postnatal, early and later infancy, early and later childhood, prepuberty, puberty, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, etc., etc.

How old are you? And - which stage/label fits you? Can we be in a few categories simultaneously?

What are ages? Those are the definitions by years or decades. You are a child, a teen, an adult. But then oops it gets odd...Are the 20's,30's and 40's similar? What about 80's and 90's?

What are stages? Usually these are certain times in life when "most" people do "something." For example, we can speak of physical development and say that most humans walk at about one year so we can talk about a walking stage or a talking stage.

But what happens when we go into areas like higher education? marriage? childbirth? careers? In the "old days" of psychology, "most" adolescents were in high school and many late teens early 20's were in college or in their career. Marriage was something that happened and in your 20's as was the birth of your 1st child.

Now we have people of all ages finishing high school and starting college. Careers are not always started in your 20's and retirement is not always in your 50's or 60's. Women are having babies into their 40's and even 50's.

People in their 80's are still out there skiing. In the ski areas nearest me, one gets a free season pass from age 72 on and recently I met an 82 year old when I went skiing. Can one describe that person as "old?" In one sense, the number, yes, but in another sense of agility and activity, no. So what is it that defines us?
Stage? Age? or Behavior?

How old are you? Here's an interesting questionnaire: http://www.realage.com

Welcome 2006 and back to blogging

I'm glad we are into 2006. The last few months of 2005 was too busy for me...getting ready to teach again and having a friend in town - which meant skiing and a short vacation to the Olympic Peninsula. That and technology issues and well...enough with excuses :- )

My resolution is to do my blogs regularly - starting today- so here we go!

How do we study the lifespan?

Research comes in many forms - studying individuals or groups, short term or long term studies, and combinations of the forms.

How do we know what changes occur say from year 1 to year 2 or from 20 to 30 to 40, etc? We can study the same person for years or we can look today at a 1-year-old and also look at a 2-year-old or look at a 40-year-old and then a 50-year-old and measure the differences. Studying the same person over time is called longitudinal research. Studying the two different people is called cross-sectional research. Both are valid types of research.

Much of what we learned about development in the past came from longitudinal studies, mainly at universities, and which were funded for decades. Going back to the last post, can you see how the investigator can have a biased approach? Not to say they did or that the research was flawed, but when you study the same people over time you, as the investigator, are now part of that person's life and being the one studied is part of the persona of the people in the study.

Cross-sectional research is less affected by long term biases but the draw back here is that the researcher is studying two different children with all that entails. Getting two different yet "matching" groups of individuals is done statistically. Factors are matched as best they can be- such as family make-up, education levels of parents, type of neighborhoods lived in, etc.

All research has flaws and all researchers have flaws - we are all human. But the knowledge we have gained over the decades from all kinds of research and researchers has led to an understanding of child development.

Another caveat - gains in technology have led to gains in the study of humans. For example, when I was in college, child development was a relatively small field of research and there were few text books on the subject! When I was in graduate school, researchers were finding ways of studying infants; some were looking at perception and language development and very few were interested in fathers or old age! Now infancy, fathers, prenatal, early postnatal, and language and perception are major fields of study. And aging adults is the newest field of research and writing. Years ago a psychologist I knew said that only as the psychologists themselves aged would they start looking at the older among us!

Just imagine what we will know in the future.

Before the beginning : )

Even before we start investigating the lifespan, two caveats of sorts about psychology and humans are needed.

1. The uniqueness of psychology

Psychology is a social science. Social sciences are the only sciences where the investigator is of the same species as the investigated.

If you think about it, rocks do not study rocks. Atoms do not study atoms. Dinosaurs do not study dinosaurs, etc.
People do study people and this leads to potential problems in the "doing" of psychology.

We all come to the observation and study of people with our own “biases” based on our culture, background, age, sex, race, etc. This is wrong or bad - but it is an important factor to consider when reading about, looking at, and studying people.

We tend look at "other" people through our own eyes – we cannot help doing so - but we have to be aware of this factor.

As an aside, we tend to do the same thing when we look at other living species…How many of us have said “my dog is sad,” “my cat is happy,” or “my bird looks interested.” And – we tend to do this with inanimate objects as well…You don’t have to answer publicly - but how many have said things like: “That light turned red just to get me.” Or “It rained today because I had planned an outdoor event.” And how many of us attribute nasty characteristics to our cars when they fail to do as we wish? You might think of similar ideas you have had.

If it is this easy to attribute feelings and intentions to non-humans - live or inanimate - can you see how much easier it is to attribute characteristics to humans?

2. The uniqueness of humans

When reading about research findings we are often tempted to say “but my family is/was not like that.” Or “that happened to me and I grew up okay.” You are correct, your family is/was not like that and you did/do make different decisions, but that does not mean the research is not correct.

Research results are the culmination of people studying many people. Research results reflect the “average,” not the specific. You should know that in statistics there is a factor called the standard deviation and it reflects the variance around the standard or norm. For example, the average IQ is 100 but there is a standard deviation of about 15 [depending on the test used] which means that the average IQ is anywhere between 85 and 115.

Most of what is studied in humans falls into a “normal” distribution – with a standard deviation. Therefore you can be somewhat different from the characteristic noted and still be “normal.” Or it is entirely possible that you and/or your family are very different. That means you fall outside the standard deviation. That is not a “bad” thing – and it may be a very good thing – like an IQ of 150 is outside the norm but is considered a “good” number. Nothing about research findings indicates bad v. good....all research does is point out an average range and variations....differences have no goodness/badness values!


So when you read about research, remember it’s all about the numbers….not the individual people.

Welcome to Spanning Life

Our lifespans are increasing and so is our knowledge about what goes on between conception and death. When I was in Graduate School, courses called Developmental Psychology were mostly about children - birth to adolescence. There were few books on other parts of the life span. One Psychologist I knew used to say that as psychologists aged; we'd be studying more about older people. That has been true. Psychology is a youngish science itself - and now that those of us who were in the field of Developmental Psychology are "old" we are more and more interested in the aging process.

Way back when, I did infancy research and many were surprised that anyone wold study infants. Now one can find classes and books not only on infant development per se; but on it's many many aspects such as: infant perception, infant speech, infant socialization etc. My humerus response to this increase in knowledge is that I am glad I am not in graduate school anymore.

But it is important to know some of it - though not all - and this blog will be more or less the course I would teach if I were not having to use a textbook. Think of it as a LifeSpan Development course for the non-psych major...