Improving the health and well-being of family caregivers
Lessons in Lifespan Health
Francesca Falzarano is an assistant professor of gerontology at the USC Leonard Davis School. Her research is inspired by her personal experience as a caregiver to her parents and explores how to improve the mental health and well-being of family caregivers, including through the use of technology. On young caregivers “I think right now it's estimated that five and a half million individuals are under the age of 18 are caring for a parent or some family member with chronic illness, mental health issues, dementia-related illnesses, and other age-related impairments. So, this is something...
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Aging among Black Americans
Lessons in Lifespan Health
Lauren Brown is an assistant professor at the USC Leonard Davis School. Her research uses publicly available data to uncover the unique difficulties Black Americans face in maintaining physical and psychological well-being as they age. Her lab both challenges the methods used to study older Black adults and strives to increase diversity in data science research with the goal of increasing the visibility of Black and Brown people via data and storytelling. Quotes from the episode On the role of racism in biomedical and statistical sciences and disease prediction If you think about the...
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Using dance to ease Parkinson’s symptoms
Lessons in Lifespan Health
Patrick Corbin is an associate professor of practice at the USC Gloria Kaufman School and an internationally renowned dance artist whose career has spanned over 30 years and bridged the worlds of classical ballet, modern and contemporary dance. He recently spoke to us about his work, exploring the positive effects that dance can have on neurology. On movement and movement therapy Well, on a neurological level movement is cognition. Movement stimulates cognition. So that's sort of the sciencey part. The other part is that dance is a multifaceted, multilingual way of movement, and...
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The effects of exercise on the brain
Lessons in Lifespan Health
Connie Cortes is an assistant professor of gerontology at the USC Leonard Davis School. Her work straddles the fields of neuroscience and exercise medicine, and she recently spoke to us about her research seeking to understand what is behind the beneficial effects of exercise on the brain with the goal of developing what she calls “exercise in a pill” therapies for cognitive decline associated with aging and neurodegenerative diseases. On brain plasticity and brain aging Brain plasticity we define as the ability of the brain to adapt to new conditions. And this can be mean...
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Tips for healthy aging
Lessons in Lifespan Health
and instructional associate professor of gerontology at the USC Leonard Davis School, and a specialist in geriatric medicine, joins us for a conversation about healthy aging, including tips on how to keep the body and mind functioning for as long as possible. Quotes from this episode On the importance of setting small goals "People may have all the good intentions, but they might set up goals that are too ambitious and then when they don't reach that goal, they feel frustrated, and they quit… We have to let them understand that goals must be small…So, an apple a day. We have to eat the...
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Cellular balance across the lifespan
Lessons in Lifespan Health
Dion Dickman, associate professor of neuroscience and gerontology, joins George Shannon to discuss how the nervous system processes and stabilizes the transfer of information in healthy brains, aging brains and after injury or disease. Quotes from the episode: On synaptic plasticity: “Synapses are essential, fundamental units of nervous system function and plasticity is this remarkable ability to change. And throughout early development into maturation and even into old age, synapses just have this amazing resilience to change and adapt to different situations and injury disease,...
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A balancing act: homestasis under stress
Lessons in Lifespan Health
is a Distinguished Professor of gerontology, molecular and computational biology, and biochemistry and molecular medicine at USC. Over the course of his career, he has played a central role in defining the pathways and mechanisms by which the body is able to maintain balance under stress and in uncovering the role aging plays in disrupting this balancing act. He recently joined Professor George Shannon to discuss his research on how the body is able to maintain balance under stress and the implications it could have for preventing age-related disease and decline. Quotes from this...
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Improving health outcomes and quality of life
Lessons in Lifespan Health
is the Mary Pickford Chair in Gerontology and director of the at the USC Leonard Davis School. She's also the co-director of the National Center on Elder Abuse, which is housed at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She recently spoke to George Shannon about her research, including her work exploring ways to provide long-term care services and supports that allow older adults to be as independent as possible and the challenges and opportunities that technology provides in this area. Quotes from this episode On building on lessons learned during the pandemic “I think a lot of what we saw...
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Stem cell biology and aging
Lessons in Lifespan Health
Rong Lu is an associate professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, biomedical engineering, medicine, and gerontology at USC. She joins George Shannon to discuss her research into the complex and surprising behavior of individual blood stem cells and what it could mean for treating diseases associated with aging. Quotes from this episode On stem cells and what makes them so promising for medical research Stem cells are the special cells in the body that can produce other type of cells. So in particular there are two type of stem cells, one called embryonic stem cells that only...
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The intersection between stress and aging
Lessons in Lifespan Health
Assistant Professor of Gerontology joins Professor George Shannon to discuss their research seeking to understand why stress response pathways break down as we grow older and whether there may be ways to delay that breakdown and potentially promote healthier lifespans. Quotes from this episode On the definition of stress: Stress can come in so many different forms and flavors. It can come in the form of something external, something like heat stress. For example, being out in the desert heat, it can be something as similar to cold stress of a winter storm, or even something like...
info_outlineDr. Pinchas Cohen, USC Leonard Davis School dean and a professor of gerontology, medicine and biological sciences joins Chief Communications Officer Orli Belman in a conversation about COVID-19 risk factors and research directions, with a focus on how research focused on delaying aging processes holds promise for improving outcomes for older adults.
On the relationship between age and mortality rates:
“Older adults are so much more dramatically affected by this terrible pandemic. While of course middle-aged people and young people are affected by this and their rate of infection can be very high, the mortality of younger people is very, very small, but rises dramatically as people age."
On vaccine response rates and older adults:
“We all know that vaccines are the number one goal for the biomedical industry right now, but some of you may or may not be familiar with the fact that vaccines are extremely efficient in young people, but among older adults, the response to vaccination is sometime very ineffective. For example, flu vaccine has a non-responsiveness rate that approaches 50% in older adults, which are of course the group that needs it the most.”
On the need to develop cytokine storm blockers:
“When people look at what actually causes people to perish from COVID 19, it's not so much the viral pneumonia that they suffer from, but rather something known as a cytokine storm that the body responds to the virus was this secretion of inflammatory cytokines like, something called interleukin six and TNF alpha and interferon, which the body then responds to with really shutting down of the lung and eventually death. So the development of blockers of this cytokine storm, are going to be critical. And that's an area that geroscience has been leading for many years.”
On the importance of gerontology and geroscience research:
“Post-COVID-19, I think that gerontology education will only become more important. Furthermore, research on the policy and social impact of the pandemic will be prioritized. Our leaders, our thinkers will continue to be at the forefront of that. Research into geroscience, particularly immunosenescence and inflammaging will be a major goal for the National Institutes of Health. Prevention of chronic disease, which has been really the biggest risk factor for older adults will return as a national priority."
On how coronaviruses differ from influenza viruses:
“Coronaviruses are quite different from influenza viruses. They're biologically unique, very separate. Also, influenza viruses affect primarily the airways, while coronaviruses can attack various parts of the body, but they're deadly when they end up attacking the lungs, which influenza does not. Influenza predisposes the lungs to bacterial infections, which could be lethal. But they're quite distinct. That’s why there are limited lessons that we can learn from influenza when it comes to COVID 19. But we do have enough previous knowledge to allow us to deal with this crisis and for future crises.”
On the roles of age, genetic and underlying conditions:
“Young people get infected just as easily as old people. The difference is that many young people have a completely asymptomatic course that they're able to have the virus go through their system, develop antibodies, and never have any sign or symptom. The genetic determinants of who is going to get illness as opposed to who's going to remain asymptomatic is something that we totally don't understand. Obviously having poor health is important..but there's also going to be genetic reasons why some people develop or don't develop severe disease and then whether or not you're going to survive, you know, be really sick and, and get better, whether you're going to have a very, very bad outcome."
On what matters most:
“At a time of great global uncertainty, what matters most is clear now than ever before. Health matters, older adults matter, science and especially geroscience matter. I think that this is going to be a challenging year ahead of us, but together we will prevail.”