elderly (Page 3)

And drinking (just not at the same time!) – We all know that teens are terrible drivers, and some municipalities want to take away drivers licenses from people over 70. But it turns out that grandpa is doing just fine (unless he’s a golfer).

Despite growing numbers on the road, fewer older drivers died in crashes and fewer were involved in fatal collisions during 1997-2006 than in years past. Compared with drivers ages 35-54 (to say nothing of teens!), older drivers experienced much bigger declines in fatal crash involvements. Reasons for the fatality declines aren’t clear, but some people think it’s because older adults increasingly self-limit their driving as they age and develop physical and cognitive impairments.
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When we go to Wal-Mart and other stores?even fast food restaurants?we notice that the employees seem a lot older than they used to be. Spending your last years relaxing on a beach in Florida is becoming a thing of the past, and more than one of every five Americans age 62 and older who expected to retire is still working.

Part of this is due to stock market failures that have affected people?s pensions and savings, as well as social security payments that are too low to live on. It turns out that most people aren’t even PLANNING to retire anymore.
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It can be depressing to grow old, but there’s a ray of sunshine around every corner. For instance, a drug developed to treat leukemia has a surprising side effect?it restores color to gray hair. News hasn’t been this good since a heart medicine was found to grow hair on bald pates (and is now sold in drugstores as Rogaine). French doctors treated 133 cancer patients with the drug Gleevec and found that five men and four women who started out with gray hair had their old color back by the end of the treatment.
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Scientists have discovered 3 things that predict how long you?re going to live: a low body temperature, your levels of insulin and a chemical called DHEAS, and how tough your stem cells are. The first two come from experiments in which animals are fed low calorie diets. These animals live up to 40% longer than normal and also have a lower than average body temperature, low insulin levels, and high levels of the chemical DHEAS.
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