 |
|
|
Aging
News at UIUC AGING
AND EXERCISE UI project goal: increase physical activity for older AmericansConfidence can play a part in the feel-good effects of exercise Study shows exercise is stress reducer Two graduate students win Doolen Scholarships to study aging Farmers tend to work long past typical retirement age, survey finds Obesity, common in postmenopausal years, linked to other health risks Fit seniors better able to react when quick thinking needed, study says Estrogen may dictate what problem-solving strategy brain uses Changes in estate tax of little consequence to most, scholar says Study
is first to confirm link between exercise and changes in brain Scientists focusing on how exercise raises immunity Nutrition, neuroscience focus of first Initiative on Aging conference Researchers examining how Tai Chi may benefit older people UI
research puts senior citizens on exercise regimens UNIVERSITY
OF ILLINOIS RECEIVES MAJOR FUNDING TO MAKE OLDER AMERICANS MORE ACTIVE
AND HEALTHY INDIANAPOLIS-The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in conjunction with the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), has received a grant of $568,767 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Recognizing that scientific and clinical evidence has increasingly demonstrated that regular physical activity is essential to health and can prevent and help with management of many diseases, the Foundation awarded the grant to support the development and implementation of a plan to increase physical activity among adults over 50. The plan, formally known as The National Blueprint: Increasing Physical Activity among Adults Age 50 and Older, was created by a national panel supported by RWJF. The panel included experts from AARP, ACSM, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and RWJF. ACSM has played a leading role in assembling these and other organizations into a health coalition known as the Active Aging Partnership. Chief grant administrators from the two institutions will be Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko, Ph.D., University of Illinois Kinesiology Department Head and Jane G. Senior, ACSM research administration director. "Regular physical activity can bring dramatic health benefits to people of all ages, but it is one of the greatest opportunities available for the aging person to extend years of active independent life," said Chodzko-Zajko. "The Blueprint was written with this in mind. Now we will be able to provide an infrastructure and continue working together identifying and addressing barriers to physical activity." The first steps to be funded by the grant include scanning national groups to ascertain the need for technical assistance, organizing national conferences of health care providers and geriatric care specialists, developing internet sites that will disseminate information, and distributing information about Blueprint-related activities. "We are very excited about the opportunity this grant presents," said Chodzko-Zajko. " It is the beginning of a process that could eventually benefit the entire population throughout the life span." The Department of Kinesiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is an interdisciplinary unit dedicated to the critical study of human movement. The advancement and dissemination of movement-related knowledge is central to the Department's mission. Faculty in the Department of Kinesiology utilize a broad variety of approaches in the integrative study of human movement, including research themes such as lifespan physical activity, disability and reconditioning, physical culture and education, human factors, and human performance. The American College of Sports Medicine is the largest sports medicine and exercise science organization in the world. More than 18,000 members throughout the U.S. and the world are dedicated to promoting and integrating scientific research, education, and practical applications of sports medicine and exercise science to maintain and enhance physical performance, fitness, health, and quality of life. AGING
AND EXERCISE Craig Chamberlain,
Education Editor 12/1/2000 But any physical activity is better than none, at any age, even if it doesn't fit common notions of exercise, says a University of Illinois professor and leading advocate for efforts to encourage "active aging." It's important to "choose an activity that you will do," rather than just wishing to do something more ambitious, says Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko [VOY-tek HODGE-koh-ZYE-koh], head of the UI kinesiology department and chair of the national Active Aging Partnership, established by the American College of Sports Medicine. "It really matters less exactly what you do than it matters to avoid being completely sedentary," he said. Only about 15 percent of adults over 65 get a recommended level of physical activity, based on a 1996 report from the U.S. Surgeon General, and as many as one-third get none at all, Chodzko-Zajko noted in an article for the November issue of the journal Quest, titled "Successful Aging in the New Millennium: The Role of Regular Physical Activity." "Part of the problem," he said in an interview, "may be that we've adopted a medical model of exercise, where exercise is sort of a bitter pill, and you get a prescription and you're expected to stick to it ... But the bottom line is it takes time to change behavior, and I personally feel the broader you can define your activity program, the less likely you are to become demoralized." Chodzko-Zajko suggests that some people might benefit from strategies such as keeping a diary of all their physical activity, including even things like short walks to the store or working in the garden. "It will motivate you to avoid days in which you have nothing to write down." Another simple strategy he said he liked, heard from a well-respected academic, was "buy a dog." "We used to think in terms of physical activity as traditional exercise, but now we realize that physical activity can be gained from a large number of different activities," Chodzko-Zajko said. And once people get started, they gradually can increase the intensity and duration at their own rate. In his Quest article, however, Chodzko-Zajko argues that more research is needed on what motivates seniors to be physically active. Part of the answer may lie in finding ways to integrate physical activity with other important needs, as part of the same program or in the same facility. "In order to
age successfully, older persons will need to be not only physically active,
but also socially, intellectually, culturally, and (for many seniors)
spiritually active," he wrote. "One of the challenges for our
profession in the new millennium will be to learn how to integrate physical
activity into the wider social, cultural, and economic context of active
aging as a whole." UI project goal: increase physical activity for older Americans Melissa Mitchell,
Arts Editor 8/27/01 EDITOR’S NOTE: Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko [VOY-tek HODGE-koh-ZYE-koh], an expert on the benefits of exercise in older adults, is available for interviews. More information on his research can be found on the Web at www.news.uiuc.edu/gentips/00/12exercise.html. CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The University of Illinois, in conjunction with the American College of Sports Medicine, has received a grant of $568,767 from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a project aimed at making older Americans more active and healthy. Recognizing that scientific and clinical evidence has increasingly demonstrated that regular physical activity is essential to health and can help manage or prevent many diseases, the foundation awarded the grant to support the development and implementation of a plan to increase physical activity among adults over age 50. The plan, formally known as "The National Blueprint: Increasing Physical Activity Among Adults Age 50 and Older," was created by a national panel supported by the foundation. The panel included experts from AARP, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the American Geriatrics Society, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute on Aging and the Johnson foundation. ACSM played a leading role in assembling these and other organizations into a health coalition known as the Active Aging Partnership. Chief grant administrators from the two institutions will be Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko, head of the UI department of kinesiology, and Jane G. Senior, ACSM research administration director. "Regular physical activity can bring dramatic health benefits to people of all ages, but it is one of the greatest opportunities available for the aging person to extend years of active, independent life," said Chodzko-Zajko. "The blueprint was written with this in mind. Now we will be able to provide an infrastructure and continue working together identifying and addressing barriers to physical activity." The first steps to be funded by the grant include scanning national groups to ascertain the need for technical assistance, organizing national conferences of health-care providers and geriatric-care specialists, developing Internet sites that will disseminate information, and distributing information about blueprint-related activities. "We are very excited about the opportunity this grant presents," Chodzko-Zajko said. "It is the beginning of a process that could eventually benefit the entire population throughout the life span." The UI department of kinesiology is an interdisciplinary unit dedicated to the critical study of human movement. The advancement and dissemination of movement-related knowledge is central to the department’s mission. Faculty members in kinesiology utilize a broad variety of approaches in the integrative study of human movement, including research themes such as life-span physical activity, disability and reconditioning, physical culture and education, human factors, and human performance. Based in Indianapolis,
the American College of Sports Medicine is the largest sports medicine
and exercise science organization in the world. More than 18,000 members
throughout the United States and the world are dedicated to promoting
and integrating scientific research, education and practical applications
of sports medicine and exercise science to maintain and enhance physical
performance, fitness, health and quality of life. Study
shows walking improves mental abilities of those more than age 60 even
if they've previously lead a sedentary life The findings centered not on the benefits of physical conditioning but on the frontal regions of the brain, where the additional oxygen taken in during walking triggered faster reaction times and heightened the ability to ignore distractions when completing a variety of mental tasks on a computer. "The nice result of our study is that a person who has not been physically active during his or her younger years still can benefit by walking," said Arthur F. Kramer, a UI psychologist and researcher at the UI Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. The study -- funded by the National Institute on Aging -- examined the cognitive impact of walking (an aerobic workout) or doing toning exercises (anaerobic activity) on 124 adults ranging in age from 60 to 75. Some of the findings appeared July 29 in the journal Nature. Participants in both exercise groups showed improvement doing a repetitive task (pushing a button) when given a visual cue. However, the walkers were better able to process and ignore irrelevant cues and successfully complete tasks than were those who had done only toning exercises. Processing relevant information and discarding distractions are essential to executive control, a term that covers such things as planning, inhibition and temporarily maintaining information in memory. When people drive a car, Kramer said, they must switch rapidly among complex skills -- watching other vehicles, looking for pedestrians, reading signs and ignoring unnecessary information. "Executive control processes are largely controlled by the frontal and prefrontal regions of the brain, areas which show negative metabolic and morphological changes during the normal aging process," Kramer said. "Cells shrink and blood flow decreases. The benefits you get from walking are in the varieties of cognition that show the largest age-related decline." Study participants walked 15 minutes a day, three days a week, at 17.7 minutes per mile, with a nurse supervising, to start. They gradually did 16-minute miles over 45-60 minutes three times a week. The toners and stretchers met three times a week for an hour during the six months of the project. Walkers improved their oxygen intake by 5 percent, a modest but significant result, Kramer said. "Whether you'd get improvements across the board with higher levels of fitness or a lifetime of staying in shape, who knows? It is a possibility," he said. "These people were de-conditioned. They had been doing very little in terms of physical fitness." Kramer's colleagues
on the study were Sowon Hahn, Edward McAuley, Neal J. Cohen, Marie T.
Banich, Cate Harrison, Julie Chason, Richard A. Boileau, Lynn Bardell
and Angela Colcombe, all of the UI Beckman Institute, and psychologist
Eli Vakil of Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Confidence
can play a part in the feel-good effects of exercise Studies in the hundreds have proven what many attest from personal experience: Exercise can make a person feel good, reduce stress, enhance a sense of well-being. Yet no one really knows why, says Edward McAuley, a UI professor of kinesiology. Few studies have successfully identified the mechanism underlying this relationship. Based on a study being published this month in the journal Health Psychology, at least part of the connection appears to come from a person's self-confidence about exercise, McAuley said. The emotional, or "affective," benefits you get from physical activity are dependent, in part, on what you believe you're capable of -- what researchers call your exercise "self-efficacy," McAuley said. The study, co-written with graduate students Heidi-Mai Talbot and Suzanne Martinez, shows that the higher a person's self-efficacy, the more likely he or she is to feel emotional benefits from exercise, McAuley said. "It suggests that changing the environment, providing information that enhances efficacy, can improve the exercise experience, at least emotionally. That becomes important particularly if the enjoyment, the emotions that are experienced in exercise, are implicated in getting people to do it again." In the study, funded in part by the National Institute on Aging, McAuley and his research colleagues fed bogus data to 46 low-active college women, most of whom exercised less than once a week. Half of them, chosen at random and labeled as "high-efficacy," were told after individual fitness tests on a stationary cycle that they placed in the top fifth for fitness among women of similar age and level of activity. The other half, labeled "low-efficacy," were told after the same tests that they placed in the bottom fifth. All the subjects were shown false computer printouts to show how their heart rates compared with their peers', and all were given positive messages about exercise. In a follow-up test given several days after the first, each subject was first reminded of her previous test results, then was asked to work out for 20 minutes on a Stairmaster. At intervals before, during and after the exercise, each was asked to respond to questions from two measures designed to assess sense of well-being, psychological distress and fatigue. The results showed the high-efficacy group responding with a significantly greater positive response and reduce negative feelings, McAuley said. The low-efficacy group showed no correlation between efficacy and affect (or emotional response). In the high-efficacy group, however, efficacy was "positively and highly correlated with affective responses in all the right directions, at every single time point." McAuley thinks the
results suggest efficacy influences how one deals with the body's signals
during exercise. People with lower efficacy might feel themselves getting
tired or reaching their limit earlier. In the person with higher efficacy,
"the belief in your capabilities is actually overriding what the
body's telling you, you're thinking 'I can go further, I can work harder,
this is a good feeling.' " Study
shows exercise is stress reducer Among the many research-based claims made for exercise in recent years has been that it reduces anxiety and stress. But some researchers have asked whether people could get the same effect just by sitting quietly. Isn't the effect a result of just taking time out, of finding a distraction from causes of stress, rather than a result of the exercise itself? No, at least not according to research by Edward McAuley, a professor of kinesiology at the UI. McAuley and graduate students Shannon Mihalko and Susan Bane, in a study published in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, found that exercise had "a significant impact on anxiety" as compared with the effect on subjects asked merely to sit still. The study involved 16 male and 18 female UI undergraduates. Each person participated in three 40-minute sessions. In one session, the subject would sit quietly in a comfortable chair in a room with few distractions. In another session, they would jog at their own moderate pace for 20 minutes on a test-lab treadmill, preceded by a five-minute warmup and followed by 15 minutes of cool-down and rest. Since lab conditions are suspected to cause added anxiety in test subjects, thereby skewing data on anxiety reduction, subjects were asked in the third session to exercise in an activity and setting of their own choosing. McAuley defined this as the "natural environment." Almost half walked or jogged, about a quarter worked out on a stationary bike, and the rest did stair stepping, aerobic dance or some other aerobic activity. They started and finished on the same exercise time schedule as in the lab session, and the intensity of the exercise was determined by the subject. At four points during each of the three sessions at the beginning and at 15, 25 and 40 minutes participants were asked to giveoral responses to a standard inventory of 10 questions designed to measure their level of anxiety. In the natural environment session, a researcher accompanied the subject on the walk or jog or workout in the gym, and asked questions at the appropriate intervals. "The data from the study suggest that the exercise effect is not simply a distraction effect," McAuley said, "because in both exercise sessions you see a reduction in anxiety whereas in the control session, sitting quietly, you just see basically a pretty flat line. The anxiety level doesn't change." McAuley noted that,
"contrary to what you'd expect," the anxiety level for the average
participant actually rose at the 15- and 25-minute intervals of the exercise
sessions meaning at the mid-point and end of the actual exercise.
It then dropped significantly and significantly below the mere sitting
level during the 15 minutes following exercise. And since McAuley
suspects that the questions asked during exercise may be measuring "heightened
physical arousal" along with anxiety, he suspects the anxiety-reducing
effect of exercise may be greater than what his study demonstrated. Two graduate students win Doolen Scholarships to study aging Greg Jaeger, News
Bureau 5/8/03 CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Two University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate students have won the 2003-2004 Paul D. Doolen graduate scholarships for the study of aging. Each will receive $4,000 to continue his studies in the field of gerontology. Kirk Erickson of Champaign, winner of the Doolen award in behavioral social sciences, is pursing a doctorate in biopsychology. His research examines the decline in cognitive functions such as memory and attention in adults more than 60 years old. Erickson will focus his research on the impact of cognitive training and cardiovascular fitness training on the neural mechanisms of the adult brain. He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Marquette University. Jason O’Connor of Mahomet, Ill., winner of the Doolen award in biological-biomedical sciences, is pursuing a doctorate in animal sciences/pathology. His research will examine the mechanism by which Type 2 diabetes mellitus augments and exacerbates cerebrovascular disease. Both diseases are critical age-associated disorders that reduce longevity and quality of life, affecting the growing elderly population. O’Connor believes that a better understanding of the relationship between the two diseases will allow for the development of more effective treatments and therapies. He received his bachelor’s degree in animal sciences from Illinois. The Doolen Scholarship
is awarded annually to graduate students in their second year of study
or beyond whose principal scholarly interest is in the field of aging.
The scholarship was established in 1986 by an endowment from the Retirement
Research Foundation, Oak Park, Ill., to honor the late Paul D. Doolen,
a longtime member of the foundation’s board of directors and a 1927
Illinois graduate.
Farmers tend to work long past typical retirement age, survey finds Jim Barlow, Life Sciences
Editor 9/1/2000 CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Did you hear the one about the retired farmer? If you did, you probably didn't hear it in Illinois. Retirement is rarely practiced, according to a University of Illinois survey. Farmers just keep on farming. The survey of 13 counties found that farmers are twice as likely to continue working beyond age 65 as are people of similar age doing other jobs. "These farmers are not about to get off the tractor seat and relax in the rocking chair," said Andrew Sofranko, a professor in the department of human and community development. "About 1,700 farmers responded to the survey, and 25 percent were 65 or older. Nationally, only 13 to 14 percent of workers 65 and over are still on the job." Of the 25 percent of farmers 65 or older, the average age was 73. A third of the 25 percent were 75 years or older and have been farming an average of 46 years. Sofranko and Mohamed Samy, a postdoctoral fellow, conducted the survey for the Increasing Farmer Income Through Use of Value-Added Commodities project, funded by the Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research. So why do farmers keep working? "We don't have specific data on this question because most farmers can't provide a good answer themselves," Sofranko said. "They are prone to say that they will just one day retire, or that it 'all depends' on their health or whether a son takes over the farm." Twenty three percent of the respondents were less than 45 years of age, 52 percent were 46 to 64, and 25 percent were 65 and over. The average age was 52. The counties surveyed were Adams, Brown, Cass, Fulton, Hancock, Henderson, McDonough, Menard, Mercer, Pike, Sangamon, Schuyler and Warren. Farmers have been one of the older occupation groups in the country, Sofranko said. For the past 40 years, at least, the average age of Illinois' farmers has exceeded 50. The most recent figures place the average age of all Illinois farmers at 53.4. "Young people aren't entering farming to the extent that they have in the past," he said. "The cost of entry precludes getting into farming on a large commercial scale. The traditional 'farming ladder' - starting small and expanding over time -- doesn't work very well in this day and age. Farming is one of the few occupations in the country where the main avenue of entry is family and inheritance." The farm financial crises of the early 1980s and late 1990s also took a heavy toll on younger and middle-aged farmers, leaving an older population engaged in farming, the researchers noted. "Older farmers simply don't think about retirement most of the time," Sofranko said. "There are not a lot of young people around them reminding them of their older age, and unlike a lot of other professions, no one is encouraging their retirement to reduce a company's payroll." Obesity, common in postmenopausal years, linked to other health risks Melissa Mitchell,
Arts Editor 5/1/02 "The risk of osteoporosis in the postmenopausal woman is well characterized," said Evans, whose research focuses on body composition and disease prevention in the elderly. "But just as problematic, if not more so, she said, are health risks – such as diabetes and heart disease -- associated with obesity in menopausal women. And since the nation’s population of postmenopausal women is expected to double by 2025, Evans said, the implications are profound. "Seventy percent of women age 45-54 are overweight or obese," said the Illinois researcher. "Before age 50, the majority of women tend to slowly increase their weight, whereas after menopause there appears to be an accelerated increase in fat mass and a change in preferential fat storage to a central -- that is, abdominal -- location." Those facts have caused Evans and other researchers to ponder the obvious question: "Is it age, or menopause?" "Only recently emerging in the scientific literature is the finding that menopausal transition produces a detrimental change in body composition both in terms of overall body fatness and body-fat distribution," Evans said. "If decreases in sex steroid concentrations influence body composition, the metabolic impact may explain why a woman's risk for diabetes and heart disease increases after menopause." Evans, who joined the Illinois faculty last year after completing postdoctoral studies at Washington University School of Medicine's Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology, is co-author of a study titled "Contributions of Total and Regional Fat Mass to Risk for Cardiovascular Disease in Older Women," published recently in the American Journal of Physiology -- Endocrinology and Metabolism. The other co-authors are A.A. Ehsani and K.B. Schechtman, Washington University School of Medicine, and R.E. Van Pelt and W.M. Kohrt, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver. In the study, Evans and her colleagues found that postmenopausal women with higher levels of trunk fat may be at an increased risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease, whereas leg fat appears to confer protective effects against metabolic dysfunction. Evans' current research
interest centers on postmenopausal women and the potential utility of
exercise as an alternative to traditional hormone replacement therapy
for disease prevention. Fit seniors better able to react when quick thinking needed, study says Melissa Mitchell,
News Editor 6/1/02 So say researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who examined the effects of physical activity history on electrocortical indices of executive control in older adults. Kinesiology professor Charles Hillman presented the results of the study in a paper titled "Aging, Physical Activity and Executive Control Function" at the annual conference of the American College of Sports Medicine in St. Louis May 29-June 1. Co-authors with Hillman are kinesiology professor Edward McAuley and psychology professor Arthur Kramer, and graduate students Artem Belopolsky and Erin Snook. In the study, the Illinois researchers employed a series of tests designed to measure cognitive responses of 32 people assigned to four categories: older adults who reported low, moderate, and high levels of physical activity in their day-to-day routines, along with a control group of college-age adults. The older adults had a median age of 66. Hillman said the study focused on the relationship between exercise and aging on "executive control function," or ECF, which he described as "cognitive processes which require more effort and are largely mediated by the (brain's) frontal lobes." An example of a more simple cognitive process, he said, occurs when a driver stopped at a red light proceeds automatically as the light turns green. Greater amounts of ECF kick in when a driver starts to move forward, then slams on the brakes to avoid hitting an obstacle that suddenly appears in the intersection. "ECF requires a more conscious effort to negotiate the environment," Hillman said. In the Illinois study, the measured responses to neuro-electric stimuli among people in the "high active older adults" group more closely resembled those of the younger adults than those of peers reporting exercise histories in the low or moderate range. The researchers also discovered motor preparation differences among the participants. "We find that active and sedentary older adults differ in the way they select the correct response," Belopolsky said. "Results for physically active older adults indicate that they prepare more efficiently for a response than sedentary older adults." Overall, Hillman said, the study shows that "increased amounts of physical activity affect cognitive functioning related to more effortful processing results in older adults." Or, in more simple terms: "Physical activity appears to be beneficial to older adults." Hillman, Kramer and McAuley are among a group of researchers collaborating in the university's newly established Initiative on Aging, an interdisciplinary program created to contribute to knowledge of the aging process, to improve the quality of life for the aging population, and to reduce healthcare costs for the aging. Estrogen may dictate what problem-solving strategy brain uses Jim Barlow, Life Sciences
Editor 5/15/02 According to a study of rats published in the June issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, activation of different parts of the brain may depend on the presence or absence of estrogen. Rats treated with the hormone learned a place-oriented task faster than rats not getting it, but those not on estrogen were faster completing a response-driven task. These tasks are believed to be controlled by different neural or memory systems. "What we found is that given these analogous tasks that require different cognitive strategies, estrogen biased the rats to use a place, or spatial, strategy," said Donna L. Korol, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Those not given estrogen are better using a response, or non-spatial, strategy. This suggests that estrogen isn't just good for all kinds of memory. Rather, it is very specific in dictating what strategy one takes. Estrogen may enhance some and impair other forms of learning." In the National Science Foundation-funded study, Korol and Lacy L. Kolo (St. Louis University School of Medicine) used young rats whose ovaries had been removed to decrease circulating estrogen levels. Three weeks later, some of them received injections of estrogen, while others got a placebo, before learning to find food in two similar four-arm mazes. In the place-training test, food always was at the same place, but the required turn changed, depending on the rats' starting point. Rats on estrogen learned the task faster than the untreated group. For the response-training test, the rats always found food by turning right (or left) at the first opportunity regardless of where they had started. Rats without estrogen learned this task quicker than the estrogen-treated ones. "If estrogen was simply enhancing learning, the results should have been the same for each task, but that was not the case," Korol said. "It appears that estrogen is enhancing place learning at the expense of response learning. Both these task scenarios are important, because they reveal that estrogen isn't just up- or down-regulating something. It is shifting what individuals are good at solving – without estrogen, they still are good at something." A postmenopausal woman not on HRT may believe that her ability to solve a problem as she always had is slipping. In reality, the brain may be shifting gears into a different strategy that the woman is not used to harnessing, Korol said. In a chapter for a book published last year, "Animal Research and Human Health," Korol and Carol A. Manning of the University of Virginia noted that when an aging woman's hormone level declines, her brain might actually shift into a problem-solving mode more common to men. "Women may actually get better at performing a task from a different approach, but they are not used to doing it that way, so they view the change as an impairment," Korol said. "Theoretically, this may be true, but we don't know this for sure yet. The question is, Can you tap into the other strength?" Korol is among a growing
body of researchers studying the cognitive impacts of estrogen. Researchers
so far have found that estrogen increases nerve-cell communications and
brain excitability, in general, but findings related to memory and learning
have often conflicted as to whether cognition was impaired or enhanced. The positive-reward, food-based tests used in Korol's lab remove stress from the equation. "Now we are going in and looking at the specific brain structures," she said. "Having estrogen at high physiological levels will shift the strategy that you use to solve a task. It might be doing so by changing the functioning or activity of certain brain areas." Changes in estate tax law of little consequence to most, scholar says Mark Reutter, Business
Editor 11/1/02 Richard L. Kaplan, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, examines in an article how ending the estate tax last year became a paramount issue in Washington and "distracted attention from issues that are far more pressing for older Americans." The passage of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act in May 2001 revised the tax on the transfer of a person’s wealth to his survivors, including the complete repeal of the tax in 2010. "Whether that particular provision takes effect as scheduled is highly conjectural at this point, but the indisputable point is that substantial congressional and presidential attention was focused on an issue that affects a very small minority of older Americans." While the revision of the estate tax was characterized by members of both parties as a major benefit for older Americans, it is questionable whether the estate tax is "even an issue for seniors, since it does not affect them, only their survivors." According to Kaplan, the issue had superficial political appeal because many older people feel that they have paid taxes throughout their lives and should not be taxed at their death. But because the estate tax was not levied on estates below $675,000, only about 2 percent of decedents face any tax liability. "Nevertheless, professional advisers often equate financial planning for older people with estate-tax minimization. As a consequence, estate tax reform is often cast as an elders’ issue, despite the fact that no one pays estate tax while he or she is alive, and neither does that person’s surviving spouse." Much more pressing for older people is plugging the loophole in 401(k) plans that permit employees and retirees to invest most or all of their savings in an employer’s corporate stock. In 1996, an attempt was made in Congress to prohibit employees from placing 401(k) assets in a single stock, but a coalition of corporations beat back the measure. "It is time for Congress to reconsider the concentration of retirement fund assets in corporate employer stock," Kaplan wrote. "Any new legislation, moreover, should prohibit any grandfathering of existing plans. Instead, it should provide some reasonable schedule for bolstering the financial integrity of any 401(k) plans. Otherwise, these retirement accounts, which often constitute their owner’s single largest nonresidential asset, may be unable to provide the retirement security that older Americans have been led to expect." Kaplan’s article is in the Elder Law Journal, which is published by the Illinois College of Law. Study is first to confirm link between exercise and changes in brain Jim Barlow, Life Sciences Editor 1/27/03 "We found differences in three areas of the brain, the frontal, temporal and parietal cortexes," Kramer said. "There were very distinct differences particularly in two types of tissue, the gray matter and white matter. Nobody has reported this before." A second Kramer-led
study – a meta-analysis (comprehensive data review) of 18 previous
studies – that will be published in March in Psychological Science,
suggests that older women, especially those on hormone-replacement therapy,
benefit more cognitively than do men from increased physical activity
as they age. "Interestingly, we found that fitness per se didn’t have any influence on brain density," said Kramer, a professor of psychology and member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois. "It is fitness as it interacts with age that has the positive effects. Older adults show a real decline in brain density in white and gray areas, but fitness actually slows that decline." In the study, most other potential negative attributes – smoking, diabetes, drinking, dieting, etc. – were factored out of the data equation, Kramer said. "This, to our knowledge, is the first human data providing a potential anatomical account of the cognitive effects that we and others have found over the years," Kramer said. "Our data also suggest that more research is clearly needed to actually do a thorough examination of brain structure and functioning, and the impact of interventions such as fitness and cognitive training." In 1999, Kramer and colleagues reported in the journal Nature that previously sedentary people over age 60 who walked rapidly for 45 minutes three days a week can significantly improve mental-processing abilities that decline with age, and particularly tasks that rely heavily on the frontal lobes of the brain. For their meta-analysis paper, researchers reviewed 18 intervention studies done between 1966 and 2001 and involving hundreds of participants ages 55 and older. Fitness training was found to show "robust but selective benefits for cognition, with the largest fitness-induced benefits occurring for executive-control processes." Few studies done in the early part of the time included women, but as data were analyzed from later studies, Kramer said, "We found that gender had a large effect; men simply don’t benefit as much, so we went back through our own data and asked why." In previous studies
of mice whose ovaries had been removed, they noted a decline in exercise
and a drop in production of brain-derived neurotropin. When mice were
put back on estrogen, production of the brain molecule increased and so
did exercise activity. Other main conclusions from the meta-analysis: Exercise programs involving both aerobic exercise and strength training produced better results on cognitive abilities than either one alone. Older adults benefit more than younger adults do, possibly, Kramer said, because older adults have more to gain as age-related declines become more prevalent. More than 30 minutes of exercise per session produce the greatest benefit, a finding consistent with many existing guidelines for adults. The studies were funded by the National Institute on Aging (National Institutes of Health) and the New York-based Institute for the Study of Aging. "These intriguing data suggest there may be one more possible benefit from regular exercise," said Molly V. Wagster, program director for the Neuropsychology of Aging, Neuroscience and Neuropsychology of Aging Program of the NIA, which supported the work. "The study emphasizes the importance of continued research on the potential role that exercise might play in reducing cognitive decline with age." Illinois contributors to the Journal of Gerontology paper were Kramer; postdoctoral researcher Stanley J. Colcombe; doctoral student Kirk I. Erickson; Andrew G. Webb, professor of electrical and computer engineering; Neal Cohen, professor of psychology; and Edward McAuley, professor of kinesiology. Naftali Raz of Wayne State University in Detroit also was a co-author. Colcombe and Kramer performed the meta-analysis study. Melissa Mitchell,
News Editor CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — An increasing number of doctors and other health experts have been encouraging older adults to rise from their recliners and go for a walk, a bike ride, a swim, or engage in just about any other form of physical activity as a defense against the potentially harmful health consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. "Exercise is touted as a panacea for older adults," said Jeffrey Woods, a kinesiology professor at the University of Illinois, who noted that fitness programs are routinely recommended for people with various health problems – from diabetes to heart disease. Health experts generally recognize that this population benefits from physical fitness, he said. What they don’t know is why exercise appears to have certain preventive and restorative health effects. Also unknown is what – if any – relationship exists between exercise and immune functioning. "Despite the numerous benefits of exercise – for example, improving cardiovascular and muscular fitness – we know very little about how exercise affects the immune systems of older adults," Woods said. "Good, bad or indifferent, this information could have important public health consequences for our aging population." For that reason, Woods and colleagues in the university’s kinesiology department are conducting research that seeks to establish the link between exercise training and immune function. The field, he said, is still in its infancy, with Illinois researchers among those who are defining it. "Our laboratory is using both animal and human models to address the extent to which exercise affects immune functioning and susceptibility to infectious disease in older populations," Woods said. "We have obtained some exciting preliminary data in mice that suggest that moderate exercise or training may boost some immune function measures and reduce mortality caused by influenza. While we don’t have corollary evidence yet in people, we are in the midst of conducting a large clinical exercise trial in older adults, funded by the National Institute on Aging, that will provide definitive evidence as to whether moderate exercise training influences immune function." In the meantime, results of one study conducted in Woods’ lab, published in the current online edition of the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, indicates that exercise training increases the ratio of naïve T cells to memory T cells in the spleens of older mice. The finding is potentially significant, he said, because, on this measure, "we turn old mice into young mice." When people and animals age, he explained, the thymus, which produces naïve T lymphocytes, shrinks, thus producing fewer naïve cells. "This is one reason that older people/animals have trouble responding to new environmental pathogens." And with the recent
appearance of so many new environmental pathogens – from West Nile
Virus to SARS and monkeypox – Woods said the ability to boost the
immune systems of the elderly, who are among the populations most at risk
from infection, is a worthy goal. Nutrition, neuroscience focus of first Initiative on Aging conference Melissa Mitchell,
News Editor 5/30/03 CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Nutrition and neuroscience are the major themes that will be examined at a conference on aging June 17 and 18 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The conference is being organized by the university’s Initiative on Aging, a multidisciplinary program that encourages scholarly collaboration among faculty researchers and students whose work focuses on increasing knowledge about the aging process. All conference sessions will take place at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, 405 N. Mathews Ave., Urbana. "A wide range
of disciplines are represented in the aging initiative at the University
of Illinois," said Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko (VOY-tek HODGE-koh—ZYE-koh),
the head of the kinesiology department and a member of the initiative’s
executive committee. "For our first annual conference, we’ve
decided to focus on the areas of nutrition and neuroscience. The conference begins at 7 p.m. on June 17 in the Beckman auditorium with a keynote address by Fred Turek, the director of the Center for Circadian Biology and Medicine and the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in the department of neurobiology and physiology at Northwestern University. Turek will discuss the "Worried About Aging? Don't Lose Sleep Over It." The following day’s activities will include a morning session on neuroscience topics, chaired by Paul Gold, professor of psychology and of psychiatry and a member of the Neuroscience Program at Illinois, and an afternoon session on nutrition research, chaired by John Erdman, nutrition research chair and professor of nutritional sciences at Illinois. A complete program, including scheduled speakers and registration information, is available on the Web. Researchers examining how Tai Chi may benefit older people Melissa Mitchell,
News Editor 8/1/03 CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — As they age, people tend to become more prone to slipping, tripping and falling. And the results of such missteps and tumbles sometimes can be catastrophic. That’s why movement researchers are increasingly focusing on the physiological effects and potential health benefits associated with Taiji – or Tai Chi, as it is more commonly known in the United States. An ancient Chinese martial art, Tai Chi combines aspects of movement and meditation; those who practice it claim to derive a variety of beneficial effects – physical as well as mental and spiritual. "There are a whole host of benefits associated with Tai Chi – only some of them related to physical health," said Karl Rosengren, a professor of kinesiology and of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. One oft-cited "side effect," he noted, is increased self-confidence. "It’s been suggested that this increased confidence leads to greater activity, which may lend itself to better functional achievement." But, the Illinois researcher said, "It’s not enough to say we think Tai Chi helps older adults have improved physical function," Rosengren said. "We have to have ways of evaluating what is happening. We’re trying to understand, in the larger picture … is it participation or skills that make a difference, and what are the benefits exactly?" Recent and ongoing
studies at Illinois focus on "exploring and understanding how Tai
Chi can serve as an intervention"; on developing methods for measuring
physical changes among older adults practicing Tai Chi regularly; and
on determining appropriate strategies for intervention. Another study, which sought to examine the effects of Tai Chi training on knee-extensor strength and force control in older individuals, will be published in the October issue of the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Science. "Results of this study found that older individuals can become stronger and have a better force control with the knee extensors following Tai Chi training." In other words, Rosengren said, Tai Chi appears to build lower-body strength and result in better, more targeted control of a person’s movements. "One way to think about it is, when we move through the world, muscles function to get us from Point A to Point B," he said. "We go up stairs and usually don’t trip, for instance. But one thing that happens as we get older is that our ability to produce the correct level of force to achieve our desired movement declines. Tai Chi seems to improve the ability to control force."
AGING 9/16/03 Are you a whiz at
finishing crossword puzzles, but mystified by math? Researchers have assumed
ageing would eventually equalise your cognitive skills at a lower level.
In other words, you'll still be better at crossword puzzles than at math when you're 85, but your skills at both won't be as keen as they used to be. Strengths, weaknesses
retained It's no secret that elderly humans often aren't as quick-witted as they were in their younger years. Most have better general knowledge and vocabulary than when they were younger, Anstey says. However, it would be very rare to maintain the level of performance on measures of complex reasoning, memory and mental speed that one had when one was a young adult. Ageing affects brain As humans, we want to think the brain has this unique status, but it doesn't. It s a body part, and like every other body part, it shows age, Park says. Long-term study examined The findings appear in the September issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. The researchers found that even as cognitive skills declined, the study subjects retained higher levels of skills in the same areas they had before. For example, participants who were better at quick thinking than verbal skills at age 72 retained that gap at age 83. The findings suggest
that ageing doesn't reduce brain power to a single level, Anstey says:
Our results suggest that the picture is much more complex. - (HealthDayNews) UI
research puts senior citizens on exercise regimens Published News-Gazette
Online 8/12/03 Are
you a whiz at finishing crossword puzzles, but mystified by math? Researchers
have assumed ageing would eventually equalise your cognitive skills at
a lower level. In other words, you'll still be better at crossword puzzles than at math when you're 85, but your skills at both won't be as keen as they used to be. Strengths, weaknesses
retained It's no secret that elderly humans often aren't as quick-witted as they were in their younger years. Most have better general knowledge and vocabulary than when they were younger, Anstey says. However, it would be very rare to maintain the level of performance on measures of complex reasoning, memory and mental speed that one had when one was a young adult. Ageing affects brain As humans, we want to think the brain has this unique status, but it doesn't. It s a body part, and like every other body part, it shows age, Park says. Long-term study examined The findings appear in the September issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. The researchers found that even as cognitive skills declined, the study subjects retained higher levels of skills in the same areas they had before. For example, participants who were better at quick thinking than verbal skills at age 72 retained that gap at age 83. The findings suggest
that ageing doesn't reduce brain power to a single level, Anstey says:
Our results suggest that the picture is much more complex. - (HealthDayNews) |
 |
©
2001 University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign
|
 |