Good morning and welcome to agebuzz… Headlining today’s topics:

-Do Your Heart Good: Options For Checking Out Your Heart Health

-Are You A Hips-ter? Bending From The Hips To Save The Spine

-Work Around: Figuring Out The Next Steps For Women Who Retire

-A Matter Of Health: Are Hospitals The Way To Go?

-What Determines Whether You’re Getting Old: It Depends On How You’re Measuring

-Some Soup and Some Schmooze: Enjoying A Meal At The Second Avenue Deli

-The Last Word

Do Your Heart Good: Options For Checking Out Your Heart Health: As you get older, or maybe because of family history, worrying about heart health may become more common. And as you age, it’s not unusual to experience an occasional strange heart rhythm or flutter, perhaps from excitement or anxiety. But if the unusual feeling persists? Then it may be time to do more than worry- and to seek out the expertise of a cardiologist. Research into heart arrhythmias continues to evolve and recently, The Washington Post reviewed a range of potential causes and possible ways to address heart palpitations. Take a look at the article Here. And, for a more general overview of the variety of diagnostic tests available to determine your potential for heart trouble, check out this recent review of heart check testsdescribed in Women’s Voices For Change.

Are You A Hips-ter? Bending From The Hips To Save The Spine: Raise your hand if you think twice these days before bending over to pick up something you’ve dropped. For all too many of us, pain that emanates from the spine or back often means that bending over is a complex or uncomfortable task. Well, it turns out that over the course of your life, you may have been bending down the wrong way, which is why your spine now hurts. In a new story on NPR, reporter Michaeleen Doucleff describes the practice of “hip hinging,” or bending from the hips rather than the waist, as a method better suited to the biomechanics of preserving the spine and preventing back pain. The key is to keep the back straight rather than curved as you bend, a method many are familiar with from dead weight lifting at the gym or from yoga. So sit up straight and take a listen to this story Here. Would you like a visual demonstration of this technique? Check out this brief video Here.

Work Around: Figuring Out The Next Steps For Women Who Retire: Leaving the workforce to retire can bring you to a real crossroads: It may be a moment to seize the day and change your life course in a new direction, or it may be a time of dread, wondering what your identity is now that your professional profile is gone. For women, the challenges can even be more momentous: they may have fewer resources available in retirement and potentially longer lives ahead than men. Kiplinger recently laid out the obstacles, and opportunities, that can await retired women depending upon their creativity and vision. Karen Wagner and Erica Baird, the founders ofLustre, recently shared their top-five tips for women who are looking for their next act upon retiring in this Forbes article. Everyone seems to agree that modern women retiring from a career can continue to pursue new ventures and re-invention, if not in traditional workplaces than perhaps with new creations of their own. For an example of one older woman who has continued to zig and zag into new career directions, take a look at the life course of Arianna Huffington Here. Finally, perhaps for the modern retired woman, her best course may be working for herself, as a freelance entrepreneur. That is the way the work world is heading, as predictions suggest the majority of us working in 10 years will be in that position. So print up those business cards and take a look at these tips for freelancing Here.

A Matter Of Health: Are Hospitals The Way To Go?: No one likes going to the hospital if you can avoid it. For older patients, there’s even evidence that hospitals can cause as many problems as they solve. Health experts are now beginning to chime in on what may be the death knell of modern hospitals as we’ve known them. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Zeke Emanuel, formerly of the Obama Administration and now at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that hospitals are becoming obsolete. He cites data to show hospitalization rates are declining and argues that sophisticated medical care can now be handled better, and more cost-efficiently, in the home setting. Writing in The Wall Street Journal (paywall), Laura Landro describes what hospitals may evolve into as we move forward: micro facilities where only the sickest, most complex medical cases are addressed, with more traditional hospital care occurring in outpatient or even home settings. In fact, a small, recent study out of Boston found that the “home hospital model” can be less expensive and allow for improved activities for patients as compared to the traditional acute care hospital experience. In New York, Mt. Sinai Hospital now runs a Hospital at Home Program that provides for round-the-clock monitoring and hospital-level care all in the privacy of one’s own home. While there will always be a need for hospitalization for some of our sickest patients, it could be that for those less sick, there’s no place like home.

What Determines Whether You’re Getting Old: It Depends On How You’re Measuring: Every year on your birthday, you get a stark reminder of how old you are- at least according to the calendar. But some of us feel younger than our years would suggest, and others of us feel “older” than we’d like. How to explain this? Well, our chronological age is one way to measure how old we are. But, in fact, biologically speaking, the aging process may be different for each of us and now there may be a simple way to determine, biologically, how “old” we really are. Publishing in the journalFrontiers in Aging Neuroscience, Chinese researchers have discovered an oxidative damage marker in urine that could lead to a simple urine test to determine how your individual body is actually aging and what age-related diseases may be in your future. Read more about this research Here. On the other hand, our perception of our own aging may be less definitive than a urine test, and more likely to shift as we grow older. New research out of Michigan finds that when we are younger, we think of aging differently than we do as we actually get older. The conclusion? It seems the older we are, the better we feel about old age. Take a look at the study results Here.

Some Soup and Some Schmooze: Enjoying A Meal At The Second Avenue Deli: Sometimes you want to put the “healthy” aspect of healthy living on the back burner, and instead focus on the living. And in that case, there’s nothing like an old-time New York deli meal, complete with the pickles and the pastrami. Over at the Second Avenue Deli in New York City, founded in 1954, you’ll find Steve Cohen, the manager for more than 35 years, who likes nothing more than to schmooze with his customers and connect with the past. For a trip down memory lane, and a hankering for a good corned beef sandwich, watch Steve talk about the restaurant Here. And for an even older New York deli? There’s only one and it’s Katz’s, founded in 1888 on the lower east side, and still owned and run by the same family. Their motto? Don’t change what works. While they may be expanding, they’re still much the same as they were in your grandparents’ era. So take out the mustard and check out the restaurant Here.

THE LAST WORD: “We may not be able to witness our own eulogy but we’re actually writing it all the time, every day.” Arianna Huffington