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As Baby Boomers Retire, California Faces Wave of Aging Residents

October 2010--The first of the baby boomers - born from 1946 to 1964 - turn 65 in 2011, and demographers predict that California's current population over age 65 (11 percent) will double or even triple by 2030.

Is the Golden State ready for this "silver tsunami"?

Articles in the October-December 2010 issue of the University of California's California Agriculture journal explore the impact of this cohort of aging Californians on a range of health, lifestyle and policy issues, including nutrition and wellness, memory, stress, quality of life, health literacy and caregiving needs.

The entire special issue on aging, "The Golden State goes gray: What aging will mean for California," can be viewed and downloaded at http://californiaagriculture.ucanr.org .

 As life expectancy rises, seniors are increasingly living with chronic illnesses that require support from paid caregivers or unpaid family members. Nationally and in California, 80 percent of elders over age 65 have one chronic condition and 50 percent have at least two.

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects chronic diseases to exact heavy health and economic burdens on older adults from long-term illness, diminished quality of life and major increases in health-care demands," wrote Gloria Barrett and Mary Blackburn, of UC Cooperative Extension in Sacramento and Alameda counties, respectively, in California Agriculture journal.

 Their analysis of caregiving data from California's In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS), the agency that administers caregiving for seniors and people with disabilities, showed across-the-board increases in caregiver caseloads and unit costs statewide between 2005 and 2009, with significant variation from county to county. Yet as long as budget cuts threaten IHSS, few caregivers receive even minimal training or support.

  "The majority of about 400,000 IHSS registry caregivers are not certificated or are undertrained," Barrett and Blackburn wrote. While this has obvious implications for the people receiving care, it also affects caregivers themselves (both paid and unpaid), who "often face a variety of physical, emotional and financial stressors alone, which increases the probability that they themselves will suffer from breakdown, neglect and abuse."

 Other peer-reviewed articles in California Agriculture report:

Newest findings about aging and long-term memory

 In a review article, UC Davis professor Beth A. Ober dispelled myths about memory and aging, including that memory declines will affect day-to-day functioning of the elderly; that Alzheimer's disease is inevitable in old age; and that all aspects of memory are affected as we age.

To the contrary, 85 percent of adults 65 and older can live independently; Alzheimer's disease affects about 1 percent, 4 percent and 15 percent of those aged 65, 75 and 85, respectively; and only episodic or "event" memory undergoes significant declines in normal aging, while semantic (knowledge) and procedural (how to do things) memory improve or remain the same.

 "The challenge going forward is to further advance our understanding of the biological as well as psychological aspects of memory functioning in normal aging, such that specific lifestyle and pharmacological treatments can be recommended to middle-aged and older adults," Ober wrote.

Age-related changes in health literacy and motivation

UC Davis associate professor Lisa Soederberg Miller reports that improving health literacy - how people understand medical information, communicate with health-care providers and manage their own treatment - will be critical in the coming decades as the number of aged Californians rises.

"Individuals with low literacy levels may be less likely to receive adequate health care because they often avoid or delay seeking care," Miller wrote.

 Miller's studies explore how cognitive and motivational factors support the acquisition of new health information, with the goal of designing effective educational interventions to increase health literacy among aging adults.

  Unique nutrition and quality-of-life needs among aging Californians

 Getting older does not necessarily mean that one must be in ill health. "No single segment of society can benefit more from improved diet and nutrition and regular exercise than the elderly," Blackburn and colleagues wrote in California Agriculture journal.

  In a review article of nutrition and wellness research concerning seniors, Blackburn noted that dietary intake and patterns can change with age. Elders may have trouble eating and accessing healthy foods due to physiological changes in their gastrointestinal systems, physical problems that limit the ability to shop for and prepare food, or limited incomes that prevent the purchase of adequate and nutritious meals.

 "Poor appetite or lack of appetite may plague elders who live alone, are lonely or do not feel like cooking, while the lack of funds to buy food affects food accessibility, availability, quality and variety," Blackburn wrote.

 Another Blackburn study on quality-of-life issues among low-income, urban seniors in Alameda County found that they prefer educational-outreach strategies that go beyond PowerPoint presentations. These seniors wanted to participate in a meaningful dialogue and spend personal time with educators, with opportunities for question-and-answer exchanges.

 How older adults cope with stress

 In a review article, Carolyn Aldwin of Oregon State University and Loriena Yancura of University of Hawaii found that, paradoxically, stress and traumatic events do not necessarily affect the health of older persons to a greater extent than younger persons.

 "Older individuals have learned to appraise and cope differently with stress. This protects them in spite of their increased vulnerability and may also increase the possibility of stress-related growth and optimal aging," Aldwin and Yancura conclude.

California Agriculture is the University of California's peer-reviewed journal of research in agricultural, human and natural resources. For a free subscription, go to :http://californiaagriculture.ucanr.org/subscribe.cfm, or write to calag@ucdavis.edu.