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

-Food for Thought: Nutritional Guidance for Older Eaters

-Work it Out: The Fate of Older Women in the Workforce

-Top Shop: An Easier Way to Get Dressed

-Mind Your Elders: Sensors in the Home as the Next Step in Home Care

-Things Fall Apart: Info and Insights on Falling

-Age Explain: What is a “Helicopter Daughter”?

-The Last Word

Food For Thought: Nutritional Guidance for Older Eaters: Clear research now exists to support specific dietary recommendations for older individuals.  Proper nutrition can lead to enduring physical health and sustained cognitive health.  Tufts University, in collaboration with AARP, has established a terrific website providing information, research findings, recommendations and recipes with the goal of supporting excellent nutritional health in older adults. So load up on the veggies and Read This.

Work It Out: The Fate of Older Women in the Workforce: While women may have come a long way in achieving gender equality in the workforce, research now suggests that they face an additional hurdle as they continue their professional lives well into their 50’s, 60’s and even 70’s: that is, age discrimination.  A new piece in the Harvard Business Review suggests that older women face age discrimination more often than older men in the work world. Does this nonsense ever end?  Apparently not-Read This.

Top Shop: An Easier Way To Get Dressed: Buttoning up your shirt may seem like an elemental part of getting dressed. But for those of us whose fingers fail us more than we’d like, due to age or infirmity, this basic daily activity can be a real source of frustration.  Enter Magna Ready, a new clothing company that’s replaced conventional buttons with discreet magnets on polished dress shirts for both men and women. Does she or doesn’t she? No one needs to know. Read This.

Mind Your Elders: Sensors in the Home as the Next Step in Home Care: For caregivers providing care to dementia patients in the home, that caregiver burden can be especially wrenching. Monitoring activities at the home while maintaining some semblance of outside life becomes virtually impossible. Now, researchers at UC San Francisco have embarked on a three-year study to develop a “Care Ecosystem” which will use existing sensory technologies to monitor patient movement in the home and detect signs of distress. For info on this new research and other initiatives to utilize sensory technology in the home, Read This.

Things Fall Apart: Info and Insights on Falling: We’ve all had this experience- rushing somewhere, not looking where we’re going and the next thing we know, we’re flat on the ground.  If we’re lucky, we can dust ourselves off and get back on our way.  As we age, however, that luck may run out. Falling can be a serious matter for older individuals: both the cause of the fall and its consequences can denote serious medical concerns and life-changing consequences.  For some insightful lessons from personal experiences with falling, Read This. And for advice about how to lessen the risk of falls in the home, Read This.

Age Explain: What is a “Helicopter Daughter?” Hovering over many 21st century children are over-involved parents: attentive to every activity and every moment of the child’s daily routine.  While such close oversight and involvement may be done with the best of intentions, the impact of these “helicopter parents” on the child’s development and independence can be disastrous.  Is there an analogous situation with adult children who care for their aging parents? Can there be too much hovering and over-involvement to the detriment of both parent and child? For a personal essay on the phenomenon of a “helicopter daughter” Read This.

THE LAST WORD: “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” Satchell Paige