Word: agee
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Metabolism begins to slow at around age 25. For each decade thereafter, the number of calories required to maintain one's weight drops by at least 2%. Muscle mass gradually shrinks. As a result, people tend to get fatter. Kidneys may lose up to 50% of their efficiency between ages 30 and 80. Some of the liver's functions may decline. Thus alcohol remains in the body longer. So do drugs, a fact doctors are beginning to consider in deciding on dosages for older patients...
...need for sleep gradually diminishes. Newborns sleep 16 to 18 hours a day; by age 65, three to six hours a night, perhaps with a nap during the day, is typically all that is necessary. The quality of sleep changes, becoming lighter and more fitful. Shorter, restless nights lead many who recall the easy slumber of youth to complain of insomnia. As a result, half of elderly women and one-quarter of elderly men take largely unneeded sleeping pills...
Such seniors are living proof that aging is not synonymous with illness, that increasing years do not necessarily lessen desires or capabilities. That is a welcome surprise, particularly to the old. Muses Margaret Strothers Thomas, 72, a retired teacher from Philadelphia: "As a child I used to look at older people, and they were bent over, stooped and complaining. I can't believe that when you reach the age that you've feared you feel great." Achieving better health for longer requires a continual alertness to false assumptions about old age, whether they come from family, friends, doctors...
More of such moxie is in order. Resignation exacts as heavy a toll on the road to old age as disease or poor habits, warn gerontologists, who stress the importance of cultivating new interests and staying mentally engaged. That view is shared by no less an authority than Comedian George Burns. "People practice to get old," he avers. "The minute they get to be 65 or 70, they sit down slow, they get into a car with trouble. They start taking small steps." Burns stays young by taking fearless strides. He plans to play the London Palladium on his 100th...
...lower incomes of Robertson's followers are due in part to the fact that he got the youngest vote in Iowa, just as President Reagan carried the young in 1984. A 1979 study by the Princeton Religion Research Center found that 54% of Evangelicals are under 50 years of age -- a finding confirmed impressionistically when one travels with Robertson. His crowds are often young parents bringing their children with them. In terms of education, Christian schools, which exact long study hours as well as a strict social code, are opening at the rate of one a day, a movement surpassed...