Conscious aging, redefining yourself and finding fulfillment as you age
Lessons in Lifespan Health
is an author, coach and teacher who leads a yoga class at the USC Leonard Davis School. He joined us to talk about his book, The Art of Conscious Aging and how to redefine yourself and find fulfillment as you age. Transcript I hear all the time, I used to do yoga, but now my body doesn't like it. Well, find a new yoga class. If you remember how it made you feel, then doing it in a new way, maybe a gentler class, maybe a hot yoga class that's in the dark, that's slow, where you hold the poses and no one's looking at you because you may be self-conscious, maybe that's the...
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Studying how the brain’s blood vessels affect cognitive health
Lessons in Lifespan Health
Dan Nation is a professor of gerontology and medicine at USC. His research focuses on vascular factors in the brain and how they affect memory decline and dementia in older adults. He joined us to talk about studying blood vessels in the brain to identify early signs of dementia and potential therapies to treat it. Transcript Speaker 1 (): The variability in your blood pressure day to day, month to month, year to year, and sometimes even beat to beat–the variability in your blood pressure is predictive of dementia risk. So higher levels of blood pressure variability are bad, even if you have...
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Deprescribing and medication management for older adults
Lessons in Lifespan Health
Michelle Keller is an assistant professor of gerontology and the Leonard and Sophie Davis Early Career Chair in Minority Aging at the USC Leonard Davis School. She spoke to us about her research focused on improving patient-clinician communication, medication management, and the identification of dementia in minority older adults. Here are highlights from our conversation. On polypharmacy “When it comes to older adults and medications, it's important to understand that while medications can be incredibly beneficial for treating various conditions, they can also present really unique risks in...
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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...
info_outlineDr. Kerry Burnight is the chief gerontologist at GrandPad, the creators of an internet-connected tablet designed specifically for seniors. She spoke to us about how the device aims to combat loneliness and abuse and about the sense of purpose that powers her gerontology career.
Selected Quotes
On being a gerontologist
Kerry Burnight: // to this day, if anybody asks me what I do I say I'm a gerontologist // a person who studies aging. And our goal is to try to make aging a better experience for all of us. And then people are right on board. So I think there's like a million different ways to express your gerontology ness. And I honestly feel so like the world is the oyster of undergrad master’s and PhD gerontologist and the only thing that will hold you back is not going for it.
On using technology to address loneliness
“And so, all things being constant being lonely or socially isolated would put you at greater risk for elder abuse and exploitation, but also at significantly greater risk for cognitive impairment for stroke for heart disease and even mortality. So you're 25% more likely to pass away than those who are not lonely and something. //And so I was thinking, gosh, you know, maybe technology could help us.”
On providing a vulnerable senior with a GrandPad
“He was able to connect with all of us but without any of the scammers are perpetrators and so he was a guy who listened to jazz music and he loved to listen to it on his GrandPad and we did all these video calls and the reason it was so helpful is because it was so different.”
On considering seniors in technology research and development
“Standard technology creates technology targeted and built for those in their 20s and 30s// It was never designed intelligently and to honor you to honor your autonomy. //Many organizations are all about “training seniors” and it's so silly. If you even take one step back and you think, don't train them. It'd be like saying let's train people to wear size two pants. No, you need to make size six pants and size eight pants and size 20 pants not shove people into the tiny pants.”
“Einstein says that the greatest sophistication is simplicity and it's true, like the hardest thing in the world that you can do is to create something simple and it's not because seniors are less than. It's because we have listened. The best thing of my job is that I employ a group of seniors ages 86 to 106 who are called our grand advisors and every step of the way. It is just by listening of what matters and what doesn't matter to people.”
On the flexibility of a gerontology degree
I say you can literally do anything you're interested in because aging is living// My aspect now is human connection and technology. But, if you're interested in food, you're interested in transportation, if you're interested in entertainment…basically, in my opinion, any facet of being a human in this time of demographic revolution needs a gerontologist to really be thinking at it in a systematic way from what it means from an aging perspective.
On the importance of stepping up to help older adults
“All you have to do is spend time with older adults and then you realize you don't have the luxury of being shy because it's not about you, it's about what you can do to serve.
And actually it was a senior who told me that one time I was speaking, there was a crowd of 1000 and I was getting nervous. And so this older person said to me, ‘you need to get out of your way’. And I got really struck me that I was the one like I'm scared to talk in front of people. I don't want to, blah, blah, blah. Get out of your way because if you're going to help aging and our own aging, then you better get to work.”