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How Aging Impairs Immunity and Increases the Risk of a COVID-19 Infection
The risk of serious illness or death associated with an infection increases with age. The body’s mechanisms that resist infections begin to weaken, on average, at age 50. The risk to seniors associated with SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19) is primarily associated with a compromised immune system. Fatality rates associated with COVID-19 begin to […]
Understanding Ageism and COVID-19
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently updated its list of risk factors for developing a serious illness after exposure to the coronavirus. Until that update, the CDC advised the public that individuals who were 65 and over had an elevated risk of suffering severe illness or death from COVID-19. The update reflects […]
Technology Can Help Seniors Stay Healthy During the Pandemic
Providing senior care and maintaining social distancing may seem like incompatible goals. Some services, whether provided by home health aides or by the staff of a senior living facility, need to be provided in person. A certain amount of physical contact — or at least close proximity — is necessary when seniors need assistance bathing, […]
COVID-19 Fraud Targets Seniors
Scammers have a long history of preying on seniors. The social isolation that seniors are experiencing to avoid contracting COVID-19 has elevated the risk that they will be victimized by fraudulent schemes that target the elderly. Seniors are more likely than others to experience serious symptoms of COVID-19. Concerned seniors are therefore searching the internet […]
Protecting Seniors from COVID-19
As the country reopens and stay-at-home orders are eased, the risk to seniors from COVID-19 may increase. While the curve has flattened in some parts of the country, infected people still inhabit every state. Since a large percentage of individuals who carry the coronavirus have no symptoms — and may never develop symptoms — it […]
Mental Health Challenges: Help for Caregivers
Here’s yet another myth buster about growing older: Mental health disorders are not a normal part of aging. In fact, there are three “patterns” of mental health disorders commonly seen across the lifespan, including individuals who: Develop a disorder (usually between the mid-teens and mid-20s) and maintain it for a lifetime; Experience some mental disorder […]
Deciding What’s Important in Life: It’s in the Cards
The holiday season can make people contemplative. And quite often, it can also inspire them to accomplish one of life’s many “Shoulds” — getting affairs in order such as completing advance health care directives and final arrangements. But for many, those tasks seem daunting. Or confusing. Or just plain not fun. Until now. The Coda […]
The Case for Slow Medicine
“I don’t consider myself a natural-born doctor,” Victoria Sweet recently told a group gathered at San Francisco’s Institute on Aging. She then described her unlikely scholastic path to physiciandom: a major in math, minor in classics — and an awakening to Karl Jung while browsing in a bookstore one day. “I was taken by the […]
Staying Stronger Longer
Most adults will lose at least 30% of their muscle mass during their lifetimes. That frightening truth even has a scary-sounding name: sarcopenia — literally translated as the even scarier sounding “poverty of the flesh.” The “poverty” actually begins for most people around age 30. At that point, even individuals who are physically active will […]
Do These Ads Make Your Life Look Sad?
Updated December 2025 Even avowed Luddites can’t claim to be totally immune to the way older people are portrayed online — when you can find them there at all: a bit feeble, immobile, badly dressed, and all alone or in the company of a doctor or caregiver. And a recent study strongly confirmed that’s not […]