Advocates: More gay-friendly senior housing needed

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — At age 62, Donald Carter knows his arthritis and other age-related infirmities will not allow him to live indefinitely in his third-floor walk-up apartment in Philadelphia. But as a low-income renter, Carter has limited options. And as a gay black man, he's concerned his choice of senior living facilities might be narrowed further by the possibility of intolerant residents or staff members. "The system as it stands is not very accommodating," Carter said. "I don't really want to see any kind of negative attitude or lack of service because anyone ... is gay or lesbian." ___ EDITOR'S NOTE — This is the latest in the ongoing AP-APME joint project looking at the aging of the baby boomers and the impact this so-called silver tsunami will have on the communities in which they live. ___ Many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender seniors fear discrimination, disrespect or worse by health care workers and residents of elder housing facilities, ultimately leading many back into the closet after years of being open, experts say. That anxiety takes on new significance as the first of the 77 million baby boomers turns 65 this year. At least 1.5 million seniors are gay, a number expected to double by 2030, according to SAGE, the New York-based group Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders. Recognizing the need, developers in Philadelphia have secured a site and initial funding for what would be one of the nation's few GLBT-friendly affordable housing facilities. They hope to break ground on a 52-unit, $17 million building for seniors in 2013. Anti-discrimination laws prohibit gay-only housing, but projects can be made GLBT-friendly through marketing and location. And while private retirement facilities targeted at the gay community exist, such residences are often out of reach for all but the wealthiest seniors. Census figures released this month indicate about 49 percent of Americans over 65 could be considered poor or low-income. Gays are also less likely to have biological family to help out with informal caregiving, either through estrangement or being childless, making them more dependent on outside services. And that makes them more vulnerable, SAGE executive director Michael Adams said. "They cannot at all assume that they will be treated well or given the welcome mat," he said. Cities including San Francisco and Chicago also have projects on the drawing board. But the first and, so far, only affordable housing complex for gay elders to be built in the United States is Triangle Square-Hollywood in Los Angeles. Open since 2007, the $22 million facility has 104 units available to any low-income senior 62 and over, gay or straight, according to executive director Mark Supper. Residents pay monthly rent on a sliding scale, from about $200 to $800, depending on their income. About 35 units are set aside for seniors with HIV/AIDS and for those at risk of becoming homeless, Supper said. The Triangle's population is about 90 percent GLBT and it has a waiting list of about 200 people. The project's developer, Gay & Lesbian Elder Housing, plans to build a second facility in Southern California in the next 18 months, Supper said. But what took so long for the need to recognized? Chris Bartlett, executive director of the GLBT William Way Center in Philadelphia, noted that advocates spent the better part of two decades devoting their energy to programs for those affected by HIV or AIDS, which were decimating the gay community. While AIDS remains a priority, Bartlett said, the crisis mentality has passed and allowed the community to focus on other things. He said he looks forward to the Way Center providing social services at the planned Philadelphia senior housing facility, in a sense repaying those who led the gay liberation movement. "Don't we owe it to them ... to ensure that they have an experience as elders that's worthy of what they gave to our community?" Bartlett said. The Philadelphia group has been trying to get its project off the ground for about eight years but has been stymied by location problems, a tough economy and stiff competition for federal housing tax credits. Rejected once for the credits, developers recently reapplied and hope for a different answer this spring, said Mark Segal, director of the Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Fund, which is spearheading the project. It's planned for a thriving section of the city affectionately known as the Gayborhood. "I'm extremely optimistic," said Segal, also publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News. However, Adams said the real solution lies not only in building more facilities, but in cultural competency training for staffers at existing elder programs. The Philadelphia Corporation on Aging, the private nonprofit that serves the city's seniors, began offering such seminars to health care workers a couple of years ago, said Tom Shea, the agency's director of training. "They're going to be seeing a diverse slice of the aging population in Philadelphia ... and we need to be sensitive to all their needs," Shea said. Adams suggested that discrimination faced by today's GLBT elders could diminish in the decades ahead, since he said opinion research shows that younger generations are less likely to harbor anti-gay biases than older generations. "So we hope that the passage of time will provide part of the solution," he said. "But of course, today's LGBT elders can't wait for that." Jackie Adams, 54, of Philadelphia, said being diagnosed with AIDS many years ago meant she never thought she'd live long enough to need elder housing. But now Adams, who was born male and lives as a female, is part of a local initiative focused on GLBT senior issues.

Read More..

Mental Decline Can Start at 45, Study Finds

THURSDAY, Jan. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Sorry, Boomers, but a new study suggests that memory, reasoning and comprehension can start to slip as early as age 45. This finding runs counter to conventional wisdom that mental decline doesn't begin before 60, the researchers added. "Cognitive function in normal, healthy adults begins to decline earlier than previously thought," said study author Archana Singh-Manoux. "It is widely believed that cognitive ability does not decline before the age of 60. We were able to show robust cognitive decline even in individuals aged 45 to 49 years," added Singh-Manoux, research director at INSERM's Center for Research in Epidemiology & Population Health at the Paul-Brousse Hospital in Paris. These findings should be put in context of the link between cognitive function and the dementia, Singh-Manoux said. "Previous research shows small differences in cognitive performance in earlier life to predict larger differences in risk of dementia in later life," she said. Understanding cognitive aging might enable early identification of those at risk for dementia, Singh-Manoux said. The report was published in the Jan. 5 issue of BMJ. For the study, Singh-Manoux and colleagues collected data on nearly 5,200 men and 2,200 women who took part in the Whitehall II cohort study. The study, which began in 1985, followed British civil servants from the age of 45 to 70. Over 10 years, starting in 1997, the participants' cognitive function was tested three times. The researchers assessed memory, vocabulary, hearing and vision. Singh-Manoux's group found that over time, test scores for memory, reasoning and vocabulary skills all dropped. The decline was faster among the older participants, they added. Among men aged 45 to 49, reasoning skills declined by nearly 4 percent, and for those aged 65 to 70 those skills dropped by about nearly 10 percent. For women, the decline in reasoning approached 5 percent for those aged 45 to 49 and about 7 percent for those 65 to 70, the researchers found. "Greater awareness of the fact that our cognitive status is not intact until deep old age might lead individuals to make changes in their lifestyle and improve [their] cardiovascular health, to reduce risk of adverse cognitive outcomes in old age," Singh-Manoux said. Research shows that "what is good for the heart is good for the head," which makes living a healthy lifestyle a part of slowing cognitive decline, she said. Targeting patients who have risk factors for heart disease such as obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol might not only protect their hearts but also prevent dementia in old age, the researchers said. "Understanding cognitive aging will be one of the challenges of this century," especially as people are living longer, they added. In addition, knowing when cognitive decline is likely to start can help in treatment, because the earlier treatment starts the more likely it is to be effective, the researchers noted. Francine Grodstein, an associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and author of an accompanying editorial, said more research is needed into how to prevent early cognitive decline. "If cognitive decline may start at younger ages, then efforts to prevent cognitive decline may need to start at younger ages," she said. "New research should focus on understanding what factors may contribute to cognitive decline in younger persons," Grodstein added. "This is consistent with what we have seen in other studies and the cognitive changes that occur as we age," said Heather M. Snyder, senior associate director of medical & scientific relations at the Alzheimer's Association. These changes do not mean that all these people will go on to develop Alzheimer's disease or another dementia, Snyder noted. "It is important to remember that the cognitive changes associated with aging are very different from the cognitive changes that are associated with Alzheimer's disease," she stressed. Although some of these people may go on to develop Alzheimer's disease there is currently no way to tell who is at risk, Snyder said. "This is why it is so important to continue to investigate biological changes that occur in the earliest stages, because it is difficult to [determine] the cognitive changes that are associated with Alzheimer's disease," she said. Snyder noted that Alzheimer's disease can start 15 to 20 years before symptoms are apparent, which makes finding a biological marker so important. "If a therapeutic is available, we can intervene at that point," she said.

Read More..

Why Some People Live to 110

SUNDAY, Jan. 8 (HealthDay News) -- People who live 110 years or longer have as many disease-associated genes as those in the general population, but they may also be blessed with protective genes that help them live so long, researchers report. The team of U.S. scientists noted that supercentenarians, as they are called, are extremely rare, with only one per 5 million people in developed nations. There is growing evidence that genetics play a major role in living to such an old age. In what they describe as a first-of-a-kind study, the researchers analyzed the whole genome sequences of a man and a woman who lived past the age of 114 and found that they had as many disease-associated genes as other people. For example, the man had 37 genetic mutations associated with increased risk for colon cancer. "In fact, he had presented with an obstructing colon cancer earlier in his life that had not metastasized and was cured with surgery. He was in phenomenal cognitive and physical shape near the time of his death," study senior author Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study, said in a Boston University Medical Center news release. The woman had numerous genetic variations associated with age-related disease, such as heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's disease. She did develop congestive heart failure and mild cognitive impairment, but these conditions didn't become evident until she was more than 108 years old. "The presence of these disease-associated variants is consistent with our and other researchers' findings that centenarians carry as many disease-associated genes as the general population," Perls said. "The difference may be that the centenarians likely have longevity-associated variants that cancel out the disease genes. That effect may extend to the point that the diseases don't occur -- or, if they do, are much less pathogenic or markedly delayed towards the end of life, in these individuals who are practically living to the limit of the human lifespan." The study was published Jan. 3 in the journal Frontiers in Genetics, and researchers will be able to access the information at the U.S. National Institutes of Health data repository.

Read More..

65-and-Older Population Soars

There are now more Americans age 65 and older than at any other time in U.S. history. According to a new Census Bureau report, there were 40.3 million people age 65 and older on April 1, 2010, up 5.3 percent from 35 million in 2010 (and just 3.1 million in 1900). "The population age 65 and older has increased notably over time," says Carrie Werner, a Census Bureau statistician and author of the report. "It is expected to increase more rapidly over the next decade as more baby boomers start to turn 65 in 2011." [See 10 Cities With the Most People Over 65.] The 65-and-older population jumped 15.1 percent between 2000 and 2010, compared with a 9.7 percent increase for the total U.S. population. People age 65 and older now make up 13 percent of the total population, compared with 12.4 percent in 2000 and 4.1 percent in 1900. Females significantly outnumber males at older ages, but the gap is narrowing. In 2010, there were 90.5 males for every 100 females among people age 65 and older, up from 88.1 males per 100 females the same age in 2000. "Women outnumber men in the older population at every single year of age," says Werner. "Males showed more rapid growth in the older population than females over the past decade." In the 2010 Census, there were approximately twice as many women as men beginning at age 89. This point occurred about four years older than it did in 2000, and six years older than in 1990. [See Tips for Baby Boomers Reaching Retirement Age in 2012.] All regions of the country have seen growth in their 65-and-older populations since the 2000 Census. The older population is growing most rapidly in the West, where the number of senior citizens increased 23.5 percent, from 6.9 million in 2000 to 8.5 million in 2010. The Northeast is home to the largest percentage of people 65 years and older (14.1 percent), followed by the Midwest (13.5 percent), the South (13.0 percent), and the West (11.9 percent). Florida has the greatest proportion of people who are at least 65 (17.3 percent), followed by West Virginia (16 percent), Maine (15.9 percent), Pennsylvania (15.4 percent), and Iowa (14.9 percent). The state with the smallest share of 65-and-older individuals is Alaska (7.7 percent). Rhode Island is the only state that experienced a decrease in the number of residents age 65 and older. The older population declined 0.3 percent, from 152,402 in 2000 to 151,881 in 2010. "The fairly stagnant Rhode Island economy during periods of economic expansion elsewhere in the '80s and '90s meant fewer people at peak job earning ages arriving and more people leaving," says Andrew Foster, an economics and community health professor and director of the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. "However, recent arrivals of Hispanics and the attractiveness of Rhode Island as a place to live are leading to substantial growth in the 55-to-65 age range? so it is likely that Rhode island will see an increase in 65-plus by 2020." The District of Columbia's older population also decreased from 69,898 in 2000 to 68,809 in 2010, a 1.6 percent decline. Scottsdale, Ariz. had the highest percentage of people 65 and older among places with 100,000 or more people in 2010 (20 percent), compared with the national average of 13 percent. "Scottsdale, like much of Arizona, has attracted a large number of older migrants from other parts of the country," says Victor Agadjanian, director of the Center for Population Dynamics at Arizona State University. Four Florida cities, Clearwater, Hialeah, Cape Coral, and Miami, are also among the 10 cities with the highest percentages of senior citizens. Surprise, Ariz., Honolulu, Metairie, La., Warren, Mich., and Independence, Mo., also have large proportions of retirement-age residents. [See 11 Retirement Benefit Changes Coming in 2012.] West Jordan, Utah, has the lowest percentage of people age 65 and up (4.6 percent), followed by Killeen, Texas, (5.2 percent) and Frisco, Texas (5.4 percent). "Higher concentrations of people in the younger ages resulted in a smaller relative share of older adults in 2010," according to the Census Bureau report. Many of the places with the lowest proportions of older residents have large populations of young people due to the presence of a college or military base. Killeen, Texas, for example, is near Fort Hood military base, and Provo, Utah, where people 65 and older make up just 5.8 percent of the population, is home to a large university.

Read More..

Optimism Is Key to Successful Aging

A resilient attitude may be the secret to successful aging, perhaps even trumping good physical health, finds a new study. Researchers surveyed 1,006 randomly selected adults in San Diego, Calif., between the ages of 50 and 99 (with a mean age of about 77) through a 25-minute phone interview, followed by a mail-in survey. In addition to evaluating the participants' physical health conditions, such as chronic disease and disability, the survey looked at more subjective factors like adults' social engagement and self-assessments of their overall health and degree of successful aging. The team found that older adults with low physical functioning but high resilience — the ability to bounce back from negative events or setbacks — had comparable self-ratings of their degree of successful aging to those of physically healthy people who were less resilient. Meanwhile, people who were less physically able but had no or low levels of depression reported self-ratings similar to those of physically healthy people with moderate to severe depression, the study indicated. "Perfect physical health is neither necessary nor sufficient," said the study's lead investigator Dilip V. Jeste, a geriatric psychiatrist of the University of California at San Diego. "There is potential for enhancing successful aging by fostering resilience and treating or preventing depression." Overall, the researchers found that a higher self-rating of successful aging was more likely among those with higher education, better cognitive function, better perceived physical and mental health, less depression and greater optimism and resilience. Previous studies have shown seniors tend to have quite positive outlooks — especially compared with younger adult generations — despite the physical and cognitive decline associated with old age. A 2008 analysis of data from the General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center indicated that about half of U.S. residents in their late 80s report being very happy, while the figure for younger adult age groups sinks to a third or less. And study of almost 45,000 German adults from 1984 to 2007 found that happiness levels dip during middle age but rebound by about age 60. Jeste led another study in 2005 that surveyed Americans ages 60 to 98 who had struggled with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental health conditions or a range of other problems. Even in the face of their ills, the participants rated their degree of successful aging quite high, which Jeste said at the time could be attributed to optimism and effective coping styles. Jeste, who is the current president of the American Psychiatric Association, said the results of the new study suggest aging doesn't have to be negatively viewed as a public health problem in the United States, where there are about 40 million adults over the age of 65. "There is considerable discussion in public forums about the financial drain on the society due to rising costs of health care for older adults — what some people disparagingly label the 'silver tsunami,'" Jeste said. "But, successfully aging older adults can be a great resource for younger generations."

Read More..

Volcanoes, Not Meteorite, Killed Dinosaurs, Scientist Argues

SAN FRANCISCO — Volcanic activity in modern-day India, not an asteroid, may have killed the dinosaurs, according to a new study. Tens of thousands of years of lava flow from the Deccan Traps, a volcanic region near Mumbai in present-day India, may have spewed poisonous levels of sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and caused the mass extinction through the resulting global warming and ocean acidification, the research suggests. The findings, presented Wednesday (Dec. 5) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, are the latest volley in an ongoing debate over whether an asteroid or volcanism killed off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago in the mass die-off known as the K-T extinction. "Our new information calls for a reassessment of what really caused the K-T mass extinction," said Gerta Keller, a geologist at Princeton University who conducted the study. For several years, Keller has argued that volcanic activity killed the dinosaurs. But proponents of the Alvarez hypothesis argue that a giant meteorite impact at Chicxulub, Mexico, around 65 million years ago released toxic amounts of dust and gas into the atmosphere, blocking out the sun to cause widespread cooling, choking the dinosaurs and poisoning sea life. The meteorite may impact may also have set off volcanic activity, earthquakes and tsunamis. [Wipe Out: History's Most Mysterious Extinctions] The new research "really demonstrates that we have Deccan Traps just before the mass extinction, and that may contribute partially or totally to the mass extinction," said Eric Font, a geologist at the University of Lisbon in Portugal, who was not involved in the research. Sea cockroach In 2009, oil companies drilling off the Eastern coast of India uncovered eons-old lava-filled sediments buried nearly 2 miles (3.3 kilometers) below the ocean surface. Keller and her team got permission to analyze the sediments, finding they contained plentiful fossils from around the boundary between the Cretaceous-Tertiary periods, or K-T Boundary, when dinosaurs vanished. The sediments bore layers of lava that had traveled nearly 1,000 miles (1,603 km) from the Deccan Traps. Today, the volcanic region spans an area as big as France, but was nearly the area of Europe when it was active during the late Cretaceous period, said Adatte Thierry, a geologist from the University of Lausanne in France who collaborated with Keller on the research. Within the fossil record, plankton species got fewer, smaller and maintained less elaborate shells immediately after lava layers, which would indicate it happened in years after the eruptions. Most species gradually died off. In their wake, a hardy plankton genus with a small, nondescript exoskeleton, called Guembilitria, exploded within the fossil record. Keller's team found similar trends in their analysis of marine sediments from Egypt, Israel, Spain, Italy and Texas. While Guembilitria species represented between 80 percent and 98 percent of the fossils, other species disappeared. "We call it a disaster opportunist," Keller told LiveScience. "It's like a cockroach — whenever things go bad, it will be the one that survives and thrives." Guembilitria may have come to dominance worldwide when the huge amounts of sulfur (in the form of acid rain) released by the Deccan Traps fell into the oceans. There, it would've chemically binded with calcium, making that calcium unavailable to sea creatures that needed the element to build their shells and skeletons. Around the same time in India, fossil evidence of land animals and plants vanished, suggesting the volcanoes caused mass extinctions on both land and in the sea there. Global impact In past work, the team has also found evidence at Chicxulub that casts doubt on the notion of a meteorite causing the extinction. Sediments containing iridium, the chemical signature of an asteroid, show up after the extinction occurred, contradicting the notion that it could have caused a sudden die-off, Keller said. A meteorite impact also would not have produced enough toxic sulfur and carbon dioxide to match the levels seen in the rocks, so it may have worsened the mass extinction, but couldn't have caused it, she said.

Read More..

Hovering Drone Grabs Spotlight with 6-Foot Arm

Look out humans — a robot floating in midair with a 6-foot arm now exists outside the realm of science fiction films like "Star Wars." The U.S. military recently tested a hovering drone's ability to attach its claw to a target object. The "V-Bat" is a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) drone that can fly like a robotic aircraft and hover in place while standing upright on its tail, according to its makers at the MLB Company. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funded work to make a "vision system" for V-Bat that allowed the hovering robot to attach its 1-pound claw to a ladder. "Our goal with the unmanned aerial vehicle payload emplacement demonstration was to show we could quickly develop and integrate the right technology to make this work," said Dan Patt, DARPA program manager. "The success of the demonstration further enables the capabilities of future autonomous, aerial vehicles." DARPA wants to construct future drones capable of precisely delivering small objects in tight spaces. V-Bat's vision system coordinated with the drone's onboard GPS so that the robot could approach and place its payload on the ladder as it hovered in midair. The successful experiment could turn drones into even more capable delivery messengers for both the U.S. military and civilian uses. U.S. Marines already get deliveries from robotic helicopters in Afghanistan, but soldiers must attach and detach the helicopter payloads manually. Many robot vision systems still struggle to accurately identify objects, let alone coordinate a midair handoff delivery. The experiment also proved challenging because a hovering robot does not necessarily represent the most stable platform. Many past hover vehicles have struggled to maintain stability in midflight. Still, the V-Bat had a backup advantage in case of an accidental tip-over. It could survive due to its nose protection and a duct shielding its rotor and vanes. The MLB Company's description of V-Bat suggests that the drone could one day carry out missions for the U.S. military ranging from aerial mapping to anti-piracy.

Read More..