Studying Successful Aging

What image do you have of old age? Do you see independent people in their 80s and 90s actively participating in community life? Or a group of increasingly dependent people whose physical and mental abilities decline with every passing year?

What biological processes, life events or social actions lead some to one group and some to the other? It’s a question of keen interest to individuals who want to remain robust as they age, and the public health and social systems girding up to handle the looming bulge of retiring baby boomers.

Over the next 20 years the newly-launched $30-million Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) will provide many answers. In one of the most comprehensive studies on aging in the world, researchers will follow 50,000 Canadians between the ages of 45 and 85 over the course of at least 20 years, collecting data on changes in their bodies and their lives that affect their health as they age.

The ultimate aim is to find ways to improve the health of individual Canadians and quality of health and social services by better understanding how combinations of bodily, economic and social changes can affect whether someone stays healthy or develops a disease.

One of the things that makes this study unique is that individual behaviour can be linked to administrative data, thanks to Canada’s public health care system, says Anne Martin-Matthews, scientific director of the Institute of Aging at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research at the University of British Columbia. When people develop a chronic condition or disease later in life, researchers will be able to look back in time to see if there is a pattern of visits to doctors, or life events, that act as an early warning sign. “We’ll be able to link the development of a disease to lifestyle, diet, stress, characteristics of neighbourhoods, socio-economic factors,” she says.

Lead researchers from Dalhousie, McMaster and McGill universities have been working since 2001 to design the study and prepare the groundwork for the massive undertaking. The study will examine the interrelationship of events and processes of aging and provide information that can be used to educate people on healthy aging, help in planning programs and delivering services to people over the age of 65, projected to make up 25 per cent of the population by 2031.

The first 20,000 participants will be randomly recruited throughout this year with the help of Statistics Canada’s Community Health Survey. The remaining 30,000 will be recruited in 2010. No volunteers are being sought. Every three years participants will be asked to provide information on social, physical, psychological, economic and health service use; the second group will also undergo physical examinations and provide blood and urine samples for tests.

Researchers also hope to figure out why some people who are plagued by several chronic conditions and poor health are able to continue an active and involved lifestyle, while others are limited by much less, says Martin-Matthews.

Grape News On Controlling Blood Pressure

Once again the lowly lab rat is providing information that may be useful to humans suffering from disease—this time, high blood pressure.

Researchers at the University of Michigan’s Cardiovascular Center fed a salty diet to three groups of rats bred to develop high blood pressure when they eat salt. One group was given blood pressure medicine, and another was fed table grapes. Actually it was a powder made from red, green and black table grapes—pips, skin and all. After 18 weeks, the rats that received the grape powder had lower blood pressure, better heart function and fewer signs of damaged heart muscle. The group given blood pressure medicine, unsurprisingly, also had lower blood pressure, but their hearts were not protected from damage.

High blood pressure causes oxidative stress that lowers the amount of glutathione, an antioxidant protein that protects the heart. Researchers think the grapes turned on genes in the heart that regulate glutathione, raising the levels of the protein and thus, giving the rats’ hearts more protection.

The lead researcher says results suggest something in grapes give added protection. He thinks it’s the flavonoids, which are known to reduce harmful molecular and cellular activity in the body.

The results are yet to be repeated in humans. However, the researcher doesn’t suggest humans start adding large amounts of grapes to their diets. To get the same results, people need only ensure they eat nine servings of fruits and vegetables per day—that will provide sufficient protective antioxidants and flavonoids.

The Cost Of Bending The Elbow

If you do decide to incorporate more grapes in your diet, it shouldn’t be in the form of fermented liquid.
Researchers from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto say that four per cent of the world’s deaths can be attributed to alcohol consumption.
Although most people in the world do not consume alcohol, consumption rates have been going up in the countries where people do imbibe, especially in India and China. Europeans down about 13 standard drinks per person per week. A standard drink is a can of beer, a glass of wine or a shot of spirits. The alcohol-related death rate is about 10 per cent in Europe (and up to 15 per cent in the former Soviet Union). Canadians aged 15 and over consume about nine standard drinks per person per week.
Injury, cancer, cardiovascular disease and cirrhosis of the liver cause most alcohol-related deaths—a burden of disease about the same as that of smoking.
The good news? Canadian research is showing governments how to address the problems, says Gail Czukar, CAMH’s executive vice-president. Consumption goes down in response to higher prices and restricting the number of outlets selling booze and other measures. And social programs, like that in Ontario requiring young drivers to maintain a zero per cent blood alcohol content, or interventions for high risk drinkers, reduce the rate of harm.

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