Vitamin E supplements, in doses higher than those normally available on store shelves, may help slow decline in people with Alzheimer’s, a new study suggests.
Read the full article at The New York Times.
If retirement is on your calendar for 2014, it’s time to answer some critical questions. Among them:
What will your budget look like?
Does it make sense to downsize to a smaller home sooner rather than later?
How will you fill days that were once occupied by a 9-to-5 job?
Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal.
A recent report by the Stanford Center on Longevity compared the RMD, which uses invested assets to pay you a retirement income each year over the course of your lifetime, to five other retirement income generators. The Stanford report shows that the RMD (required minimum distributions) is one of several credible ways to generate retirement income, each having their pros and cons.
Read the full article by Center on Longevity Research Scholar Steven Vernon at CBS MoneyWatch.
On Dec. 21, 100 years ago, a paper in New York published the first crossword. It quickly became known as a game for the intelligent — even helping Britain recruit code-breakers during WWII. But there isn’t much evidence that this brainy game can help stave off dementia.
Read/Listen to the full story at National Public Radio (NPR).
“I believe that we have about 20 years before the medical and economic costs of this disease, let alone the social costs, just cripple our entire medical system,” says Peter Snyder, Ph.D., a Professor of Neurology at Brown University and Senior VP and Chief Research Officer of the Lifespan Hospital System.
“We have to identify people who are in the earliest phases of the disease—and that probably means before they’re complaining of much,” Snyder says.
Read the full article at Forbes.
Government ministers, public health advocates, scientists and drug industry executives from the Group of Eight leading economies held a special summit meeting in London last week to devise a strategy to address what amounts to a global epidemic of dementia.
Read the full article at Forbes.
One of the worrying trends in the labor market in recent years has been a decline in the percentage of Americans working or actively looking for work. There have always been a large portion of the working-age population considered to be not in the workforce. These may include stay-at-home parents, full-time college students, or retired persons. But the relative number of these folks has been increasing for about a decade, as the more of the workforce enters retirement age. That trend accelerated during the recession, likely due to a weak economy encouraging more people to stop looking for work altogether.
But according to a new paper released today from Gary Burtless and Barry P. Bosworth of Brookings Institution, we shouldn’t blame older workers for this trend.
Read the full article at Time.
As you get older, every time you misplace your wallet or can’t remember why you walked into the kitchen, you may wonder: Is this a sign of dementia? Even if such bouts of forgetfulness aren’t serious, a screening test for dementia or its most common cause — Alzheimer’s disease — might seem appealing, if only to reassure you that you’re not losing your mind.
Yet there are good reasons to think twice about such a test, says Des Spence, a general physician in Glasgow, Scotland, and a columnist for BMJ.
Read the full article at The Washington Post.
A Stanford Center on Longevity study describes the roadblocks to obtaining accurate financial fraud estimates – victims are often reluctant to speak up – and suggests ways to improve the national tracking of such incidents.
“Without accurate and reliable estimates of fraud,” wrote Martha Deevy, director of the Financial Security Division at the Stanford Center on Longevity, “it is difficult to understand what works or does not work to protect victims from harm.”
Read the full article at Stanford Report.