Articles
The Journal on Active Aging brings articles of value to professionals dedicated to older-adult quality of life. Content sweeps across the active-aging landscape to focus on education and practice. Find articles of interest by searching the article archives in three ways: Enter a keyword in the articles search bar; click on search by topic; or type a keyword or phrase in the general search bar at the top of the page.
Topic- Nutrition
Unveiling nutritional requirements of older adults, part one by Sandy Todd Webster
Our eating choices have a significant impact on our quality of life as we age, affecting everything from our physical well-being to our cognitive and mental health. Read on to explore the key nutrients that elude us as we age--and how to reclaim them.
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Healing practices: The evidence for Chinese medicine and healthy aging by Kelly Clady-Giramma, MS, LAc, Dipl OM
In China, long life and older adults are revered and aging embraced. Prior to the rising popularity of Western culture there over the past few decades, birthday celebrations were reserved for the very old. While everyone is young once, the thinking goes, it takes a lot of luck and talent to grow old-talent that deserves to be celebrated. Unsurprisingly, the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) philosophy of longevity is not synonymous with the contemporary Western obsession with "anti-aging." Taoism, an ancient spiritual system that promotes living in harmony with nature and gave rise to TCM, encourages functionality and feeling young on the inside rather than simply looking young on the outside. TCM offers many tools and advice around longevity. It advocates balanced life in all its aspects. It promotes connection to nature and its cycles as well as respect for our circadian (daily) rhythms. TCM also encourages us to take personal responsibility for our health and be proactive. Many more people and physicians are turning to personalized integrative medicine today, focusing on healthy lifestyles and the best of various healing traditions. Integrative medicine combines treatments from conventional allopathic, or "Western", medicine with other evidence-based healing modalities from around the world, including TCM. For active-aging organizations, TCM's complementary approaches may open additional avenues to support clients in living longer, healthier lives.
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Prevent, treat, survive: Eating well through the continuum of cancer by Lori S. Kiker, MS, RDN, LD, CSO
Research reflects progress in the fight against cancer over the past decades. In the United States, overall age-adjusted death rates declined 27% between 1991 and 2016, largely due to fewer people smoking and improved early detection and treatment, says a recent American Cancer Society report. Most new cancer diagnoses occur in adults 50 and over; specifically, 80% of new diagnoses in the US and about 90% in Canada are in the 50+ age group. As a result, cancer cases will continue to rise in line with a growing older population. By staying physically active and maintaining good nutrition, adults diagnosed with cancer in later life may better tolerate cancer treatments and get the most from their therapies. Individuals often have questions about nutrition throughout the disease journey and may come to you-as an active-aging professional-for help. This article provides the answers to many common questions people have asked me as a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist specializing in oncology. It also tackles some widespread myths about nutrition and cancer.
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Countering chronic inflammation for healthier aging, part one: The food connection by Shirley Archer, JD, MA
Do you wake up feeling fatigued? Do you suffer from joint pain or stiffness? Digestive problems? If you have one or more of these symptoms, you may be dealing with chronic or long-term inflammation....The good news: Scientists have become better not only at identifying chronic inflammation's presence, but also in how to reduce it for better well-being. As an individual who's aging-namely, all of us-and as an active-aging professional, it's valuable to understand this "top of mind" topic to educate others and to implement programs that can reduce excess inflammation and promote health.
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Nutrition to aid wound healing in the aging adult by Julie Richards, MS, RDN, LDN, Mary Litchford, PhD, RDN, LDN, and Joyce Pittman, PhD, ANP-BC, FNP-BC, CWOCN, FAAN
Advanced age is commonly identified as a risk factor for delayed wound healing-yet age in and of itself is not a risk for failure to heal. It is the multiple health conditions, or comorbidities, affecting many older people that present a risk to healing. Even so, aging is associated with chronic wounds and impaired wound healing. With the over-60 age group predicted to nearly double as a proportion of the global population in the decades to come, from 12% in 2015 to 22% in 2050, chronic wounds will affect many more people worldwide. Many factors can hinder healing-including diabetes, obesity, malnutrition, vascular disease, infection and poor lifestyle choices-thus increasing the risk of a chronic wound. Although often overlooked ..., good nutrition is fundamental to the healing process.
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A healthy microbiome equals healthy aging by Tereza Hubkova, MD
More than a hundred years ago, Russian microbiologist and immunologist Ilya Ilich Metchnikoff attributed the longevity of Bulgarian peasants to their consumption of kefir. Kefir, as he noted, contained Lactobacillus bulgaricus, a bacterium-producing lactic acid lending the beverage its sour taste. How much of Metchnikoff's observation of the anti-aging effects of friendly microbes--or probiotics--is true? And, does illness and death truly begin in the colon? The human body can be described as a "meta-organism"--a hybrid of some 30 trillion human cells with another estimated 100 trillion bacteria, fungi, protozoa, archaea and viruses. In other words, for each native cell in the human body, we play host to three-or-more symbiotic microbial cells. Who do you think runs the show?
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