canny granny

Bikes seem to be gaining popularity amongst the senior set

An 84-year-old man, missing since he left home to ride his bike in the small central Polish town of Znin last week, has been found in good health wandering round London’s Heathrow Airport.

“According to the family, he just took his bike and left,” a Polish police spokesman said. Polish Police had been searching for the man, identified only as pensioner Ludwik Z, since 8 December.

The family, police and airport authorities have been unable to explain how he got to London. He speaks no English and has no friends or family in England,

Here she is! My trike … from the photo at
Achievable Concepts who specialise in Adapted Recreation and Sporting Equipment for People with Disabilities and the Aged. They make them for people like me too, who just want a trike instead of a two-wheeler. I intend to ride this for the next 10 years, and the prospect of a 70 year old on a mountain bike is somewhat scarey to say the least. You must agree that a thre wheeler makes more sense.

It’s recommended that adults get more than 60 minutes of moderate to vigourous physical activity each day. There are three components to a well-balanced exercise routine: aerobic exercise, strength training, and flexibility training.

Rewards and Benefits of Exercise
Exercise benefits every part of the body, including the mind. Exercising causes the body to produce endorphins, chemicals that lead a person to feel peaceful and happy, and alleviates mild depression and self-esteem. If you feel strong and powerful, it can help you see yourself in a better light. Plus, exercise gives you a real sense of accomplishment and pride at having achieved a certain goal.

Exercising makes you look better, too. People who exercise burn calories and look more toned than those who don’t. In fact, exercise is one of the most important parts of keeping your body at a healthy weight. When you exercise, you burn food calories as fuel. If a person eats more calories than he or she burns, the body stores them away as fat. Exercise can help burn these stored calories.

Exercising to maintain a healthy weight also decreases a person’s risk of developing certain diseases, including type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. These diseases, which used to be found mostly in adults, are becoming more common in teens.

Finally exercise helps us well. Women are especially prone to osteoporosis as they get older and weight-bearing exercise, like running or brisk walking, keeps their bones strong.

Bike it!
Cycling is healthy, both for you as an individual, and for the community you live in. That’s the conclusion of the British Medical Association’s report, ‘Cycling: Towards Health and Safety’.

Regular cycling will improve your fitness and can help you live a long and healthy life. Riding a bike can also help you maintain a healthy weight. Three quarters of all our personal journeys are less than five miles long - that’s no more than half an hour on a bike. Switching these short journeys from car to bicycle will benefit everyone in your community. You’ll be helping to cut noise, air pollution and traffic congestion.

So go by cycle - you’ll feel better for it! I certainly am.

Calorie Restriction
Calorie restriction (CR)adherents claim it’s the only diet that has been proven to extend healthy life span in mammals such as mice and primates, and provides numerous secondary health benefits, such as a far lower risk for most of the degenerative conditions of aging. The degree to which CR can extend the maximum healthy human life span is open to debate, but the evidence for at least some healthy life extension is compelling. Read further on Calorie Restriction

It’s called Undernutrition

“The only approach scientists have found to reliably increase longevity in mammals is to reduce an organism’s caloric intake by about one-third, although the life span of some cold-blooded species can be extended by environmental temperature reduction. Called “undernutrition without malnutrition,” caloric restriction has been shown to extend both the maximal and average life spans of worms, insects and mice. Scientists are now trying to determine if and how caloric restriction works in primates. And though knowledge about its efficacy in humans is still developing, researchers are probing caloric restriction’s physiological effects to understand how we might slow the aging process or confront age-related diseases and conditions. From Ageing Info

Ageing Population
Does this mean semi-starvation? We will need to cut back on food at any rate. Over the past few years, the world’s population has continued on its remarkable transition path from a state of high birth and death rates to one characterized by low birth and death rates. At the heart of that transition has been the growth in the number and proportion of older persons. Such a rapid, large and ubiquitous growth has never been seen in the history of civilization.

The current demographic revolution is predicted to continue well into the coming centuries. Its major features include the following:

One out of every ten persons is now 60 years or above; by 2050, one out of five will be 60 years or older; and by 2150, one out of three persons will be 60 years or older.

The majority of older persons (55 percent) are women. Among the oldest old, 65 percent are women.

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries, said A.A. Milne

A little forgetful
You just opened a drawer to take out something, whatever it was. You can’t quite think what it was. A little later you’re looking for something in the cupboard, not entirely sure what you’re looking for, no matter, you will remember when you go back to the kitchen. That’s because our brain is middle-aged too.

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity, but experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again

Apparently, we aren’t just living longer, we are staying healthier until an older age, called ‘compression of morbidity’, and this means that most of us will only suffer severe age-related illnesses in the last year or so of life.

Researchers predict that the baby boomer generation will revolutionise what it means to be old because our attitudes are so different to those of our parents. We’re more likely to be demanding and imaginative consumers of both products and services, seeking out information for ourelves and refusing to be defined by an age-group. But even before the bulk of the boomers retire, lingering stereotypes of the average senior citizen as a frail and passive creature are already out of date.

So welcome to the ageing future, the revolution has already begun.

How old can we go?

Life expectancy is increasing in the developed world. But Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey believes we can live to be 1000

How low can they go?
Down through the ages, many cultures have observed that everyone has troubles. “The rain falls on every roof” is an African Proverb that acknowledges this sentiment.

No one goes through life without problems, be it financial troubles, emotional problems, physical ailments, stress, loss of a loved one, divorce, etc. It’s a comfort at the end of a bad day to know that we are not alone in our suffering and that everyone gets hit with something. But who is at the end of the line?