Description

This video by TV360 offers you expert advice about living well into your golden years.

Transcript

How to Live Well in Your Golden Years I see lots of old folks and my practice is built around geriatric medicine and I’ve been doing it for a long time so I have a pretty good sense of people’s age. I have to tell you that if Joe would have walked into my office, I would not have a guessed he was a 101 years old. He looks like a good 80 year old man. Joe was extremely unusual, statistically he have survived well beyond the mean for men in this country, in any society for that matter. He’s doubly unusual and he’s done it so well. He’s living a good life at a 101, now obviously we’re more interested in seeing Joe because it gives us a sense of what’s possible but the reality is that many people of a 101 those were constitutional weren’t able to survive that long as Joe does. So he is very fortunate not just in surviving but in surviving well. I think you’re trying hard to maintain abilities in all spheres and Joe has done that, Joe has maintained his physical abilities, I don’t know this about him but I have to believe that he was a physically active man. Not a couch potato, I think he have to work hard to maintain mental abilities, I notice he’s still reading, my guess is the guy was an avid reader, perhaps he had other interest that helped maintain his mental faculties. I don’t know about his diet but I like to think that he didn’t commit excesses dietary speaking. That he was a little bit prudent about what he ate, I imagine he avoided smoking and he certainly avoided excess alcohol. He probably adheres to the recommendations of his physicians where they made sense and he was cagey in his ability to navigate the medical health care system which sometimes put older folks at risks. I think the other components of Joe’s success though have to do with non medical issues and that is a very positive outlook. An ability to maintain his social connections and a good humor to approach to himself and to his circumstances, he is above all resilient because the losses impaled him living that long are many. It's still an exceedingly rare thing to see somebody that age, 101 years old. It's increasingly common though and I have to say that in my clinic we now have patients as old as a 105 walking up to the clinic windows to check in for a visit. And we have plenty of people in there; late 80’s, 90’s, and approaching a 100 were very variable. Often leading independent lives, surprisingly independent, able to do almost anything they want to do, so I think we’re seeing the tip of a demographic phenomenon here where getting very old is getting more and more common. In fact one of the fastest growing age groups in the country is people over the age of a 100.