Lava Love: Geezers Gone Wild!

The airport in Kailua Kona, Hawai'i is built on top of a lava flow barely 200 years old.  Landing here is sometimes a jarring experience for tourists expecting waterfalls and rainforest because the landscape is instead a stark lava desert that looks a lot like dark brownie batter.  Of course we have waterfalls and rainforests too, but they are elsewhere on the island.

I live on the side of Hualalai volcano, one of five volcanoes that make up the mass of the island of Hawai'i (note, Waikiki and Honolulu are on a different island, not here).  Three of these are "active" volcanoes, meaning they are either erupting now (Kilauea, about 90 miles from my house), or are bound to erupt again in the future (Mauna Loa and Hualalai).  One of the remaining two is likely extinct (Mauna Kea, which has many world-class telescopes on its summit) and the other is quite dead (Kohala).

In short, there is a lot of lava around.

Most people assume that volcanoes erupt at their summit, often explosively, and lava flows down the sides in waves that gradually build the cone higher and higher as the lava cools.  But like many of our assumptions about lava, this one is very oversimplified.  For instance, another major way that Hawaiian volcanoes grow is by swelling from the inside as magma forces its way into cracks and crevices on its way to the surface.  Kind of like a pimple as it gets ready to "erupt" except that lava pimples are permanent and don't go away afterwards.

Another way is even more interesting, at least to a lava lover like me.  If a volcano erupts for a long enough period of time, it develops lava tubes, or conduits, through which the lava can flow for miles before being deposited on the flanks of the volcano.  The lava first forms channels, like stream beds or river beds, except that the force at work is thermal erosion, not water erosion -- the new lava melts its way into the older surface.  As the lava ebbs and flows in these channels the cooling sides get higher and higher and eventually close over the top, making an insulated route for lava to travel great distances before breaking out and coating the landscape.  The tubes can form a complex system in which they take different routes for a ways, then come together and diverge again, and each main tube can have many smaller side tubes. Also, newer flows can create tubes that enter older ones at a higher level making multi-tiered systems that resemble complex highway intersections.

When an eruption stops completely the lava in the tubes drains away, leaving empty conduits that can be as big as subway tunnels.  The cooling lava contracts and sometimes crumbles, collapsing the tube at its weakest points.  But long portions often remain intact.  For instance, the southern part of our island hosts one of the longest intact tube systems in the world, with over 32 miles of interconnecting underground conduits.  Shorter sections of tubes can be found in nearly all parts of the island.

To a near-geezer like me who wants to prove he is still young enough to do stupid and slightly dangerous things, these old tubes are irresistible.  For the past several years my hiking buddy from Oregon (also a near-geezer) and I have been exploring old lava flows and investigating the tubes that we can find.  Many of the tubes and openings are undocumented and unmapped and they aren't described in any guidebook.  They are also very difficult to find because the openings become hidden by vegetation or are in remote areas.  We've learned that some of the most unpromising-looking landscape can hold geological treasures, and we've become pretty good at reading the subtle clues in the terrain that may lead us to a great tube adventure.  It is terrifically rewarding to come across an opening and think that we used our wits (well, what's left of them) to locate it.  Very ego-boosting for near-geezers.

And getting inside is nearly always an awe-inspiring experience.  We're walking in the island's arteries, where 2000 degree molten rock once flowed and seeing the products of an unfathomably powerful geologic process from the inside!  Wow!

As lava flows through channels and tubes it spatters, splashes, and splatters, producing a limitless variety of fascinating swirls, drips, and globs that freeze in place as the lava cools.  [See my photos at the end of this blog for examples.] Some of these structures are extremely complex and delicate.  For example, the air movement that accompanies the flowing lava can produce a long drip that is needle-sharp and cools horizontally.  Gusts of air can also whip a long drip and stick the tip upward to form a loop or even a knot.  Some other features are

• lavacicles -- vertical stalactites from the ceiling of tubes.  These aren't formed by dripping water, though, but by the remelting of the ceiling as newer lava flows in the tube or by overhead intrusion of lava from a new surface flow over the old tube.
• stalagmites -- pillars of lava on the floor of a tube formed from lava dripping from the ceiling.  The heat in this case may come from new lava flowing over the top of the tube.
• bathtub rings -- newer lava flowing through a tube often leaves a "high lava" mark when it drains away.  Sometimes these are so thick they form benches along the tube walls.

I want to be clear that we are very respectful of the formations we find and try to be careful not to damage them.  And we never intentionally break off any of the features.

As rewarding as this activity is, there are also costs.  Hiking across a lava flow is a bit like using one of those balance boards at the gym -- the surface is uneven, unstable, and very unfriendly to aging muscles.  Moving through a tube sometimes requires a "duck-walk" strategy that aging knees really don't like at all.  And lava is really, really, really sharp.  Barely brushing against it can produce prodigious amounts of blood from delicate old skin.  Did I mention that "lava love" might be considered a bit stupid?

Complex drip patterns on side of a channel.

Look at how sharp and delicate this drip is!

A unique double-tipped drip.

Drip with tip stuck upwards. Hiking stick handle for scale.

Lavacicles

Figure this one out!!

Complex knobby drips with spatter on them.

More delicate complexity. Hiking stick for scale.

Alien hieroglyphs on side of tube.

Lava stalagmites deep inside a tube.

Great example of lavacicles.

Sharp lavacicles on ceiling -- don't bump your head!

Taste Buds Are Wasted On The Young!

We were at Redd, a highly-touted restaurant in the Napa Valley north of San Francisco.  We hadn't planned to eat there -- usually it takes a reservation weeks in advance -- but the personnel at a nearby wine-tasting establishment suggested we try the restaurant's bar, which serves wonderful appetizers and doesn't require a reservation.  When we arrived we found to our surprise there was an unexpected open table in the main restaurant,  and we opted for that instead.

Good choice.

Early in the meal the waiter brought a special appetizer, complements of the chef. He described it as "yellowfin tuna tatar with asian pear, avocado, chili oil, fried rice, and cilantro."

Hmmm... "Tatar," of course means "ground up and raw." For most of my life the idea of eating raw tuna would have been acceptable only if I was stranded on a desert island and near death from starvation. Since moving to Hawai'i (which is most definitely not a desert island) and having access to excellent fresh seafood, I've found that certain types (not all) of raw or lightly cooked seafood have a texture and flavor that is amazingly tasty. But it isn't just the flavor of the fish that I've come to appreciate, it's also the subtle, complex and surprisingly unique flavors and textures that a talented chef can create in the total preparation of spices, sauces and other ingredients -- in this case the fried rice (actually more like puffed), the pear and avocado, and the chili oil and cilantro.  This appetizer had it all -- delicious!!

By the way, the rest of our meal at Redd was equally subtle, complex, and just as likely as raw fish to be something I would have shunned in earlier years:  chestnut soup with roasted apples and brown butter, a beet salad with gulf shrimp, pomegranate seeds, fennel, watercress and yucca chips, and a main dish of rare Sonoma duck breast with cranberry spaetzle, sunchoke, spinach, and duck consomme.  All terrific!

In my youth I had strong and rather simple taste preferences.  If it was salty, greasy, and over-cooked I liked it (well, except for liver & onions, but that's another blog).  My mother, who did most of the cooking in our family, was raised on a Midwestern farm and learned to prepare simple, straightforward, and very satisfying dishes like pot roast, pork chops, fried chicken, and baked ham.  Slightly more exotic were her tuna casserole, macaroni & cheese, meatloaf, spaghetti & meatballs, and Swiss steak.  The only fish dishes I can remember were pan fried trout and baked fish sticks, neither of which I liked.  Since we couldn't afford to eat at restaurants very often this was my culinary world for many years.

It wasn't really until my wife and I began traveling abroad, which we started doing shortly after we were married and have continued ever since, that I was exposed to different and more complex food.  These travels also introduced us to cultures where the preparation, presentation, and enjoyment of food was a highly developed norm, like Italy and France.  About the same time we joined a "gourmet" dinner group that met several times a year.  Each dinner menu was chosen by a committee and different dishes were assigned to different members for preparation.  The result was a combined meal that would have been very difficult for any single person to produce, and it offered us the chance to sample a number of dishes we would not have attempted for ourselves.  It also produced social pressure to at least taste foods I never would have tried on my own. As our experience grew my wife became an adventurous and accomplished cook and her enjoyment of preparing a wide range of dishes means that we eat very, very well at home these days.  I pay for her efforts by being the clean-up crew.

Another contributing factor to my willingness to seek out new dishes is that my wife and I never order the same thing in a restaurant.  We pick things from the menu that we will share, and usually we look for interesting items on the appetizer menu.  For instance, we might have two or three appetizers and one main course.  That way we get to try more things and compare our reactions.

So over the years my appreciation for well-prepared, creative, subtle and complex food has grown stronger and stronger. It was a slow process with many dead-ends, disappointments and sometimes unfinished dishes.  But frankly I'm glad it took so long because now I think I value good food even more and don't take it for granted.  An illustration of my evolution is that one of my favorite recent movies is the 2007 Disney animated film Ratatouille, in which a Paris rat (yes, RAT) dreams of becoming a world-class chef.  His family naturally doesn't understand his odd appreciation for food that isn't garbage.  One scene I particularly like occurs early in the movie, when the main character (Remy) tries to explain to one of his brothers the magic of food and flavor.  Different flavors can be wonderful when tasted separately, he points out, but when they are combined in just the right way they produce something greater and infinitely more enjoyable than any single ingredient.  His brother nods in feigned understanding and then returns to eating his garbage.

I need to make it clear that there are limits to my culinary explorations. First, I'm not eager to try anything just because it's different or exotic or I've never eaten it before.  My threshold for organ meats, for example, is very, very high.  And just because someone exclaims how good something is isn't enough -- some people will eat ANYthing.  Second, I'm too cheap to ever enjoy a $200+ meal -- my palate can't possibly be refined enough to consider that worthwhile.  In fact, some of the best food I've had has been at rather modest places.  For instance, another meal we enjoyed beside the one at Redd on our California trip was in a small family-run restaurant that served some of the best Mexican food I've ever tasted -- total cost $10.  Third, I choose not to eat certain kinds of food for philosophical reasons -- see my blog on The Reluctant Carnivore Diet.

According to the NIMH's Medline, when we are young have about 9,000 taste buds on our tongues that detect flavors.  Unfortunately this number decreases after age 40-50 for women and 50-60 for men, and those taste buds that remain atrophy.  Sensitivity to the four tastes -- salty, sweet, bitter and sour -- often decreases beginning around age 60.  The exact reason for this decline isn't known: "Studies about the cause of decreased sense of taste and smell with aging have conflicting results. Some studies have indicated that normal aging by itself produces very little change in taste and smell. Rather, changes may be related to diseases, smoking, and environmental exposures over a lifetime."  To the best of my knowledge, there isn't anything you can do to stave off this decline.

So the sad fact is that I now have the experience and appreciation for good food that has taken me most of my adult life to acquire, yet my tasting equipment may be wearing out!  This isn't certain -- the loss of taste buds may not get to the point of interfering with my enjoyment of eating, but the possibility isn't pleasant to consider.

When I was young I may have had 9,000 taste buds but I really didn't know enough to put them to good use. As I now begin to lose them, for me the conclusion is clear:  Taste buds are wasted on the young!

Don't Go To Your 50th High School Reunion!

I recently attended my 50th high school reunion -- an "interesting" experience. 

This was my first reunion with my classmates over the years.  I've received notices for the interim gatherings but it never seemed worth the expense and time to attend any of them.  However, the 50th seemed significant somehow -- a milestone worth acknowledging.  It also seemed to fit in with my more reflective and nostalgic tendencies associated with retirement.

One thing I learned right away is that the internet has made reunions much easier to promote and to manage.  Websites like ClassReport.org, Classmates.com,  MyEvent.com allow organizers to display information about the event and to provide biographical and contact information about alumni.  (I'm sure that Facebook will soon find a way to supplant these independent venues and make it even easier to do this. For the potential downside, see my cautionary blog about Facebook.) Very slick.

I graduated from South High in Denver.  We were the South High Rebels, a designation clearly linked to the Confederacy and the Civil War. On the reunion website was our logo, the profile of a confederate soldier.  We were obviously less culturally sensitive in those days (imagine being one of the few Black students at our school during a rally to cheer on our Johnny Reb football team).  Just for kicks I went to the current website for South High and found that the "Rebels" term is still used, though the soldier has been replaced by a more neutral block letter "S."  The current website also extolls the school's diversity (not a defining characteristic while I was there) and its goal of developing in students "...a sense of civic responsibility to contribute to their global community."  Sounds great.  I just hope they don't still wave little confederate flags at the rallies like we did.

Since I really didn't keep in touch with very many of my classmates after graduating, I was curious to read the biographical information posted on the website.  I learned three things from this.  First, I couldn't remember most of the people in my class (this might be due in part to the sheer numbers involved -- there were 700 in my graduating class).  Second, of the ones I could remember a disturbingly large proportion of them were dead.  Third, the people I recalled most fondly were often those with whom I had also attended junior high, where we were "tracked" -- the same group of kids went from class to class for three years and we got to know each other very well.

At the event itself we were given id tags with our yearbook photo and name.  This was very helpful, because most people didn't look much like they did in high school.  Even when I could place either the face or the name, I was often at a loss to remember the context in which I knew the person.  It was an exhausting cognitive effort to bridge a gap of 50+ years when there was no connective thread between then and now, nothing in the middle.  By the end of it I came to the painful realization that as emotionally charged as those days may have been at the time, they have little relevance for my life today.  Revisiting memories of those times was actually a little depressing, because it didn't reveal any significant truths about who I am today (as I thought it might) and instead presented a puzzling and disjointed picture of someone I hardly recognized.

I realize that for many people high school memories are very positive and that reunions are a joyful and heartwarming way of maintaining meaningful relationships.  My high school experience was not so great.  It was a period in my life of great uncertainty, social isolation, and near-calamitous life choices. Somehow I pulled out of it in time, and I now think high school was something I survived, not something I enjoyed.  The reunion did what I guess it should have -- it reminded me that now is the most important time of my life, not the past.

Decision Making in Geezerhood

The waitress returned for the third time, order pad in hand.  "How we doin' here folks?  Are you guys ready to order or would you like another few minutes?"  There was a tone of sweet condescension in her voice, likely the result of her reaction to our grey hair.  I imagine she was thinking: come on geezers, make up your minds!

One of the stereotypes of older people is that they have difficulty making decisions and the decisions they finally come up with are often flawed.  Like most stereotypes, this one has a kernel of truth but also distorts the real picture, and is flat-out wrong in certain cases.  For instance, my wife and I have always taken a long time to order in a restaurant because we share each dish and we are both particular -- so it takes some time to select things we both will like.  Being geezers is irrelevant.

However, there is ample evidence from research on aging that the average performance of older people on many types of decisions is both slower and less optimal than younger people.  This is particularly true when the decision involves remembering, evaluating, and comparing many pieces of information that vary in relevance to making an optimal choice.  The cognitive declines in memory, analytic reasoning, and executive functioning that are common in older adults make these kinds of decisions more difficult and results in sub-optimal choices (Henninger, Madden, and Huettel, 2010).

Financial decision-making is one realm in which the consequences of poor choices can be very important. The cognitive deficits associated with aging have been found to be particularly problematic in this context. For example, a Brookings Institute study comparing age groups on a variety of financial products found that older people wind up paying higher fees, penalties, and interest rates across a wide range of credit transactions, including credit cards, mortgages, and car loans (Agarwal et al., 2007).  Interestingly, the relationship between decision quality appears to be U-shaped, with the most optimal decisions made by those around 50.  One explanation of this curvilinear function is that young people, though they have high cognitive abilities lack experience and background knowledge, whereas older people have a great deal of experience and knowledge but have difficulty applying this because of cognitive deficits.  In middle age there is an optimal trade-off of experience and cognitive functioning.

Another important aspect of financial decision-making involves making choices that require an assessment of risk of loss versus probability of reward.  For example, maintaining an investment portfolio of 100% bonds entails very little risk but provides limited rewards, whereas a portfolio of 100% equities entails much more risk but also may provide significantly greater returns over time.  And of course there is considerable variation in the risk levels of individual stocks and bonds that requires evaluation and comparison of complex information in order to make an optimal choice.

Unfortunately, research evidence concerning the quality of decisions involving risk indicates that geezers tend to make poorer decisions than young people.  Henninger et al.(2010) recently summarized the data succinctly:

...older adults’ real-world decisions involving risk are often of objectively worse quality than those of younger adults, both in laboratory and real-world settings, with an abrupt decrease in decision-making skill observed in individuals over 70 years of age (Korniotis & Kumar, in press). As examples, older adults within that age range earn 3%–5% lower risk-adjusted annual returns (Korniotis & Kumar, in press) and obtain systematically worse outcomes on a wide variety of financial instruments (Agarwal, Driscoll, Gabaix, & Laibson, 2007), even when controlling for confounding factors like income, investment horizon, and desired rate of return... In short, substantial evidence demonstrates that older adults are more likely to make poor-quality financial decisions, often leading to significant negative personal consequences.

In line with the "conservative geezer" stereotype, one source of these sub-optimal decisions might seem to be a general tendency toward risk aversion even when some degree of risk is adaptive. However, the evidence indicates a more complex picture. Though older people do exhibit detrimental risk aversion in some circumstances (Mather, 2006), they also may show the same or even more risk preference as young people in other situations.  For example, if the benefits of an alternative with more risk are emphasized, older adults may weigh them more heavily than young people.  This stems from the general tendency of older people to be more optimistic and positive than younger people, a phenomenon I explored in an earlier blog.  In the financial arena this tendency may lead to poorer choices and susceptibility to scammers (Ross, 2010).

So far the picture looks pretty bleak, but fortunately I can end on a couple of positive notes.  First, recognizing the challenges of geezer decision-making allows the development of ways of presenting information modifying the context of decision making to compensate for declines in cognitive functioning, for example by reducing the memory load in decision tasks and by presenting information in ways that can be more readily related to older adults' greater past experience (Henninger et al., 2010) and that may more clearly balance the positive and negative aspects of risk alternatives (Ross, 2010).

Second, it is clear that there is considerable variability in the quality of decision-making by geezers, to the degree that some older people outperform younger adults.  This variability has been shown to be tied to differences among older people in the degree of cognitive decline -- an important fact because it means that it isn't age per se that leads to poorer decisions but rather it is the degree of specific types of neurological deficit.  And there is abundant evidence that the rate and amount of cognitive decline can be altered by life style choices, with the most dramatic effects coming from continuing physical exercise throughout middle and old age (see my blog Jogging the Memory of a Geezer for a review of this research).

Yet another reason to lace up those walking shoes -- it might keep you solvent!

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Agarwal, S., Driscoll, J., Gabaix, X., & Laibson, D. (2009). The age of reason:  Financial decisions over the life-cycle and implications for regulation.  Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2, 51-117.

Henninger, D.E., Madden, D., & Huettel, S.A., (2010). Processing Speed and Memory Mediate Age-Related Differences in Decision Making. Psychology and Aging, 25, No. 2, 262–270.

Mather, M. (2006). A review of decision-making processes: Weighing the risks and benefits of aging. In L. L. Carstensen & C. R. Hartel (Eds.), When I’m 64 (pp. 145–173). Washington, DC: National Academies
Press.

Why Is That Geezer Smiling?

[*** Warning***  This is another in my series of Geezerhood blogs. Instead of reading this you may want to do something more fun, like checking your investment portfolio.  Related blogs to avoid are given at the end.]

There are a lot of negative stereotypes about aging.  One of them is that most older people suffer from a variety of negative emotions, like depression, remorse, and despair as they confront the problems and challenges of aging. Old people are just not happy campers.

Like many stereotypes, this one sounds reasonable. For example, depression and sadness seem like a natural reaction to the loss of friends and family, declining physical and mental abilities, and to the contemplation of one's unfulfilled goals and dreams.  The stereotype of the sad geezer is especially strong among young people, but even older people seem to share this pessimistic view (Hummert, et. al,1994).  In fact, just reading this is making me a bit depressed.

However, there is ample empirical evidence that even though it sounds reasonable, the stereotype is wrong, and that older people report generally higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction than do younger people (Mroczek, & Kolarz, 1998; Myers & Diener, 1995;  Charles et al., 2001).  According to Laura Carstensen, a renowned researcher on aging at Stanford University, the fact that emotional well-being is actually maintained and in some ways even improves across adulthood "...is among the most surprising findings about human aging to emerge in recent years" (Carstensen et. al., 2011, p. 21).

A cynic (probably someone young) might argue that this is just another symptom of the cognitive decline of Geezerhood -- no longer in touch with reality, the oldsters are in denial and just assess everything as positive. However, Carstensen's research indicates that older people in fact exhibit both positive and negative emotions to situations, often in a more complex way than younger people do:  "...investments in meaningful activities under time-limited conditions elicit richly complex emotional experiences, such as gratitude accompanied by a sense of fragility and happiness tinged with sadness" (Carstensen et. al, 2011).

One explanation of these changes in emotional well-being across the life span is given by Carstensen's "Socioemotional Selectivity" theory of aging, which proposes that we structure our life goals partly on the basis of how relevant they are to the time we have left:

The central change in adulthood is a shift in the salience of social goals. Younger adults, having much to learn and relatively long futures for which to prepare, are motivated by the pursuit of knowledge—even when this requires that emotional well-being be suppressed. For older adults, the reverse trend appears. Facing relatively shorter futures and having already accrued considerable knowledge about others, older adults prioritize emotional goals because they are realized in the moment of contact rather than banked for some nebulous future time.
       The theory stresses that age does not entail the relentless pursuit of happiness but rather the satisfaction of emotionally meaningful goals, which entails far more than simply feeling good. Finding meaning in existing relationships, even conflictual ones, emerges as a central task in later life. (Carstensen et. al., 2000, p. 645)

So, the picture that emerges is that older people are happier overall, but also experience negative emotions in meaningful ways. I would add to Carstensen's example of relational goals a more general openness to experiencing all life events in an emotionally meaningful way, including those we probably dismissed as insignificant when we were younger.

Our young cynic, clutching at straws now, might point out that the research showing that geezers are happier than young people is "cross-sectional" in design and that so it really hasn't demonstrated that people's emotional well-being improves as they age.  It could be that the current crop of old people have always been happy, perhaps because they grew up in simpler, more supportive times.

A recent longitudinal study by Carstensen (Carstensen et al., 2011) has eliminated this possible alternative explanation by following the same group of people over a 15-year period.  The results showed that as participants in the study aged their emotional well-being improved, thus supporting the earlier cross-sectional conclusion .

So, why is that Geezer smiling?  You'll find out when you're older.

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Related Blogs and References:

Jogging the Memory of a Geezer
Embracing Your Inner Geezer
How to Compress Your Morbidity
The Power of Negative Thinking
Thoughts for a New Year
So, What Do You Do All Day?

Carstensen, L. L., Pasupathi, M., Mayr, U., & Nesselroade, J. R. (2000). Emotional experience in everyday life across the adult life span. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 644–655.

Carstensen, L. L., Turan, B., Scheibe, S., Ram, N., Ersner-Hershfield, H., Samanez-Larkin, G. R., Brooks, K. P., & Nesselroade, J. R. (2011). Emotional Experience Improves With Age: Evidence Based on  Over 10 Years of Experience Sampling. Psychology and Aging, 26, 21–33
 
Charles, S. T., Reynolds, C. A., & Gatz, M. (2001). Age-related differences and change in positive and negative affect over 23 years. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 136–151.

Mroczek, D. K., & Kolarz, C. M. (1998). The effect of age on positive and negative affect: A developmental perspective on happiness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1333–1349.

Myers, D. G., & Diener, E. (1995). Who is happy? Psychological Science, 6, 10–19.

Jogging the Memory of a Geezer

[**Warning**  This blog is another in my "Geezerhood" series.  Past entries have included "Embracing Your Inner Geezer," "How to Compress Your Morbidity," "The Power of Negative Thinking," and "So, What Do You Do All Day?".   Those readers who have decided they are immune from Geezerhood may find this material irrelevant and are urged to use discretion in reading further.]

As the saying goes, "Growing old isn't for whimps."  Besides the challenge of coping with physical changes, as discussed in my blog of  2/1/11, there is also the challenge of possibly losing your mind, or at least not being  able to remember where you put it.  Sad personal reminders of this are several academic colleagues of mine who are now in various stages of Alzheimer's, a disease made all the more tragic for these people because they were all bright, well-educated intellectuals with incisive minds. 

Alzheimer's is the most prevalent form of dementia, followed by dementia produced by strokes.  And it is indeed prevalent. According to the Alzheimer's Association, 5.4 million Americans have the disease.  At age 65 the estimated lifetime risk of developing Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia is 20% for women and 17% for men.  For those who make it to 85, the risk is much higher -- 43%.   And it is indeed deadly.  Alzheimer's is currently the 6th leading cause of death in this country, 5th for those over 65.  It is estimated that 61 percent of people with Alzheimer’s at age 70 will die before age 80 compared with 30 percent of people at age 70 without the disease.

An optimistic take on these grim statistics is that most geezers won't be stricken by Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia during their "golden years" -- if  20%  are afflicted, then the other 80% won't be, right?  While this optimism is justified in the strictest sense,  there is now a substantial body of scientific evidence that even "normal" geezers will experience some degree of cognitive decline due to changes in neurological processes and brain structure that are an inevitable result of aging.  These physical changes will likely be manifested in difficulties in learning, reasoning, decision making, cognitive task performance, and memory.   The evidence also shows, though, that there is a wide range among individuals in the type and degree of difficulties they experience, even among those with the same degree of  neurological degradation.  A more realistic approach then, is to ask "how much cognitive decline will I experience and is there anything I can do about it?"

The most recent research bearing on these questions has been nicely summarized and evaluated by Christopher Hertzog in a monograph published by the Association for Psychological Science (Hertzog et.al., 2008).  Hertzog's analysis of the available data suggests that there are a number of identifiable factors that influence a person's degree and rate of decline, and that there are certain interventions that can -- within limits -- alter an individual's position within the possible range of functioning.

It is important to note that the evidence for some of these "enrichment effects" is not very strong or is controversial, while for other factors the research seems much clearer and stronger.  For example, it is somewhat surprising that the common sense idea of staving off cognitive decline by leading an intellectually active lifestyle (the "use it or lose it" hypothesis) -- while it has received consistent empirical support -- must be tempered by the fact that the strength of the effect is not as strong as it is for other factors and may be open to alternative explanations  (Hertzog et. al., 2008).  Nonetheless, research over the last 10 years indicates that continued engagement in mentally stimulating activities (reading books, attending plays, playing chess, writing, playing a musical instrument, attending public lectures, taking courses, etc.) can reduce the debilitating effects of "normal" cognitive decline, and even lower the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease (Wilson et. al, 2007).

Another approach to cognitive enrichment is based on what might be called the "mental pushup" model., where older people are exposed to interventions that involve specific training in memory, reasoning, or problem solving.  For example,  in a study by Ball et al. (2002), 2500 participants over 65 went through training sessions in one of three cognitive domains:  memory, reasoning, or visual search.  The results showed marked gains for each training group that persisted over a 5-year follow up period.  As encouraging as these results seem, it was also found that the enhancement effects didn't transfer to performance-based measures of everyday problem solving or everyday speed of processing -- in other words, the benefits were restricted to the specific training domains and didn't generalize to other kinds of tasks.   A number of other studies have reached the same conclusion -- very little generalization of the cognitive gains achieved by training specific skills or processes (Hertzog et al., 2008).

However, there have some very recent attempts to develop training strategies involving more complex mechanisms that do show generalization.  One example is training in quickly switching between different tasks or between different sets of cues relevant to the same task,  both of which are abilities involving cognitive control that usually decline significantly with age.  In a study by Karbach & Kray (2009)  this type of intervention not only significantly improved older adults' task-switching performance,  but also produced generalized improvements in verbal and spatial memory, and reasoning skills.

Another promising new approach is "metacognition"  training.  "The essential feature of metacognitive interventions is to train individuals to assess processing demands of task contexts and to select, implement, and evaluate strategies during performance" (Hertzog et al., 2008, p. 20).  For example, one metacognitive approach trains people on using mnemonic memory techniques coupled with self-testing to determine when material has been learned well enough to permit later retrieval (Dunlosky et al., 2007).  Research indicates that the generality of this technique enables older people to apply it to everyday situations outside the experimental context.

As promising as some of these training strategies are, there is one type of intervention that recent research shows is hands down the most effective in lessening cognitive decline associated with aging:  physical activity.  It even seems to "compress cognitive morbidity" so that the period of diminished mental capacity is shorter, even among those with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia (I discussed compression of morbidity regarding physical aspects of aging in an earlier blog).

The fitness fanatics out there no doubt are vigorously nodding their heads in agreement as they read this before their spinning class or after their 15-mile run.  But the real news in this research is that (a) the level of physical activity required to achieve significant benefits is really quite modest, and (b) beneficial effects can be achieved even when the physical activities are initiated later in life. This is particularly encouraging for those geezers who have physical limitations or injuries that prevent them from engaging in high impact aerobics, or for those who weren't physically active in their younger years.

For example, in a study by Kramer et al. (1999) older adults who were in good health but sedentary were randomly assigned to either a training condition in which they walked briskly for 1 hour per day 3 days a week for 6 months, or a condition in which they performed stretching and toning exercises for the same amount of time.  Those in the walking condition but not the stretching and toning condition showed generalized improvement in various aspects of cognitive functioning, including the ability to selectively process task-relevant information while ignoring irrelevant information, the ability to override inappropriate responses, and the ability to switch rapidly between multiple tasks.

In another example, the activity levels of 6,000 women aged 65 and older were assessed (e.g, blocks walked per week, flights of stairs climbed per day, frequency and duration of  various exercise and sports activities) and then levels of cognitive functioning were measured 6-8 years later (Yaffe et al., 2001).  Those who were more active were 30% less likely to show cognitive decline, even after adjusting for education level, health status, and other rival explanations.  Interestingly, walking distance was related to cognitive functioning whereas walking speed was not, suggesting that even moderate levels of activity have a beneficial effect.

Finally, a number of studies have found that modest physical activity and exercise can reduce the probability of severe cognitive problems in later life.  Rovio (2005), for instance, found that physical activity in middle age consisting of as little as 20-30 minutes twice per week of exercise vigorous enough to produce breathlessness and sweating reduced the risk of dementia 20 years later by 52%. 

After evaluating all of the available research regarding cognitive functioning in older adults, including the studies focusing on physical activity, Hertzog et al. (2008) offers this optimistic conclusion:

"What is most impressive to us is the evidence demonstrating benefits of aerobic physical exercise on cognitive functioning in older adults. Such a conclusion would have been controversial in the not-too-distant-past, but the evidence that has accumulated since 2000 from both human and animal studies argues overwhelmingly that aerobic exercise enhances cognitive function in older adults.  The hypothesis of exercise-induced cognitive-enrichment effects is supported by longitudinal studies of predictors of cognitive decline and incidence of dementia, but also by short-term intervention studies in human and animal populations.  The exercise-intervention work suggests relatively general cognitive benefits of aerobic exercise but indicates that cognitive tasks that require executive functioning, working memory, and attentional control are most likely to benefit."  (p.41)

Geezerhood is tough.  But thanks to increases in our scientific understanding of aging, we are seeing some real advances in practical ways to come to terms with it.  Cognitive decline may be inevitable, and for some us it will be devastatingly severe.  But thankfully there are ways we can lessen the degree to which the quality of our lives are impacted by the relentless march of time.



References:

Ball, K., Berch, D.B., Helmer, K.F., Jobe, J.B., Leveck, M.D., Marsiske, M. (2002.  Effects of cognitive training interventions with older adults:  A randomized controlled trial.  Journal of the American Medical Association, 288, 2271-2281.

Dunlosky, J., Cavallini, E.,  Roth, H.,  McGuire, C.L., Vecchi, T., & Hertzog, C. (2007).  Do self-monitoring interventions improve older adults' learning?  Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 62B (special issue I), 70-76.

Hertzog, C., Kramer, A.F., Wilson, R.S.,  & Lindenberger, U. (2008).  Enrichment effects on adult cognitive development:  Can the functional capacity of older adults be preserved and enhanced?  Psychological Science in the Public Interest, (9).

Karbach, Julia, & Kray, Jutta (2009). How useful is executive control training? Age differences in near and far transfer of task-switching training.  Developmental Science,  978-990.

Kramer, A.F.,  Hahn, S., Cohen, N.J., Banich, M.T., McAuley, E., Harrison, C.R., et al. (1999).  Aging, fitness and neurocognitive function.  Nature, 400, 418-419.

Rovio, S., Kareholt, I., Kelkala, E.I., et al. (2005).  Leisure time physical activity at midlife and the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.  Lancet Neurology, 4, 705-711.

Yaffe, K., Barnes, D., Nevitt, M., Lui, L.Y., & Covinsky, K. (2001).  A prospective study of physical activity and cognitive decline in elderly women.  Archives of Internal Medicine., 161, 1703-1708.


Wilson, R.S., Scherr, P.A., Schneider, J.A., Li, Y., & Bennett, D.A. (2007).  The relation of cognitive activity to risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.  Neurology, 69, 1911-1920.

How to Compress Your Morbidity

Let's talk about dieing. I don't mean death itself, which has all kinds of philosophical and religious issues attached to it, but rather the physical and mental processes leading up to death, which involve more factual, scientific issues.

All of us will die and nobody knows exactly when. Despite the uncertainty as to the timing of death, most of us have an idealized model of how we want to die: continued high level of physical and mental functioning for as long as possible and then rapid decline just before the end. This period of decline in which we are infirm, diseased, disabled and/or demented is called morbidity, and we wish it to be as short as possible, followed by a quick and painless death.

About 30 years ago a gerontologist by the name of J.F. Fries proposed what he called "the compression of morbidity hypothesis." According to Fries, there are natural limits on how long humans can live, and improvements in health care, life style, and reductions in the effect of environmental risks are steadily progressing us to a maximum life expectancy, which he believed at the time was about 85 years. He proposed that the same factors that produce a longer life would also produce a "compression" of morbidity because they would lead to a lower incidence of chronic disease and a higher age of onset of chronic disease.

The compression of morbidity hypothesis is certainly attractive because it fits our idealized model of dieing, and it would be great if it were correct. Unfortunately the gerontological research over the last 30 years seems to indicate that Fries was wrong on two counts. First, life expectancy in at least one country (Japan) has now exceeded Fries' proposed limit of 85, and is still increasing almost linearly in most countries (Christensen et. al, 2009), though there is perhaps some leveling off in the U.S. (Crimmins & Beltrán-Sánchez, 2010):

Large declines in mortality rates in recent decades have translated into sizable increases in survival at older ages. For example, in the United States, the probability of a 65-year-old surviving to age 85 doubled between 1970 and 2005, from about 20% in 1970 to about 40% in 2005 (Bell & Miller, 2005). Similar or greater increases in survival at older ages have been reported in most developed countries among people aged 80 years or older since the 1970s (Kannisto, 1994, 1997; Vaupel, 1997). As life expectancy has increased, the modal age at death has steadily increased so that death in low-mortality countries most frequently occurs to people in their late 80s and 90s (Robine, 2010). Even death rates among people above age 100 have declined significantly in recent years leading to an increasing number of centenarians (Kannisto, Lauritsen, Thatcher, & Vaupel, 1994; Robine, Saito, & Jagger, 2003; Vaupel, 2010). This steady rise of life expectancy even at the oldest ages indicates that humans are not yet pushing up against a fixed limit, one that cannot be exceeded, which is a central tenet underpinning the compression of morbidity hypothesis." (Crimmins & Beltrán-Sánchez, 2010)

Although this may seem like good news -- we're living longer -- the data also show incidence of disease and disability has increased, not decreased in elderly populations, contrary to the compression of morbidity hypothesis (Christensen et. al, 2009; Crimmins & Beltrán-Sánchez, 2010). With respect to physical mobility problems, for example, data from the National Health Survey compared the percent of people in different age groups in 1998 and 2006 who reported being unable to perform at least one of the following: walking 1/4 mile, walking up 10 steps, standing or sitting for 2 hr, and standing, bending, or kneeling without using special equipment. The results show no support for a compression of this kind of morbidity:

For a number of other sources of morbidity, like cardiovascular disease, stroke & heart attack, diabetes, & cancer, the research comparing 1998 and 2006 indicates "There is no hint of a declining prevalence of disease over these eight years....The most striking change over the ten-year period is the increase in all the CVD conditions among older males; for females, the increase among the oldest group only occurs in the prevalence of stroke. Older men and women show an increased prevalence of cancer. Diabetes increases are seen through much of the adult age range" (Crimmins & Beltrán-Sánchez, 2010). Since mortality rates in older age groups have been decreasing during the same period, this means the number of survivors of these diseases has generally increased, often with decreased functioning associated with the management of the disease.

Now that you're suitably depressed, let me point out that the studies reviewed above deal with population trends and don't negate the possibility of individual factors that might contribute to compression of morbidity. Indeed, there is data showing that life-style choices (diet, exercise, weight control, preventative health-care, etc.) may compress morbidity for specific individuals, though more studies along this line are needed to be more definitive. In one study, 418 people were followed over 12 years (1986-1998) in terms of how their lifestyles (smoking, exercise, weight) related to morbidity patterns. Those with healthier lifestyles showed either a slight increase in morbidity over time with no acceleration of disability before death, or only a brief period of accelerated morbidity before death (Hubert, et. al., 2002), consistent with the idea of morbidity compression. In short, it is certainly possible to have some degree of control over your own individual morbidity pattern.

Another more optimistic point is that even if we must live with disease or disability in our later years, there are more ameliorative resources available all the time. As Christensen et. al. (2009) have noted, the rising use of assistive technology and improvements in housing standards, public transport, accessibility of buildings, changes in social policies, shifting gender roles, and the social perception of disability may loosen the link between disease and functional limitation of disability. Of course, these things are somewhat dependent upon governmental policy and therefore the political climate. Given our current health care debates in the U.S. we may find ourselves well behind other developed countries in offering preventive and ameliorative resources.


References

Christensen, K., Doblhammer, G., Rau, R.Vaupel, J.W.(2009). Ageing populations: the challenges ahead. Lancet. 2009 October 3; 374(9696): 1196–1208

Crimmins, E.M., & Beltrán-Sánchez, H. (2010). Mortality and morbidity trends: is there compression of morbidity? Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 66B(1), 75–86.

Fries, J. F. (1980). Aging, natural death, and the compression of morbidity. New England Journal of Medicine, 303, 1369–1370.

Hubert HB, Bloch DA, Oehlert JW, Fries JF. (2002) Lifestyle habits and compression of morbidity. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2002 Jun;57(6):M347-51.

Lessons from Living in Hawai'i

Here are some of the things I've learned from living in Hawai'i for the last nine years:

• Palm trees. There are a gazillion different kinds. They cost a lot of money to be pruned. They have to be pruned every 6-9 months.
• Trade winds are better than tornadoes.
• Banana tree sap is the world's most permanent dye.
• Bananas. A gazillion kinds. The smaller the tastier.
• It takes two years to grow a pineapple in your yard.
• Aloha means more than "hello" and "goodbye."
• In the Hawai'ian language the same words mean "sweet person" and "fat person."
• There were glaciers in Hawai'i.
• Human impact. Before humans came to Hawai'i there were NO mosquitoes, cockroaches, ants, rats, mice, or any other mammal except for bats and seals.
• You can fall in love with the breeze.
• Air can smell really good.
• If the supply connection t0 the mainland is threatened, the first things to go from supermarket shelves are toilet paper and rice.
• Lava deserves a close look.
• Many American visitors refer to going home as "going back to the States." We usually don't correct them because (a) we don't want to embarrass them and (b) the mainland feels like a different world to us, too.

Embracing Your Inner Geezer

As I pointed out in an earlier blog (The Power of Negative Thinking), a central finding from research in my field of Social Psychology is that stereotypes can have powerful influences on our behavior and judgments, and these effects can occur even when we are not aware of the process.

A particularly interesting phenomenon (to me, anyway, as I get older) has to do with aging stereotypes -- widespread beliefs and expectations about the characteristics and abilities of older people -- us geezers, in other words. In our society the stereotypical beliefs are mostly negative and have to do with loss of physical and cognitive abilities. One thing that makes aging stereotypes different from other forms of stereotyping, such as those directed at minority groups, is that all of us eventually become a member of the target group.

Note the implication of this. When we're young, we hold negative beliefs about all those "old farts" in society. At some point we finally become an old fart ourselves, and we have to deal somehow with the fact that those negative beliefs pertain to US.

Psychologist Beca Levy has proposed recently that many people may come to embody the aging stereotypes, with important personal consequences. In her words, "...stereotypes are embodied when their assimilation from the surrounding culture leads to self-definitions that, in turn, influence functioning and health" (Levy, 2009). The power of the influence is illustrated by a study of 50 year-old people whose self-perceptions of aging were measured and then their health and level of functioning was assessed over the next 20 years. Those who had more positive self-perceptions of aging at 50 had fewer health problems and lived an average of 7.5 years longer than those with negative perceptions! Importantly, these differences were not due to differences in how healthy participants were at the beginning of the study.

This study illustrates that the direction and strength of embodiment varies across people, with corresponding variations in the direction and strength of the effects. Other research has demonstrated that the influence of embodiment can vary from moment to moment, depending on the salience of stereotyped qualities in a particular situation -- that is, how much a quality like memory or physical strength is relevant to the task at hand. Imagine, for example, that you're "elderly" and you're trying to do your income taxes -- a rather complex cognitive task if there ever was one. Imagine also that you've just seen a movie depicting older people as befuddled and confused. Research mimicking this situation has shown that you are more likely to have a difficult time with the task than if you had not seen that negative movie. But importantly a movie that emphasized the positive qualities of aging, like wisdom and patience, might lead to doing the task even better.

These moment-to-moment effects of embodiment can occur even when the older person isn't thinking consciously about the stereotype. This is perhaps the most insidious aspect of all stereotypes -- they may influence us even when we aren't aware of it. It's one thing to see a movie that was obviously portraying aging in a certain way and then immediately going home to do your income taxes -- it's likely that you would be aware of the movie's message as you became confused trying to figure out the IRS instructions on, say, depreciation of tangible assets. You could consciously try to counter negative aspects of the movie or embrace positive ones and doing so might influence how well you do at your task. But many stereotypic cues are more subtle and we often don't even notice them -- the brief depiction of someone in a t.v. ad, or the quick encounter with the elderly Walmart greeter. Research has shown that these subtle, unconscious cues also may influence performance.

An example of this impact of subtle stereotypic cues is in another study by Levy. Groups of older participants were shown either positive or negative words associated with aging by flashing them on a screen very quickly -- so fast that people couldn't identify the exact word, but still encoded it (in other words, they weren't aware of the word but Levy could show that they had in fact processed it). Shortly afterward the participants performed seemingly unrelated tasks that required either memory or physical balance. Those who had been unconsciously primed with negative words did less well on both the cognitive and physical tests.

The implication of all this is that we may underestimate the impact of stereotypes on our functioning as we grow older and mistakenly attribute performance decline to aging rather than correcting attributing it to beliefs about aging. But this research also illustrates that if we embrace our inner geezer and focus on the positive aspects of aging we can overcome some of the negative expectations that lead to a self-fulfilling prophesy of cognitive and physical decline.

Grey Power!!




References:

Levy, Becca R.(2009). Stereotype emodiment: A psychosocial approach to aging. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol 18 (6), pp. 332-336.

Levy, Becca R. (2009). Leifheit-Limson, Eric. The stereotype-matching effect: Greater influence on functioning when age stereotypes correspond to outcomes. Psychology and Aging. Vol 24(1), pp. 230-233.

So, What Do You DO All Day??

I’ve been retired for about 8 years. When I meet new people and reveal that fact I often get the same reaction from those who haven’t yet retired themselves – they will often be curious about “how is it?” or “do you like being retired?” Over the years I’ve come to a couple of conclusions about how to answer those kinds of questions.

First, I’ve found that it is important to note carefully the tone and wording of the questioner. Some people are intrigued in a positive way, and their question is motivated by a sincere interest in knowing all the fun/relaxing/fulfilling activities that they, too may look forward to when they retire. Others, though, ask the question more like “but, what do you DO all day?” – these seem to be challenging you to demonstrate that retirement isn’t just a boring way to pass the time until you die. They can’t seem to imagine a life without a career and are looking for verification that without one a person is pretty much worthless.

Second, I’ve learned that any honest attempt to describe one’s daily activities is almost surely going to sound like life is a string of trivial and vacuous events. But this is true at any time of life – retirement doesn’t necessarily change the superficial nature of the list. Indeed, I’ve sometimes wanted to turn the tables and ask “but what do YOU do all day?” Thinking back to my own working days, I’d have to list a lot of things I didn’t enjoy or feel fulfilled doing – many things I recall “having” to do and yet really disliking them very much, even though as an academic I had a very rich and rewarding career. And really, that’s a major difference – 90% of the things I do now I want to do.

Bottom line. Whatever you do all day, try to make your experience of it enriching and rewarding in a personal way. Note that my emphasis is on your experience, not on the activity itself. Even the most seemingly trivial thing can be rewarding if you freely choose to engage in it and if your mind is open to fully experiencing it. My answer, then, to what I do in retirement, is “I live every moment as fully and completely as I can. What about you?”

The Power of Negative Thinking

In my field of Social Psychology one of the most central principles is that people’s beliefs about themselves and others often have strong impacts on behavior. This can be a straight forward relationship, as when a person modifies their interaction with someone based on beliefs about the other’s characteristics – for instance, being guarded and reserved with someone we believe is untrustworthy.

More interesting, however, are instances where our beliefs have influences that are more subtle and indirect yet the outcome has significant consequences for our well-being. An example of this kind of phenomenon was reported in a recent article by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health and the National Institute on Aging. It caught my attention because... well, “aging” is getting to be a very personal thing.

The Yale group looked at the stereotypes people have about getting older – beliefs such as “old people are helpless” or “old people can’t learn new things.” Stereotypic beliefs are conveyed in a variety of ways in any given culture, most often through depictions in films, books, news stories, and broadcast media. Different cultures have different views of aging, of course – in some societies the aged are revered as sources of cultural heritage and wisdom while in others (our own, certainly) the aged are seen in primarily negative terms that center on losing physical and mental abilities. It is important to remember that stereotypes are not accurate representations of a group of people, but rather are exaggerations of qualities or outright fabrications of qualities.

The researchers examined an interesting and important question: “Does a younger person’s belief in negative aging stereotypes influence that person’s health as they themselves get older?” It is easy to imagine at least two possibilities here. First, if somebody believes in a negative notion of what it means to get older, they might develop health habits (high fat diet and lack of exercise, for example) that in fact lead to poorer health. On the other hand, having a negative view of aging might motivate a person to adopt habits that are widely held to prolong youth – strenuous exercise, diet supplements, plastic surgery — at least some of which may actually contribute to a healthier life as the person ages.

To answer their question the researchers turned to a large data base that has been accumulating for many years, the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging that was begun over forty years ago. In the 1960's a large group of young volunteers were given a battery of mental and physical tests, and these have been repeated at regular intervals as the individuals have gotten older. Included in the psychological measures was an assessment of the strength of each person’s belief in negative aging stereotypes. The physical measures of health included cardiovascular events such as angina attacks, congestive heart failures, myocardial infarctions, strokes, etc.

The results were clear and rather sobering. Younger individuals who held more negative age stereotypes were twice as likely (25%) to have a cardiovascular event over the next 30 years of their lives than those with more positive beliefs (13%). This relationship held even when the researchers controlled for other possible differences between the two groups when they were young. These included many things that are known risk factors for cardiovascular events: elevated blood pressure, family history of cardiovascular death, body mass index, depression, education, gender, marital status, number of chronic conditions, race, self-rated health, serum total cholesterol (milligrams per deciliter), and smoking history. These factors were not as good at predicting cardiovascular problems as the negative stereotypes people held.

The study raises a number of interesting questions that I’m sure the researchers are now trying to answer. For example, how do these individual differences in negative views of aging arise? Can the they be changed and if so, how? What behaviors did the negative beliefs engender that made the cardiovascular problems more likely? Can they be changed?

As we wait for the answers there is one thing that is a clear lesson from this study. Beware the power of negative thinking.


Reference: Age Stereotypes Held Earlier in Life Predict Cardiovascular Events in Later Life.
Becca R. Levy, Alan B. Zonderman, Martin D. Slade, and Luigi Ferrucci. Psychological Science, Volume 20, Issue 3, Pages 296-298.