Updated August 2025 Weather-related disasters have increased globally in the last fifty years. Fortunately, weather-related deaths have not increased at the same pace. Scientists have improved their ability to predict extreme weather events and governments have become more adept at issuing warnings while there is time to avoid a catastrophe. Measured by economic loss of […]
Updated April 2025 Ordinary products, ranging from food and over-the-counter medications to hand sanitizers and sunscreens, can pose a health or safety risk. Senior consumers can protect themselves by checking product recall lists and safety alerts from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as warnings about unsafe foods posted on the government’s FoodSafety […]
Vaccination rates of older Americans continue to rise. Nationwide statistics reveal that Americans who have reached the age of 65 have the highest rate of vaccination among all age groups. As of October 21, 2021, 96% of Americans ages 65 years or older have received at least one dose of a vaccine and 84.5% are […]
Healthy aging means maintaining the functional abilities that enable wellbeing. Functional abilities include the capacity to meet basic needs, to be mobile, to build and maintain relationships, to make decisions, and to feel like a contributing member of society. Factors that contribute to healthy aging include exercise, diet, healthcare, having regular contact with friends and […]
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, […]
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 […]
Updated September 2025 Most people in the U.S., where the average life expectancy is 78 years old, live about 20% of their lives with a chronic disease of aging such as osteoarthritis, Type II diabetes, cancer, heart attack, stroke, and macular degeneration. But the brainiacs at the Buck Institute for Age Research, based in Novato, […]
Of all the unexpected changes, diminutions, and just plain annoyances that aging inevitably brings with it, those in the know agree that the hardest is losing what they’ve come to cherish most: their independence. Perhaps independence is so hard to give up because it’s so hard-won. Most people spend their youthful years longing for the […]
Many families grew up with the kitchen as a focal point and central gathering place in the home. For many seniors who still live at home, they now prepare a meal for themselves alone. Kitchen safety is critical because the kitchen is a place where accidents often occur. When it comes to seniors and kitchen […]
In a kinder, easier, more foolproof world, there would be one document allowing people to indicate what medical care they prefer to have provided or withheld. And it would be housed in one repository, accessible by medical personnel anywhere and everywhere, at any hour of the day or night. We don’t live in that world. […]