Perhaps they just need better songs ....

NNNNnnggggnnnn ... 

I've tried, really I have..
I'm all for older musicians ..  (big time !)
I'm happy to champion causes related to the elderly..
I treat and write about dementia (watch the shortest one closely...)

But I just can't quite go here.....

and even this is a struggle...

Hitting the highs with High Intensity Interval Training

Two weeks since I watched Michael Mosley on BBC's Horizon tell me that just a few minutes of high intensity exercising (going as hard and fast as I possibly could, to get my heart rate up to around 90% max) would shake my metabolism into a higher gear, and I am astonished at the results.  In just two weeks I'm feeling fitter and shedding weight faster than I ever have before. 

I'm doing it to improve my sugar metabolism and try to dodge my high family risk of Type II Diabetes but as I am dieting too it is already working very effectively to help me lose weight - especially the high-risk central "apple-shaped" obesity.  

Its changing all long standing teaching  Its painful to beat my heart rate up to about 150 and stay there for a minute before resting and then trying again, but not impossible (especially on my old pal, the X-trainer) and much more bearable than hours of slower slog.

here's one of the original papers  on it from Australia and some more research on the topic. .. and here   Lack of time is no longer an excuse as this slightly old report tells.. 

Keep watching this space
 .. maybe now the sun is coming out, one of these would be nice...  (helmets are there to keep bird woo off presumably ?

NB * Get your doctor to check you about before you try if you have any risk of heart disease or other health problems

A beautiful tribute by a son to his father's last years

http://www.dayswithmyfather.com/#/0

Guess we could try running the Indian Railways instead ?

 

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/09/employment

Is 68 too old to teach ?

Teachers are busy debating an NUT ad which they say suggests that 68 is too old to be working in schools. Hear what they have to say at :
http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/558534.aspx?s_cid=Mon_news_COM

The general feeling seems to be that individuals should have a right to carry on working in their teaching role at this age, if they so want to, although most hope they will have been able to pack up work by then.

Isn't this a waste of one of the most valuable contributions that older people can make to society -  to help pass on the huge wisdom and knowledge they have acquired over the years ?

Bearing in mind that at 65 many people will still have 20-30 years of life ahead of them (average lifespan of women in Surrey is now nearly 95  - and rising..) we are going to have to accept, like it or not, that complete retirement for all work or contribution to society needs to be pushed back further into later life (unless illness or disability intervenes). 

About 10,000 people in the UK today are already over 100, but its estimated that 10 million people alive at the moment will reach 100 (17% of the population).  The numbers speak for themselves, and the age of 68 starts to look more like it's still part of mid life.  If you are going to reach 100, you probably still need to be working in some shape or form at 68.  And the majority of 68 year olds today are still fairly spritely.   Of course, many will have gone past the ability to manage heavy manual work (although we once had builders come in to extend our house and the guys digging the foundation were a 58 year old and his 81 year old father !) but perhaps a couple of hours 2 or 3 days a week teaching would be an achievable contribution to society. In Denmark, retirement has become a gradual process, slowly giving up a day a week at a time, over a period of several years.

Its time to take a different view of the years previously held as the start of retirement, and we need to find productive roles for those towards the end of mid life.  

 

Tales from The Departure Lounge 2

One of my patients has turned a corner - the wrong one - and she is now dying, very slowly.  I think I've posted on a similar case about a year ago, and like that patient, no food or liquid has passed her lips for 8 days now (although mouth care keeps her lips moist). She's very peaceful lying in bad, semiconcious, but her family are distressed by the idea that we are not feeding her, giving her drinks (We can't just pour them down her) or giving her intravenous fluids. Nothing for 8 days. Its a basic human instinct to want to nurture with food and drink - and even harder to accept a loved one is dying.   I should add that breakdown of body fat in this starvation situation liberates water and combined with a switching off of metabolism, water needs are much reduced. Of course, you can't ask an unconcious person what its like to not take any fluid (although she is not showing any signs of distress – we are managing her on the Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying.) A study from Oregon of 106 terminally ill patients in hospice programmes who chose to discontinue food and fluids with the conscious intention of hastening death found that most reported a high degree of peace and comfort - 90% were thought to have achieved what is described as a "good" death. In the end I guess that even is she is not suffering, its a long slow haul for her loved ones around her bed. 

N Engl J Med 2003; 349: 359-65

 

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa035086#t=articleDiscussion

Blueberry brain-treats

What should you be eating to protect your brain and nervous system as you get older? Here's the research evidence summarised in 10 short slides - I recommend you read them at the link below (and then go out and get a salmon salad and some berries for lunch)

Brain food !