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In May 1964, Nels and Irene Highberg bought their first and only home. It was a modest, brick rancher -- no garage -- on a pleasant cul-de-sac on the edge of East Petersburg. The Highbergs raised two sons there. They entertained neighbors there. They grew old there. After 48 years at 6312 Miriam Circle, the Highbergs -- Nels is 92, Irene is 89 -- figured they could manage a while longer. Family and friends agreed. But the county Office of Aging stepped in last summer, saying for safety reasons the Highbergs must move to a nursing home. "I ain't going...

A generation of Americans who embraced communal living in the 1960s is again considering that concept and other ways to coexist as they near retirement. This time, they’ve traded peace signs for dollar signs. “By force of sheer volume, the (baby boomers) who in 1968 thought they would change the world by 2028 actually will,” said Andrew Carle, founding director of the Program in Senior Housing Administration at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. Over the next three decades, one in five U.S. citizens will turn 65 or older, Carle said. They’ll control more than half of the discretionary income,...

President Obama's reelection didn't just put a bounce in his step. It appears that it also erased his gray hair. Appearing in the East Room Wednesday for his post-election press conference, the chatty Obama displayed a head of rich, black hair. Photos and even the White House live stream of the session showed no more gray. But just a week ago, at the end of his campaign, the president had a head of salt and pepper hair with lots more gray.

Hi all, I hesitated for a long time to post this--particularly because our keyboard is so sticky it is difficult to write and post. I was just hoping for some advice. If I posted in the wrong place, I hope the mods will move it. Julie

A new study has outlined for the first time a biological mechanism by which zinc deficiency can develop with age, leading to a decline of the immune system and increased inflammation associated with many health problems, including cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disease and diabetes. The research was done by scientists in the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University and the OSU College of Public Health and Human Sciences. It suggests that it's especially important for elderly people to get adequate dietary intake of zinc, since they may need more of it at this life stage when their ability to...

Dear Friend, You can hardly turn the television on or read the news without encountering a Catholic bishop, a conservative talk show host or a reactionary politician proclaiming that America is experiencing a "war on religion." They should know, because they're the ones waging it. Religious extremists are doing everything in their power to destroy the wall between church and state. They are stirring up sympathy by yelling from the rooftops about religious freedom, while their real goal is to use the power of the government to impose their narrow-minded beliefs on the rest of us. America is one of...

Best I can tell, the former South Korean minister of food, agriculture, forestry and fisheries is trying to convince me that fermented cabbage could be sold at Sephora as a regenerative skin-care product. “I’m 73 years old,” says Sung-Hoon Kim, standing under the Gwangju World Kimchi Culture Festival tent in Bull Run Regional Park last Friday in Centreville. “Do you see any wrinkles on me?” As I inspect his round, friendly, bespectacled face, I have to admit that I don’t. Well into his eighth decade on Earth, Kim has no crow’s feet around his eyes and no apparent worry lines...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Easier-to-chew foods, brighter lights in stores and bigger, clearer fonts on packaging: Those are a few of the changes marketers discussed at a conference Friday about how to sell to aging consumers. The retail innovation conference at Wake Forest University’s uptown Charlotte campus was sponsored by drugstore chain CVS Caremark. It was the first of what the school says will be an annual series. “There’s a silver tsunami coming as the baby boomer population moves into seniors," said professor Roger Beahm, executive director of the school’s Center for Retail Innovation. That tsunami is expected to change everything...

Genetics and healthy diets matter more for longevity. To those who enjoy the pleasures of the dining table, the news may come as a relief: drastically cutting back on calories does not seem to lengthen lifespan in primates. The verdict, from a 25-year study in rhesus monkeys fed 30% less than control animals, represents another setback for the notion that a simple, diet-triggered switch can slow ageing. Instead, the findings, published this week in Nature1, suggest that genetics and dietary composition matter more for longevity than a simple calorie count. “To think that a simple decrease in calories caused such...

Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have, for the first time, identified a single gene that simultaneously controls inflammation, accelerated aging and cancer. "This was certainly an unexpected finding," said principal investigator Robert J. Schneider, PhD, the Albert Sabin Professor of Molecular Pathogenesis, associate director for translational research and co-director of the Breast Cancer Program at NYU Langone Medical Center. "It is rather uncommon for one gene to have two very different and very significant functions that tie together control of aging and inflammation. The two, if not regulated properly, can eventually lead to cancer development. It's an exciting scientific...

This week at a tele-town hall hosted by Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, a caller asked Newt Gingrich if he would consider choosing former half-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Gingrich responded by saying that Palin “is certainly one of the people you would look at” and told the caller that he is “a great admirer of hers.” "She is certainly one of the people you would look at. I am a great admirer of hers and she was a remarkable reform governor of Alaska, she’s somebody who I think brings a great deal to the...

Until recently, few people gave much thought to senescent cells. They are cells that linger in the body even after they have lost the ability to divide. But on Nov. 2, in what could be a landmark experiment in the study of aging, researchers at the Mayo Clinic reported that if you purge the body of its senescent cells, the tissues remain youthful and vigorous. The experiment was just in mice, and it cleared the cells with a genetic technique that cannot be applied to people. Like all critical experiments, it needs to be repeated in other labs before it...

A diagnostic video.

The onset of wrinkles, muscle wasting and cataracts has been delayed and even eliminated in mice, say researchers in the US.It was done by "flushing out" retired cells that had stopped dividing. They accumulate naturally with age. The scientists believe their findings could eventually "really have an impact" in the care of the elderly. Experts said the results were "fascinating", but should be taken with a bit of caution. The study, published in Nature, focused on what are known as "senescent cells". They stop dividing into new cells and have an important role in preventing tumours from progressing. These cells...

(Reuters) - Plants and animals are shrinking because of warmer temperatures and lack of water, researchers said on Monday, warning it could have profound implications for food production in years ahead. "The worst-case scenarios ... are that food crops and animals will shrink enough to have real implications for food security," Assistant Professor David Bickford, of the National University of Singapore's biological sciences department, said. Bickford and colleague Jennifer Sheridan trawled through fossil records and dozens of studies which showed that many species of plants and creatures such as spiders, beetles, bees, ants and cicadas have shrunk over time in...

Destiny Is Demography By Bill Bonner 09/16/11 Baltimore, Maryland – The San Francisco Federal Reserve bank came out with a gloomy forecast last month. Its analysts said that stocks were likely to earn paltry returns over the next 10 years. The reason cited was simple enough; stockholders don’t live forever. ‘Demography is destiny,’ said Auguste Comte. ‘It works the other way around too,’ he might have added. If they thought they were going to live longer, America’s most ubiquitous age cohort — the baby boomers — might continue to buy stocks. Instead, the cold hand of the grave is on...

In Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," Gulliver encounters small group of immortals, the struldbrugs. "Those excellent struldbrugs," exclaims Gulliver, "who, being born exempt from that universal calamity of human nature, have their minds free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of spirits caused by the continual apprehensions of death!" But the fate of these immortals wasn't so simple, as Swift goes on to report. They were still subject to aging and disease, so that by 80, they were "opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative," as well as "incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below...

Who says smoking cigarettes is so bad ... well, aside from the World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and every medical board and association on the face of the Earth? But should smokers be fortunate enough to dodge all that cancer, heart disease, emphysema and the like, they will be uniquely protected — for reasons unexplained by science — against a handful of diseases and afflictions. Call it a silver lining in their otherwise blackened lungs. Although long-term smoking is largely a ticket to early death, here are (gulp) five possible benefits...

Japan closer to doubling sales tax amid fiscal woes Friday 03rd June, 07:00 AM JST TOKYO — The Japanese government on Thursday announced a social security reform plan that would result in a doubling of the country’s consumption tax rate to 10% in stages by the year through March 2016 and lower pension payments to the elderly with higher incomes. The move came as the country has been struggling under swelling welfare costs due to the aging population, which have added to the government’s difficulty in restoring its fiscal health, the worst among major developed economies. But the reform initiative...

MENLO PARK, Calif., May 13 (UPI) -- A blood test that measures the length of a person's telomeres -- a predictor of longevity -- may be available soon, U.S. and Spanish researchers say. "Knowing whether our telomeres are a normal length or not for a given chronological age will give us an indication of our health status and of our physiological 'age' even before diseases appear," Maria A. Blasco, who heads the Telomeres and Telomerase Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center and who co-founded the company Life Length, told Scientific American. Telomeres are caps on the ends of...