Optimum Life Blog Archive: August 2011

I got a call last week from one of our communities to tell me about a resident of theirs who was spending his 103^rd birthday visiting a Coast Guard ship whose crew had been kind enough to give him "another boat ride" to reminisce about his days in the Navy. They were anticipating some press coverage, but they were trumped by the birthday of another centenarian-this one the oldest person currently alive in America at 115 years old.

I have just spent a week on the Optimum Life Alaskan Cruise with a number of older adults. I don’t have daily contact with our residents as I once did, so this was a real treat for me. So often we hear about the negative changes that occur with age, but there really are some benefits of getting older-and our residents that I shared the cruise with, exemplify what it means to grow older with grace and dignity.

As you read this I am cruising on the Celebrity Infinity in Alaska’s Inside Passage. I am so grateful for the opportunity to take this trip along with a group of residents and family members from our Brookdale Communities. Also along with us is Karen Twilla, the winner of our brookdaleliving.com cruise give-away and her husband John.

Among other known benefits, drinking wine might protect your skin from the sun’s damaging rays. At least that is what a recently released study from the University of Barcelona suggests. Several past studies have demonstrated the ability of antioxidants found in fruits and vegetables to protect skin from the sun’s harmful UV rays.

What are your top worries when it comes to health? If you are like the majority of people who took a recent survey it is cancer, followed by Alzheimer’s disease as a close second-and a quarter of the subjects said developing Alzheimer’s was their biggest fear. The survey was conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and Alzheimer’s Europe and was funded by Bayer AG who is developing a scan for early detection of Alzheimer’s.