Lina Ko July 15th, 2010
The Montreal Gazette reported that the Memory Clinic of the Jewish General Hospital have just raised a sum of $10,000 for the expensive testing supplies used at the Memory Clinic. Launched with McGill University 20 years ago, the clinic is a leading centre for research and treatment of degenerative neurological illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease.
An estimated one in five baby boomers will fall victim to the disease. A doctor at the clinic said that one aspect of his job satisfaction is to hear the elderly talk about their experiences. Everyone’s story is different and this makes the job interesting. But the Memory Clinic is diagnosing and treating people who are beginning to forget their stories. Usually people can still give a good account of their lives and a lot of this is well maintained in the beginning. Patients are referred to the clinic by family doctors and their memory functions are assessed. Neurological assessment of patients focuses on memory, language and non-verbal skills.
Research focuses on why some cases of mild cognitive impairment become dementia and some don’t. The clinic also studies the rates at which impairment increases. If symptoms are identified early enough, the clinic can set up a medical regimen that will stabilize symptoms and slow down the onset of illness. Losing one’s memory is a sad condition. Many baby boomers have seen their parents go through the process, so hopefully they will be more sensitive to the signs and symptoms in themselves. Let’s also hope that this clinic, together with other similar ones in the country, will be able to cater to the cognitive needs of the boomer population.
Lina Ko April 6th, 2010
According to The Globe and Mail, sociologist Lyndsay Green interviewed 40 seniors identified as role models for aging well by the people who know them. She discovered that money matters far less than learning to laugh about yourself. The number-one key lesson learned is to be charming. Once you are older, there are often very few reasons for people to hang out with you unless you are charming. It’s the same guideline for boomers – try to be in touch with current affairs and the latest in technology and pop culture. This will make you more relevant to the younger people you hang out with. Share with them jokes that only boomers can make – there’s an advantage to be more mature, after all!
As Ms. Green said, it’s how you accept your diminishing capacity that really will reveal your ability to attract people and become part of the emotional circle that you are going to need when you age. The more you fret about aging, the more younger people will stay away from you.
One of the most astonishing findings, according to the sociologist, is that age is not just about a loss of youth, it’s a new stage of opportunity. The benefits that come with this new stage are: reduced worries; more stress-free life; more control over your time; and there’s no longer the need to please others. And one of the most powerful prerogatives of age is the permission to speak the truth. But does this make you more popular? It all depends on your presentation – speaking the truth in a very candid, funny, amusing way is always better than a didactic, authoritative lecture.
As mentioned so many times in previous blog postings here, a work plan is more important than a retirement plan. You need a purpose in life, and work provides that for many of us. Paid work can very well be replaced by volunteer work, but you will still need to feel valued and needed.
According to the role models interviewed by the sociologist, pride is a huge barrier to aging well. To retain your independence when you’re aging, you need to accept help. The most important key message from all these aging-well role models is that they all stressed the importance of the ability to live fully in the moment and treat life as a gift. Wherever you plan to live as you age, you will have to assess whether you will get enough intellectual stimulation and whether you will have enough of a community around you. You’ve got to be in a location where you are part of a physically accessible community. It’s also good advice to learn a few jokes without repeating them over and over again. Make other people around you laugh and laugh at yourself! You may enjoy aging better.
Lina Ko February 12th, 2010
According to The Canadian Press, London, U.K., will soon launch a park for the capital’s aging baby boomers. This specially-designed outdoor playground will offer low-impact exercise equipment to help older people improve their balance and flexibility and tone muscles that may not have been tested for decades. The Westminster City Council is providing funding for the playground, which is planned for London’s popular Hyde Park. The new playground, due to be built by this spring, will have six pieces of equipment bought in Denmark, including a stationary bicycle, a cross-trainer and a sit-up bench.
This seems like such a great concept as every park usually has a children’s playground, but very few have playgrounds for adults. I’ve always observed that seniors are often behaving like kids, and for them to have their own playground just makes a lot of sense. But once again, are we confusing boomers with seniors? Is this playground targeting seniors and the elderly, or are they aiming at boomers who refuse to acknowledge they are old? It’s always a good idea to encourage older people to exercise and socialize. But to name it the ‘Hyde Park Senior Playground’ even though it welcomes anyone of any age to use it is a kiss of death to attracting boomers.
More and more fitness clubs are catering to boomers who found gyms too intimidating in the first place with too much firm flesh. It will be interesting to see how successful the Hyde Park playground will be for boomers rather than seniors.
Lina Ko December 18th, 2009
I’ve been talking to a lot of my boomer friends lately to wish them well over the Holidays. Some are morbid and pessimistic and keep complaining about the inability to retire. Others are youthful and optimistic, constantly seeking BOTOX as their spa-replacement solution. And they live all around the world in different continents – Hong Kong, Shanghai, London, Florida, Virginia, Palm Springs, New York and, of course, good old Toronto.
I’m determined to beat the winter blues from now on and try to visit friends over long weekends in the warm regions of the world. Moreover, I’ve decided to get brain-fit in the new year. I read from enRoute magazine that the famous Canyon Ranch now offers a brain fitness program – one of the first in North America. A weekend program of fencing, art classes, computer games and nutrition counselling promises to make people smarter and healthier.
The renowned spa is not the only one offering such services to boomers. Last year, Westin Hotels and Resorts placed instructional cards with mental and physical exercises in the showers, pools and lobbies of its hotels as part of its BrainBody Fitness Promotion. The Yorkville Club, a gym in my neighbourhood, introduced a NeuroActive Bike that puts your brains to work with 22 touch-screen games that challenge your recall of faces, shapes and sympbols.
Whether it’s mental or physical health, boomers need to maintain both to keep enjoying life and contributing to society. Here’s wishing all baby boomers (aged 43 to 62) a healthy, meaningful and happy new year ahead of us!
Lina Ko November 3rd, 2009
Having just blogged about the rise in demand for physiotherapy, I was glad to come across a women’s gym that offers customized solutions for women boomers to stay active and fit. Contours Express, based in Kentucky, U.S.A., has Canadian franchises across Canada – Alberta, B.C., Nova Scotia and Ontario – aiming to make a difference in women’s lives. Although most of their members are boomers, the fitness centres also attract overweight teenagers, Gen-Xers, Gen-Yers and even seniors who want to keep fit in a fun, safe and non-intimidating environment.
Guided by qualified fitness trainers, the women’s gyms offer a 29-minute workout combining weight-based equipment with an aerobic exercise. I have a few girlfriends who want to lose weight and feel more energetic, but are too intimidated by most of the gyms because, believe it or not, most of the men and women frequenting gyms downtown are actually extremely fit. Because I haven’t seen any fitness centres in urban centres that offer customized solutions for boomer women, I hope Contours Express might consider opening a franchise in downtown Toronto. But, at the moment, their gyms in Newmarket, Burlington, Orillia and Whitby are helping women in these suburbs who want to help themselves.
Lina Ko October 16th, 2009
According to The Ottawa Citizen, the practice of physiotherapy is on the rise – up in the last decade by 100 percent – because we have an aging population that wants to stay active. An epidemic of physical fitness is breaking out among the 50-plus generation. Suddenly there are Canadians who at 50 are fitter than they have been in their adult lives. They are running marathons even after having heart attacks. They are training five days a week. Pilates and yoga classes are thick with them. Canada had 2,000 athletes in the recent World Masters Games in Australia, the most of any of the 95 visiting countries. This surge of exercise is a phenomenon of baby boomers who wish to live forever, or at least to live as if they were young.
Scientists say health-conscious boomers may be right. Exercise slows the rate of muscle loss, joint stiffening and artery hardening. It reduces the risk of glaucoma. Even elderly couch potatoes who take up exercise in their 80s can live healthier and longer lives.
To keep the aging population active, there is a lot of demand for physiotherapy. In 1999, there were 2,500 members of the Order of Physiotherapists, the professional order. Now there are more than 6,000 members. Each year, about 155 physiotherapists graduate from universities, but by 2012-13, with the newly created masters program, 260 expect to graduate annually. Physiotherapists are trained to manage and prevent many of the physical problems caused by illness, sport- and work-related injuries and aging.
Some physiotherapy clinics are smart enough to incorporate the fitness component. The body wears down over time, and sometimes exercising incorrectly can flare up a previous injury or bring on new ones. An active lifestyle is becoming more the norm than the exception. But with that, comes the cost of correcting and fixing injuries due to the overzealousness of keeping fit.
Lina Ko September 29th, 2009
I read with interest Candace Bushnell’s article in the October issue of More magazine. For an author with her Sex and the City and Lipstick Jungle fame, I’m surprised that she’s a beauty scrooge. She welcomes Botox but draws the line at surgery. She doesn’t like cosmetic surgery because she’s too lazy. You have to interview doctors. You have to get blood tests. Then you have to undergo surgery yourself and then lie in bed with ice packs on your face for a week. It’s too much time and effort even for somebody as famous as Candace Bushnell who just turned 50.
But I do agree with her that we boomer women will have to get by in life without being perfect. ‘Change your looks and you can transform your life’ is not always true. I always say that women who keep changing their hairstyles every other three months are bored with their lives. They can’t find their own identities and, therefore, hope that their hairstyles will help define who they are. I agree with Bushnell that age itself is the great transformer. Over time, everything about us is going to change – from the shape of our faces and bodies to the hair follicles on our heads. But most importantly, age transforms what we feel inside. As we enter our boomer age, we should have a sense of what matters and an ability to let go of what doesn’t. As Bushnell said, “Personality and accomplishment and empathy seem much more interesting, and achievable, than the pursuit of a flawless visage.”
I agree that women should decide to spend more time doing what they want to do and less time doing what they don’t want to do – like keeping fewer, quality friends instead of acquiring more superficial companions. And we should stop worrying about how we look. Of course, we should still care about how we look; but stop worrying about whether we are still looking young or perfect. There’s no such thing as permanent youth and perfection. Instead, what we now have, at a boomer age, is more focus, concentration and drive than we’ve ever had before. That will transform our lives in a way that cosmetic surgery never could!
Lina Ko July 27th, 2009
It’s well known that boomers are very health-conscious because they want to live longer and better than their parents. According to a recent Leger survey, when it comes to reading information on food packages, the majority of Canada’s baby boomers are all about the fats. Seventy-seven percent of boomers say they actively read the nutrition facts panel today as compared to five years ago. When asked to choose what nutrition information is most important to them, boomers mention fat most often (66 percent) followed by sodium (54 percent), calories (47 percent) and cholesterol (32 percent). Most seem to understand that saturated fats should be limited and trans fats should be avoided, but they don’t know that omega-3s should be sought out.
According to the Globe and Mail, another recent survey by World Action on Salt and Health (WASH) has indicated that cereals, burgers, submarine sandwiches and onion rings sold in Canada contain significantly higher levels of sodium than the same products sold in other countries. This leads to some serious concerns about efforts to reduce the country’s dangerously high salt consumption, a leading cause of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
In every product studied, the survey found that the amount of salt differs from country to country. In many cases, sodium levels are highest in Canada and lowest in Britain, which launched an aggressive campaign several years ago to reduce salt consumption. But the problem isn’t in the salt shaker. Up to 80 percent of the sodium Canadians consume comes from packaged or processed food, including fat-free salad dressings, breads, canned vegetables and pre-made meals.
The good news is that boomers have made conscious efforts to better their dietary choices over the last five years:
- The majority agree that they look for more healthy food choices and they consume less saturated fat and trans fat
- 64 percent look for products that are rich in omega-3
- 58 percent follow Canada’s Food Guide more closely
- 59 percent consume more soft, non-hydrogenated margarine than butter in their daily diet
- 79 percent eat fewer foods that are high in sodium
We are what we eat. In addition to regular exercises, boomers need to watch their diet even more carefully to achieve their personal health goals. Food manufacturers who can come up with product solutions to help boomers do that would be overall winners.
Lina Ko June 29th, 2009
Last week, two boomers whom I grew up with passed away on the same day – Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett. The former was a musical and entertainment icon while the latter influenced us in pop culture and hairstyle in the 70’s.
I sympathize with Farah Fawcett whose death kind of got sidestepped by the media just because she was unfortunate enough to die on the same day as Michael Jackson, who’s obviously perceived to be bigger in global stature. Larry King who prepared a tribute to the former Charlie’s Angel moved the story from the headline to the sidelines. The Canadian media didn’t do much better. As little as I know about Farah Fawcett’s long struggle with anal cancer, her fight demonstrated a fierce and unrelenting physical strength – in a phone interview, Fawcett’s friend Cher reiterated how Fawcett’s struggle was almost unheard of.
Michael Jackson’s death, in spite of its tragic nature, was a result of declining mental health over a few decades. Jackson has been a tormented soul for a long time. His insecurities about his appearance; his loss of innocent childhood; his constant drive for perfection in spite of his past career prime; and the endless child-abuse allegations drove him to rely on prescription drugs. His downfall has been happening for a long time; yet his unexpected death at 50 triggered a worldwide sensation.
For us boomers, it’s a lesson that mental health is equally important to physical strength. Without the former, the latter will falter. Whether a passing is expected or sudden, let’s remember two influential boomers whose art and lives affected us at some time when we’re growing up.
Lina Ko April 21st, 2009
According to the Toronto Sun, forget a degree in business administration, finance or economics. And don’t bother with an MBA – at least for now.
If you want a job, health is wealth. A trend forecaster, Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute, predicted that with all the baby boomers going deaf, blind and out of their minds, they will need help.
According to a study by the U.S. Labor Department, 13 of the 20 fastest-growing occupations between 2004 and 2014 are related to health care. Canada is not far off either. Home health aides, medical assistants and physician assistants are in the top five. “The university system is very much geared to the 20th century, not the 21st century,” said Celente. “It’s been decades since a college degree served as an automatic passport to a good job.”
Among the top future jobs are: the health, nutrition and fitness fields – meeting spiritual, emotional or physical needs will provide employment opportunities at all levels, from services to products. The whole developing world is ageing and they are not in good shape overall – they are overweight, stressed out and addicted to prescription drugs. It looks like they are prime candidates for extensive care.
I don’t envy young students who are about to graduate from universities or colleges this year. The economy is still looking vulnerable and finding a permanent job is challenging. Jobs in education and health care seem to be good bets since they are recession-proof. When all else fails, start a business geared towards boomers, and you’re in the right direction!