StemCell Therapy

As someone who writes a lot about the medical and social issues of aging, I am constantly faced with a problem: What am I supposed to call old people these days?

I know. Some of you are mad at me already, but it gets really tiresome to have to alternate among the hazy euphemisms that are supposed to stand in for the hated word old. Older, as in older adults or older people, seems to be the most acceptable term, but it offends the part of me that prefers words with some precision. Older than what? Everybodys older than somebody. Senior citizen has fallen out of fashion, but seniors is OK in some quarters. (Definitely not all.) Some writers use mature. Do we really have to wait till were 65 to be mature? I rather like elders, but when does that start?

I am old enough to remember when it was OK to call people not much older than I am now (62) old. I get that ageism is a serious problem, especially if you feel good and want to or have to keep working after 65 in a setting that prizes youth. In some quarters, 30 is over the hill. So, I see why advocates dislike the word old and all its pejorative implications. We live in an era when both our recent presidential candidates were past traditional retirement age, when rock stars tour in their 70s, when Tony Bennett is beloved and charismatic at 90, when doctors, lawyers and professors routinely work well into what used to be old age. We need to rethink what old means.

But I personally think that some of my baby boomer peers the oldest are now 71 are ridiculously sensitive about words that imply theyve lived a while. I also think its crazy to use the same word to describe me that youd use for my frail, almost 88-year-old mother. I asked her how she thinks people should describe her and she said ancient. She wasnt joking. I am clearly beyond middle-aged, from a math perspective, unless I got every possible good gene in my family. It would make my life as a writer who sometimes has to write about age groups easier if we had more than one word for the huge swath of the population over that arbitrary line: age 65.

I asked some experts for help with my terminology problem and found that theyve been struggling with it too. For years.

We need a word or words to describe this period, and we just dont have them yet, said Tracey Gendron, a gerontologist at Virginia Commonwealth University. She prefers not to categorize people, but says referring to older adults and the aging population is acceptable.

As she and others pointed out, one source of the problem is that were dealing with something new. I think were in an unprecedented time, this longevity revolution, she said.

Aging experts, she said, have tried calling people young old (65 to 74), old old (75-84) and oldest old (85+). Age-based categories at this stage of life often arent helpful, she said, because there is so much variability in how people age.

The variation in aging is vast, said Christine Arenson, a geriatrician at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Most geriatricians think of their target patient group as starting around 70, she said, but a 40-year-old who has had diabetes for 20 years might have much in common with older patients. Most 65-year-olds in America are quite healthy still, she said.

John Shoven, a Stanford University economics professor, said you could define the end of middle age as the point at which people have a one percent chance of dying in the next year. The age at which men and women have reached that milestone has climbed impressively since 1930.

Shoven looked at three groups: those who had a 1 percent, 2 percent and 4 percent chance of dying in the next year. Shoven thinks achieving 1 percent risk roughly corresponds with the end of what most of us think of as middle age. Shoven himself hes 70 likes to think of middle age as the middle of our adult years, not the middle of our whole life. He thinks if your chances of dying are less than 1 in 100, youre still young. He doesnt think were old until our risk climbs to 4 percent. The striking thing is that the age at which people reached those milestones has climbed impressively. In 1930, an average man reached the 1 percent threshold at 44. Men now hit that mark around 60, women at 65. The age at which men have a 4 percent risk of dying in a year rose from 65 in 1930 to 76. Women now get there around 80.

That jibes with Jerry Johnsons experience. He is chief of geriatric medicine at Penn Medicine and is himself 69. He says that many 70-year-olds have more in common medically with 50-year-olds than with 80-year-olds. Between 70 and 80, a lot happens in terms of endurance and energy conservation and exposure to new diseases and co-morbidities, he said. Between 80 and 85, many people begin to think and act differently.

He hasnt found a word that pleases everybody. Some patients dont want any word for the older age group. He thinks a label helps with succinct communication but added that labeling is always flawed. Theres no way to get around it.

There seems to be general agreement among experts that elderly and senior citizen and aged are on the outs. Elders has fans because it connotes respect, but, apparently, some critics think its too much like elderly.

Kirsten Jacobs, associate director, dementia and wellness, for LeadingAge, a senior housing group, said people should also steer clear of silver tsunami, a term often used to describe the coming increase in need for senior services as boomers age. Equating aging to a natural disaster, she said, sends the wrong message.

The FrameWorks Institute, which helps advocates and scientists communicate more effectively about their social issues, recently studied attitudes and messages around aging and concluded this year that aging has a major image problem. People almost always see it as negative. The way we talk about aging is littered with othering language that sees older people as them and not us. As Allen Glicksman, 63, director of research and evaluation for Philadelphia Corporation for Aging, joked, Old is 10 years older than you are.

Pope Francis, center, is greeted by South Korean children upon his arrival at Seoul Air Base in 2014. The pope is 80 years old an age that doesnt seem as old as it once did.

Singer Tony Bennett, right, who turned 91 on Aug. 3, has recorded music with Lady Gaga in recent years.

Actress Olivia de Havilland, a star of such films as the classic Gone With the Wind, turned 101 in July.

Stacey Burling

Old hard to categorize in age of longevity

Read the original:
Breaking age groups into categories is challenging in era of longevity - Wilkes Barre Times-Leader

This entry was posted on August 10, 2017 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Longevity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |