The population gets older. I think everyone from Washington D.C. to Hollywood has noted the change in the demographic.
Did anyone notice, however, that an older population means more illness and senescence? More illness and senescence means more caretakers. Read more on More Aging, More Caretakers…
Filed under Aging, Alternative Medicine, Doctors, Family, life, News by on Jul 12th, 2018. Comment. 
I can’t believe how many people come in to my office telling me that I don’t understand that their pains are from “getting old,” and that everyone, as they get old, has aches and pains and that is how it is. Read more on How Old Is Your Doctor?…
Filed under Aging, Doctors, End Of Life, life, News by on Dec 27th, 2017. Comment.
The easiest ways to spot trends is to age. Not that I noticed I was aging. Somebody pointed out to me I should be a “poster child” for senior citizens. This left me a bit confused, since I did not notice I had become one. Gevalt! I am 64, which means in one more year, I will become eligible for Medicare. Better check my pulse. Read more on Maybe You CAN Fool Mother Nature…
Filed under Aging, News, Research by on Mar 18th, 2017. Comment.
Filed under Aging, Brain, depression, Disease, End Of Life, Family, News by on Mar 2nd, 2017. Comment.
She was, and is, a close and cherished friend. Someone decided she had Alzheimer’s. At least somebody said she did. She had wonderful plans for retirement. Now the retirement community she had been dreaming of did not seem to want her and her husband around. She has just made the decision (I don’t know with who’s help) that it is a better idea she does not drive. She would surely not remember the details of how the diagnosis was made. I wonder if it had been made properly. Probably not.
Filed under Aging, Alternative Medicine, Alzheimer's Disease, Diagnosis, Disease by on Jan 9th, 2017. Comment.
I do surf the web — I do not do so aimlessly.
I was impressed by an article published by AARP on things people should not do after 50. Despite the fact that I absolutely abhor anyone telling me “laws” about what to do or not to do, I checked it out.
I decided most of them were so stupid they should never be done by anybody. Read more on Bouncing Back From Adversity…
Filed under Aging, News by on Aug 29th, 2013. Comment.
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, that old Dylan Thomas poem, is a favorite of many mature adults, including me.
Rage, Rage against the dying of the light
Let’s face it — none of us is getting any younger. And as we age, we’ve got to choose – will we rage, or will we just go gently.
I remember someone who alleged they wanted to work with me telling me they were interested in working with an emeritus neuroscientist. He was a very sharp guy, at least as far as I could tell from his academic publications. He had been with the system a long time and published much. I had not, since I’ve never seemed to fit into that system any better than most other systems.
The project fizzled for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the news that his family was up in arms because this elderly gentleman had given the overwhelming bulk of his life savings to one of those delightful online scams.
I have not checked what the country of Nigeria is doing in terms of industry, but they seem to be leading the way when it comes to these scams. They promise tremendous amounts of money, starting with an email to a recipient that purports to be a personal email but which surely has been delivered in bulk. All the recipient has to do is advance a little money to get a lot. A greed factor then takes over, and the recipient advances more and more money in hopes of a big payoff — which does not seem to happen. Anyone who has not received at least one such email is probably not a big internet user, to say the least. I have received them in three languages, and I do almost all of my internet work in English.
It has been known for a long time that old folks are most often prey to the financially unscrupulous. Personally, I think that the isolationism and diminished social function that often come with aging play at least as much a part in this as neuroscience does. But for the moment, let’s assume that at least some of the problem is a loss of judgment that comes with age. Assessing individual financial capacities may be helpful — for families and guardians and stuff — but there is a delirious amount of variability here.
The typical American solution of let’s-make-more-rules may not be the way out.
At quite a young age, I saw my Grandfather-of-Blessed-Memory tell my mother that he had a daughter in Boston – even though she was standing right in front of him. He simply could not recognize her. As she stood there crying like a fountain, I knew I was in some kind of trouble.
Read more on No More Cognitive Loss for Age…
Filed under Aging by on Oct 25th, 2012. Comment.
I don’t care if Dylan Thomas was drinking himself to death while that was being written. It is a sentiment close to my heart, and undoubtedly the stanza of poetry I quote most often.
Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rage at close of day
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I will not accept the allegedly inevitable “cognitive loss of age.”
I suppose my mother did me a service at age 10, when she dragged me fairly close to the oversized window of an oversized ladies room, and told me never to linger trying to make myself attractive, for it would be a waste of time. I was – in the opinion of my parents – destined for brains, not beauty.
Time lost in fixing my appearance would be noted sardonically by my father, and bother him, as we wasted his time.
But my strong suit was my brains, and even I agreed that I should work on them — working very hard in school — and that way I could win in life. I actually took my mother seriously, for a very long time. It was not until my late fifties that I started to be anywhere near a fashionable woman’s size, finding to my amazement that people found me attractive, and taking more notice myself than ever in my life.
But even now, I don’t give a damn if they call it “cognitive loss for age” or “dementia,” I want nothing of it.
Nothing at all.
Filed under Aging by on Jan 23rd, 2012. 1 Comment.
One of the most popular posts in this blog recently was about the so called “fountain of youth” research into teleomeres.
Well, if you just can’t get enough and want to keep up on the latest developments on longevity research — I mean real science research rather than “try-to-sell-you-a-supplement” research — you should subscribe to my free newsletter.
I send this directly to subscribers and it contains information that does not appear in this public blog. You have to be one of the few, the proud, the well-informed.
My most recent newsletter has an update on teleomere research. You don’t have to miss out. Just go sign up — or as we say in the dot-com world “opt-in” — and you’ll start getting this regularly.
Best of all, you don’t have to miss out on what has been printed earlier. I have an archive of all my past newsletters available — just a click away.
I hope you sign up so we can keep in touch even better.
Take care and be happy!
Estelle Toby Goldstein, MD
The Renegade Doctor
Filed under Aging by on Jul 15th, 2011. Comment.
On A Cat Aging
by Sir Alexander Gray
He blinks upon the hearth-rug
And yawns in deep content,
Accepting all the comforts
That Providence has sent.Louder he purrs and louder,
In one glad hymn of praise
For all the night’s adventures,
For quiet, restful days.Life will go on forever,
With all that cat can wish;
Warmth, and the glad procession
Of fish and milk and fish.Only – the thought disturbs him –
He’s noticed once or twice,
That times are somehow breeding
A nimbler race of mice.
MERLIN
I loved Merlin – King Arthur’s court wizard — when I was a kid and that was just about the time that Disney came out with “The Sword in the Stone.”
WOW – nearly 50 years ago!
Later I was to love the Arthurian legend in many deep and symbolic ways — love it so much that for a long time I kept a light-up, plug-in sword which was (actually, fairly easily) removed from a plastic pseudo-crystalline rainbow light-shooting stone. Doing so didn’t make me a queen of anything, though.
It is almost impossible, I think, to be human and anything more than partially literate without knowing the splendor of the Arthurian legend.
Fast forward to the present, and I am a wizard in my own way – a doctor. I wanted every patient to have the smiling sense of the Arthurian splendor that I had when I pulled that ersatz sword from the ersatz stone. Most of them did, until that piece, like many dear to me, was lost in a series of moves.
Filed under Aging by on Mar 9th, 2011. 1 Comment.