Looking at the world through older eyes
[21 October 2003 - SunSpot.net - Maryland] An NIH program with the American Visionary Art Museum pairs medical students and seniors to explore aging with art: The American Visionary Art Museum has space waiting on the walls for art created by seemingly ordinary older people. As part of an experimental program on art and aging, a dozen or so senior citizen recruits will have their work hung near one of Anna Mary Robertson 'Grandma' Moses' landscape masterpieces, The Old Covered Bridge, which she painted when she was 83. ... Experts in geriatrics and art say there is evidence to suggest people in their 80s and 90s can be more creative. At that stage, they say, social conventions are less important and inhibiting to people. ...

McKeon did for Marlins what aging boomers can for society
[21 October 2003 - The Christian Science Monitor] When the Florida Marlins needed a manager earlier this season, they surprised baseball fans by choosing Jack McKeon, a 72-year-old who had been fired by the Cincinnati Reds three years before. Most felt he was too old to come back, too old to relate to the Marlins' inexperienced young players, too old to turn around a losing team. ... There are untold numbers of older adults who have the will, talent, and time to be Jack McKeons in their own communities. As individuals and as a society, we need to act a little more the way Loria did when he hired McKeon. We need to see the promise and potential of older adults to bring about truly exceptional results. Then we all win. ...

Cognitive impairment worse than expected in seniors
[20 October 2003 - University of Pittsburgh] Archives of Neurology article finds that 22 percent of the population over age 75 have cognitive disorders, worse than those expected for normal aging: The rate of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in persons aged 75 and older is higher than expected, affecting 22 percent of those in the age group, according to two articles published in Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals, and authored by Oscar Lopez, M.D., associate professor of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Lopez's research involved 3,608 people aged 75 and older who participated in the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS). He found that the majority of cognitive difficulties are the result of multiple problems, such as small "silent" ischemic lesions in the brain, depression, use of psychiatric medications, or other disease processes that can affect the brain (including chronic liver and kidney failure) rather than the onset of Alzheimer's. ...