support for conversations live comes from the gertrude j saunt endowment the james h olav family endowment and the sydney and helen s friedman endowment and from viewers like you thank you [Music] good evening and welcome to wpsu's conversations live i'm carolyn donaldson coming to you live from the dr caico miwo ross wpsu production studio tonight i hope you're safe and well and with today's news we have a lot to discuss tonight but as the older adult population grows it's no wonder aging is an increasing concern for many people what are the different aspects of aging what is the mental and physical toll and what control do we have over our own aging process we're going to cover these questions and more with a panel of experts joining us tonight and we hope you join us and join in with the conversation first marty slewinsky is a professor of human development and family studies at penn state he's also the director of the center for healthy aging at penn state his research focuses on aging and health including cognition dementia risk stress and emotion regulation amy lauric is an assistant research professor also at the center for healthy aging at penn state and her research focuses on the psychological and sociological processes related to successful healthy aging and mary rifetto is a registered dietitian at the james e vanzant va medical center based in altoona now the va center has outpatient clinics also in dubois huntington indiana johnstown and state college and serves all of the veterans from our region now you can join us too in tonight's conversation this is why we're here we want to hear from you our toll-free number is 1-800-543-8242 and call during the next hour and our email address is connect wpsu.org that's if you feel more comfortable typing it up and sending it to us we'll try to get that question answered as well so let's begin the conversation now healthy aging it's actually a concept that all of us need to embrace throughout our lifespan not just people with gray hair like me as i volunteered to host this knowing that i needed to learn more about this topic because really we're aging through our lives and we can do it very healthy and very proactively as we'll discuss tonight so i want to start with that really general question i guess from our different guests and just from that higher level thinking what is healthy aging to you marty let's start with you okay that's a great question um when when i teach healthy aging to undergraduates and begin to get them to encourage them to think about what their future is going to look like um we try and talk about the different kinds of challenges and the different kinds of changes people experience throughout their lives so to me healthy aging is balancing uh finding a balance to where you can um sort of maximize the growth that you experience throughout adulthood and find ways to compensate for some of the things that that decline a little bit as we get older good point mary i'm going to turn to you next with your population that you serve and the veterans in our region and their caregivers and family members thank you so healthy aging to me as a dietitian so just to give you a little bit of an idea uh 65 percent of our veteran population that we serve is over the age of 65. so this is something that we deal with day in and day out and healthy aging to me from a dietitian standpoint is really eating for health and preserving preserving your body and nourishing it with with good food that is really going to serve you yes you want to treat yourself you i'm not telling i would never tell you not to ever have cake again or anything like that good good if you do want to learn how to properly nourish your body and nourish yourself for any type of diseases that may arise such as diabetes or heart disease okay and amy you're on the front lines in community engagement with all sorts of people of all ages so what how do you define healthy aging when you're out in our communities well healthy aging is i think something that we we learn to embrace as we get older but they're early on i think there's a little bit of fear with it because they see it happening in others so for me healthy aging is really about embracing one's own aging experience but also in learning taking the opportunity to learn from others and recognize role models and continue to sort of seek out interactions for uh for the benefit of of really yourself but also for for the other all right very interesting well to start the conversation we're going to start with a few statistics and marty you brought with us a couple of graphics too and amy that kind of tell our story because in pennsylvania we all need to start embracing healthy aging right we've got a lot of us out there yeah pennsylvania depending how you count it is one of the oldest states in the united states the fifth oldest state the number of people over the age of 65 is increasing rapidly and what's interesting is in the united states we're rapidly approaching uh what i call a cultural tipping point for the first time in the history of of our country and in in the history of the world the number of people over the age of 65 will outnumber uh people under the age of 18. and this is um not just a demographic uh change but this is a reshaping of our culture our society and our population in a way that that we're really quite not as as a society prepared to deal with okay very interesting and and just even using the term of of aging and using those terms that are perhaps we're used or misusing elderly aging old people you know what shouldn't shouldn't we be saying when we define our our our new lifestyles and our aging lifestyles yeah i think that's a great question an interesting question as well um when when i uh try to use labels or when we have to use labels to categorize people i think a good practice always to put the people first so when when we refer to this process or this phenomena uh it's fine to say older older adults um people who are over the age 65 um and it is important how we we we talk about envision uh this process okay very interesting now remember we want to hear from you folks so if you're watching this show please give us a call the number there you see on your screen 1-800-543-8242 we want to get as many people calling and there's many questions answered i have lots in my head and my gray old hair head but i'd love to hear from you folks out there too so let's let's start too with anyone on the panel here to talk about that the topics that people are asking most about when they when you go out to present a program amy or or mary when you're making a presentation at one of your clinics or your outpatient centers um you know what what are some of those topics that that are brought to light with with reference to healthy aging i can jump in there okay one one of the well there there are the orientation of most people is what can i do okay and so we try to offer a variety of ways for people to take more control over their experiences and this can encompass many things it's everything and mary can speak to this what we eat moving it's also about learning new things or interacting with others so you see on your screen there are some pillars of brain health and marty can talk more about brain health in particular but these are all things we can be doing at every age but are especially important as we get older okay and let's let's delve a little bit deeper into the brain health because there's some exciting news that your center has just released and that you're going to be doing a consortium to even learn more about better brain health right marty yeah penn state has just recently announced support for uh geroscience and dementia prevention consortium which is going to involve a major investment in scientific efforts to try to understand the root causes of neurodegenerative diseases and identify strategies that people can use to prevent slow or delay them great and i know that the veterans affairs the department of veterans affairs under which you operate mary have always taken a hard look at this because that's your that's your demographics right your veterans that you serve are absolutely in this category yes absolutely absolutely okay let's go back to that graphic can we on the six pillars and marty can you do a little deeper dive into that brain health because i i'm there um i wear hearing aids i wear uh you know contacts i'm having a little bit of cognition issues and i i would assume some of our viewers are as well so help us through some more of this yeah it's a question that's on people's minds recent national surveys have shown that nearly 50 percent of adults of all ages in the united states have some concern or even worry about keeping their brains healthy and staving off dementias as they get older and i understand that concern because as of right now there are no approved therapeutics that directly address the root cause of dementia and no effective preventive treatments but the good news and what's really interesting is that historically over the last few decades the proportion of people over the age of 65 with dementia has been steadily decreasing by about 13 percent per decade and that's good news because that shows that there are things that we can do as individuals and as collectively as a society that even in the absence of a medical breakthrough can help to promote our brain health and stave off dementia and some of those um that you just saw on the on the screen a moment ago uh showed some of those those strategies that we can adopt diet is a very important okay consideration in this all right so let's move over to mary before we get those calls so please uh do uh while you're watching this please think about a question that you might have for our panel but mary you've brought along some really interesting things again proactive somewhat easy steps that we all can embrace and impart build into our diet so walk us through maybe some of those food and nutrition things that will help us age healthy yes absolutely so we do have a graphic here of a sample plate on how a general healthy plate should look we could pull that up that'd be great okay it's coming up there there it is that looks that looks delicious too but healthy eating can be good right so as you can see here the top half of your plate 50 of your plate should be comprised of non-starchy vegetables and fruit so by non-starchy vegetables i'm talking about relief you clean your peppers onions green beans broccoli and cauliflower a couple others to name a few and as we move down toward the bottom part of the plate you'll see on the bottom the bottom left-hand side 25 of your plate should have should be comprised of starches or starchy vegetables so by starchy vegetables i mean your corn your potatoes both white and sweet potatoes and your legumes and your beans such as navy beans kidney beans etc okay over on the bottom right here you'll see um 25 of your plates should be lean protein so here we have a chicken breast but that could be that could be poetry that could be fish that could be red meat we recommend if you do want to eat red meat try to choose leaner cuts of red meat or even maybe 80 20 at the highest for ground beef 90 10 or above is even better just to reduce that cholesterol and saturated fat in your diet very interesting and it really does break down easily that you can kind of break your plate up that way i know that we used to say like a fistful of protein right just like four ounces or something however you want to define it all right so that's what we're supposed to eat let's keep going if it's okay with you folks out there let's look at what hydration i you know as we age i'll be honest you know we still want to be active and we'll talk about an active lifestyle but you got to keep refreshing right absolutely yes so um hydration is very important as we age so right here we have a recommended amount of water intake for men and women now this is very basic so if you want a more specific measure of what you should have individually i would recommend talking to your doctor meeting with a dietitian some good choices of hydration are your water fruit and vegetable juices are fine if you're watching sodium and sugar do be mindful of how many of those you're taking in milk is a great source of hydration especially low fat and fat free milk and any other type of decaffeinated or herbal teas those are all going to be sources of fluids that are going to hydrate you well now as far as what to choose less often notice i didn't say never and soups yes that's fluid but it's also a hidden source of salt which is going to pull that fluid off of you um soft drinks and sports drinks because they are so high in sugar that's a very common misconception a lot of people think sports drinks are very healthy and they can be and they have their time in place absolutely caffeinated drinks that's a big one a lot of people think that they're very well hydrated because they drink a lot of coffee and quite honestly coffee is going to do the exact opposite it's going to act as a diuretic and cause you to actually excrete more fluid and same with alcohol okay very interesting and and marty or amy perhaps you want to comment on how important hydration is especially for your brain health right it really there's a definitive research that shows that connection between well hydration and cognition well you know that this is a new area of study and um linking hydration levels to brain health uh memory function but what does seem to be the case is that as we get older we aren't as sensitive to cues to hydrate so oftentimes people are are dehydrated and sometimes mistake thirst for hunger so um you know that's a that's a mistake i make a lot i think and then also the fact that many of us as we age perhaps have to take additional medicines which can play into that too right i mean we have to be a little careful and again with the advice of the doctor which we're not advocating and prescribing anything but definitely you have to judge that and use your best judgment with hydration and different medicines that you might be taking correct yeah okay if you're just joining us i'm carolyn donaldson this is wpsu's conversations live and tonight we are talking with some experts about healthy aging we are joining us tonight we have uh our toll-free number is 1-800-543-8242 you can also send us questions by email at connect wpsu.org we've got marty slowinski and amy lorick from the center for healthy aging and mary rofetto from the va vanzant medical center so once again we did get an email question that i want to kind of talk about because i think it plays into some of the sociological um aspects of healthy aging so joan who is a personal friend of mine i'm so glad joan you brought this up because i see her out about with her little one is there research on whether having a pet affects healthy aging and if so what are the possible conclusions and does it matter what kind of pet it is and if so which kind is better and she just thanks us in advance for having this program so is it okay to have a pet is it good is it bad how does that measure into healthy aging in today's equations amy i'm going to ask you to start from your kind of psychological and sociological hat well i um i don't know what the research says on this and maybe marty could speak to that but i do know that pets offer companionship and an opportunity to um to have a conversation frankly that's what we happens at our house i have a conversation with my dog on a regular basis um and so it's um an outlet for um expression but also affection and i think that is beneficial to us in terms of our mental health but also in terms of just our staying engaged and again through this pandemic and we can get into more questions related to that but we've seen that sense of community and that sense of loss and that sense of trying to find the right place so marty can you comment on the research behind some of this it's a great question it's very timely i was just reviewing a brand new study that was published today there so the research does suggest that owning certain pets and i'll i'll give you an idea of which kind you might be able to guess are associated with better health in older age there was just a study published looking at about 11 000 people in japan and what they found is that older adults who own dogs showed a lower likelihood of being physically frail a lower likelihood of developing chronic health conditions these are people between the ages of 65 and 85 and a lower likelihood of developing disabilities and this was even controlling for they took into account it you know prior history of chronic illnesses marital status the amount of time they spent outdoors so it really was owning dogs that seemed to be related to this good outcome unfortunately um owning cats didn't do the same same job now i have a cat and a dog so um but um a cat ownership was not associated with with the better health outcomes and you know part of the reason could be what amy was saying um also uh we think that it's it's a reason to get out and move around um i know during the pandemic we have a dog and the dog was the reason we would go for walks when the weather wasn't so great so um there are some direct benefits for that absolutely very interesting hey we've got a caller uh lisa from bolsberg thank you so much for joining us on conversations live tonight your question for our panel of experts thank you so much i'm really interested in hearing the opinions of community-based care pennsylvania has a community health choices program that is funded by the state and i'm interested in hearing if there's any feedback on how well that program is working and if it's effective but also to be talking about models of community-based care to work with individuals who may not be eligible for medicaid to stay in their homes where there are systems that are set up to provide services to them that they may for instance buy into there are models like that in massachusetts that i think are very interesting and i'm wondering what these folks are thinking so thank you all right got a couple of questions within there i'm gonna just open it up who would like to start the conversation on that well you know i'll start off probably not with with the answer you're looking for i don't know of research that has evaluated the um effectiveness i do know um that it that they serve an important role in reaching underserved areas and people who can't otherwise have access to care i think the emphasis on bringing care to people's homes is also important because it it helps to serve and meet the needs of individuals who maintain autonomy and independence what do you find very when you serve some of the population base of the veterans who come in for their services um again largely home-based i guess and they come in for for medical reasons or health reasons but are you finding any any uh variables out there with that with that population well we do have a home-based primary care program at the va where we send the care to them which is very nice we have the providers the dietitians nurses social workers actually visit the veterans in the homes which is really helpful and we have seen some positive health outcomes from that program and we have some other programs as well where we can offer home health and different services if people can get out of the house a little bit but they just need a little bit more assistance to help them age in place a little bit longer age in place aging in place i guess that's i did want to ask that and amy i don't know if you can comment on that from a community perspective is that something that we're still as especially younger caregivers looking at their moms or dads or the old you know the the the people over a certain age you know this aging in place concept is that still uh a good thing for for many folks i i think the research um that that i'm familiar with points to the fact that most people do want to stay in their homes as long as possible and because of community connections because it's familiar setting um there are a variety of reasons that would drive that but i think that aging in place can mean many different things and so it could mean that you get to stay and in your same community in your same home but it can also be that you choose a place at a certain age that you would like to live out the remainder of your your life and that's where you will stay then so so um there are a variety of ways of interpreting aging in place but i do know that um many most people are choosing to to do that it's also a little bit more economical for many people and that could be one of the important variables that lead to that decision but but i also think that staying within one's community and the familiarity of your home makes a difference in terms of providing comfort and reassurance as so many other things are changing as you age okay very interesting with your center for healthy aging and the research that you've done marty i'm curious to find um are you finding different populations in the research that you've done have different healthier outcomes and is it based on cultures at all you know again i'm looking at multi-generation or intergenerational families that exist in certain cultures are we seeing that still helping in a healthy aging process for some yeah that's a great question and i'll i'll try and answer that by piggybacking on on what amy was talking about in terms of aging in place something to keep in mind is that not all communities are created equal when it comes to um supporting healthy aging and keeping people autonomous and safe um living independently things to think about where the things we think about when we're younger or middle-aged that where we pick where to live aren't necessarily the things we should be thinking about when we're planning to where we want to live into older age so thinking about things like access to transportation walkability sidewalks access to sidewalks all of those types of things we we need to consider as well as the kinds of homes we live in so living in a very nice remote rural area when we're middle-aged is very very different than when we're in our 70s or 80s the home cell may be nice the setting may be nice but we may not have access to the services that we need all right good good point again thank you hey dick from johnstown joins us now on conversations live dick your question tonight for our panel thank you yes i think all of us would agree that optimism is very important for healthy aging and um i was wondering because as we get older we think more of disease acute and chronic and also we think of death probably more often so if how do we maintain optimism in light of these things and how do we gain more optimism i would appreciate your answer to that and thank you thank you dick that is something at any age we need to embrace right marty right and that's a great question dick and um you know what's what's kind of interesting and the research does show that being able to maintain not only optimism but positive views of aging and purpose in life um are very much directly related to the quality of our life and and how healthy we could stay into older age and what's very interesting is that the research shows for people on average as we get older even you know when we have a little bit less time left the stereotype that as we get older we become less happy more depressed isn't true on necessarily true on average that people are able to maintain happiness uh be able to manage stress manage their anxieties just as well when they get into older age now there certainly are challenges that people face um and complications that people need to deal with that um are you know don't present um themselves in in in in younger years so i you know want to acknowledge that as well um one proven method for this is volunteerism so right so people who engage in in volunteerism show better outcomes into older age and this isn't just about sort of feeling good staying happy staying engaged but there are some hard health outcomes such as reduced likelihood of developing hypertension cardiovascular disease strokes so there are many many benefits to um finding a place to volunteer so if i could give one bit of advice it would be to find places that you enjoy working at volunteering at that sounds great and i do want to ask mary because i'm pretty sure you've got a pretty vibrant volunteer network right at the va hospitals and the clinics and the outpatient clinics yes we do we have quite a few volunteers at the va and we have been allowing them to come back more and more now i know for a while with covid we had to kind of put some things on hold but they they love it they love it and i worked on the clc the community living center for a while that's our um our skilled we have some skilled nursing some long-term care some short-term rehab kind of like a nursing home floor more or less just to make it more understandable and we used to have when we could we had volunteers come up all the time and it meant just as much to the volunteers as it did to the residents there and it was such a joy to see them interact that's great amy um would you be able to comment on like programs like ali you know as part of the osher lifelong learning institute that's based here but they're ollies all over the country or something similar to that is also something that's good for healthy aging absolutely and it sort of is an expansion of what marty was talking about there are rsvp programs a retired senior volunteer program and that is really a service that helps place volunteers in the community with organizations that need help and need volunteers there are some programs in other counties that are senior corps or the foster grandparent programs these are active programs in counties across pennsylvania that are just easy ways to find a way to just get involved or our resource that can help you match to an organization of your interest so it sort of takes all of the legwork out of doing the research and it makes it easier to find organizations that that you're interested in or that might need help wonderful and if i can give a blameless selfish plug wpsu uses a lot of volunteers for different things that we do right here and we love the interaction that we get from our our more gray-haired people that come in and help us with programs because they're knowledgeable and they've got these life long things that they've done and they're they're vibrant people that want to give back to the community so very good um if you're just joining us i'm carolyn donelson this is wpsu's conversations live and tonight we're talking about healthy aging it's for everybody and all of our lifespans our toll-free number is 1-800-543-8242 you can also send us some questions by email and that's connect at wpsu.org so you don't miss the program you can just type in your question we have we have still about a half hour left in the program and we do have a gentleman who did write in to us so let's get to his email here chuck from state college writes what medical provider expectations related to aging should we have and given the demographics our providers attuned to the needs of seniors oh boy that's a that's a big one to answer but who would like to start no one wants to i'm going to put marty on the spot then since you've got a little bit of the research there that you can probably tell us generally speaking we're not going to attack anyone individually or any doctors of course yeah i mean so um as as people get get older just in the same way that they're pediatricians that uh are specialized in addressing the special needs that young people have it's important to recognize that some of the the needs for being healthy and and dietary needs might change as people get older so it is important to have a doctor who's sensitive to what age their patient is whether they're 20 30 40 50 or 80 so i don't know that you always need a specialist but it is important for someone to take things like that into account and you know be able to make recommendations as as needed especially things related to diet nutrition exercise and mental health maintaining mental health in older age as well and and mary i guess you would see that firsthand with the demographics and the veterans that you work with and and your providers right that work in unison with the dietitians that with including yourself right out there working with our veterans yes yes and i i feel that our providers are fantastic when it comes to that in to touch on what marty was saying it is it is you know important to have a provider who really understands what is important for that individual and for their age for example you could look at somebody who is i don't know just 90 years old okay they have diabetes they have heart disease textbook you would say okay you want to cut back on xyz and give them a whole list of things not to eat however if they're if they're very thin for example maybe they're slightly undernourished that wouldn't be the most practical advice to give them so it is very important to have somebody who really can take a step back and see the broad view of everything that's going on and make appropriate recommendations not just textbook there is a difference good good point and if i could just add one more point to that but sometimes um the relationship between a patient and a doctor is just that the relationship and it involves communication uh going both ways so it's also important that with your doctor that you don't minimize when you're talk when if you have a difficulty or a problem you don't minimize the problem you share what's going on and kind of keep track of changes because sometimes changes that may creep up on us are something that if we catch them early there's a lot you can do about them okay we have another caller can we get to that question for our panel of experts stephen from dubois you're on the phone right now can you uh direct your question tonight thanks for joining oh yeah uh i'm at 91 years old and i i'm i live in a home and i i have a traders all over my body and how i can have a healthy living you know how would you do it how to be active i mean at your age stephen first of all i applaud you you're 91 years young right folks on our experts that's right yes and i'm sorry your question one more time it was with your arthritis you're concerned about mobility or yeah with you see you go to the doctor and says i can do nothing for you you have a osteoporosis like an arthritis in your joints and i can do nothing for you you're going to suffer for the rest of your life how you can cope along with it oh goodness well who would like to offer some ideas um you know without knowing your situation right it's just it's very none of us are medical doctors so we can't give you medical advice right thank you and and and without knowing your situation it's hard to give you specific advice but um i know if a doctor said something like that to me i want to talk to another doctor because i i do know that you know my mother had osteoporosis osteoarthritis and um through uh physical therapy and occupational therapy was able to maximize their function her function and her well-being and quality of life um even when things got uh uh pretty bad so if you didn't like what your doctor said there's nothing wrong with trying to to talk to another one and see if they can come up with a better idea on that no but the only thing that i can find that out is uh supplement doctor-like not a medication type because but the doctor my doctor said medication is going to get you hurt worse since then cure you there's no cure but there's just copyright with the pain that's the problem okay well stephen we appreciate anyone else want to weigh in on that again we are these are research doctors and our dietitian but we feel you know and overall we hope our program is a little bit enlightening to maybe offer some some relatable tips that you can take into the next step being optimistic and being out there in the in in as vibrant of community as you can be at this point thank you thank you very much um i do want to touch more on advocacy so in this situation perhaps even stephen or someone it is it still good to have another caregiver a family member be an advocate for a person who is maybe you know having some cognitive issues or things like that i hear about that and i'm gonna ask my own doc you know daughter when it becomes evident that i need some help on you know learning the process and if i become ill in some way so advocacy is is a good thing right for family members to embrace in these aging circumstances absolutely and i i do want to sort of add something to what stephen raised as an issue and and that is that um sometimes we are told to accept diagnoses or situations because we're just getting older and i think that that's an easy out um and and i think that we have to begin to ask more questions and to ask for what science is teaching us because uh gerontology the area of geroscience is growing and we are learning new things all the time and so what a physician or a nurse may have learned in school may no longer be the right treatment and it would be helpful to continue to ask questions to find out what the latest bit of information is that could be helpful very good i agree with amy and then just if i could like get related to advocacy there there are some um useful resources that people can go to depending on what the the uh uh the situation is so you know i would encourage people to visit um the website for their area agency on aging there can be helpful resources there visiting the aarp website can direct to very uh helpful resources for advocacy as well and then looking for your local chapter of the alzheimer's association can also provide uh uh some assistance and direction if you're looking for advocacy and we've just put up your resources too just from our guests of panelists and we'll have this information on our website following this as well as this program in full so thank you for that insight i have another caller may from bellefonte is calling in tonight your question tonight may for our panel yes thank you for taking the call i wanted to know if there is any department for aging that aid people to stay in their houses you know because to clean the house to even sometimes if you're ill very difficult to fix food and whatnot i did i contacted the department for aging in belfast and the only information that they seem to have available i contacted two people there and they both wanted to send me the same information about what to do if you don't have any money there evidently there's no real answer for people who want to stay in their house are physically able to stay in their house and can afford to stay in their house but may need help periodically or maybe all the time we're talking about 90 year old people yeah there are resources um and so here locally at center county there's something called the green book and the green book is something that the area agency on aging the office of aging produces that lists all of the services and resources that you could find to do the kind of work you describe and so each county does it a little differently i know that center county produces this as a resource and they are they don't evaluate the quality they just tell you the service that exists in our area and so that's a an immediate resource for you i contacted the department of aging in belfast and i didn't feel it was very helpful because all of their information was for people who had no no funds resources and i think that green book could be helpful to you because it details all of the local businesses that do the work that you've you've described and so i think that that that list might be a place to begin and and if i could add mary could you give us a little insight as to how the direction works for veterans and their families because that's a little more specific right the kind of resources you have for for that population yes yes so if you do if you can relate to what may is expressing and you're a veteran then i would uh suggest reaching out to the va um if you're currently receiving benefits and you have a provider reach out to your provider we do have home making services as far as eligibility and all of that i don't know the details but we do provide those types of services for homemaking a few hours a week whether it be for cleaning cooking all sorts of things all right and marty what any any comments on that because again that i i know that here's another statistic i i was pulling out from your earlier discussion that we're living longer which is wonderful and therefore we need to have these services even expanded more greatly right within the government or in some quasi-governmental kind of thing to be able to provide that type of resource information for folks yeah you know i i would reiterate um uh the advice uh suggestions amy gave but but you know that is a great point and i wish that it was easier for people like me to be able to find the services that they need in this kind of situation and you know the fact of the matter is you know as a society we spend a lot of money on helping young people grow up but not so much attention on helping people grow old um so this is a challenge that people face now and more people will face in the future and i have to applaud people like you marty on the research end of things because even with that new consortium you just found and you're going to get some funding for and do some research on you're going to be able to show some maybe hard facts about how we do need to devote more time and energy to this important subject right the hope the hope ultimately is to um create actionable science where we can make recommendations for policy um that can impact people's lives absolutely that's wonderful that's great hey i want to get back to some more common sense things while we have just we got about 15 minutes left and we didn't get through even all of the wonderful positive smaller changes that we can make and mary i'm going to go back to you because you've brought some other graphics along that i don't want to get that point missed we live in pennsylvania it's cold it's dark right now but we can do something about adding perhaps a supplement that will help us again yes yes let's talk about vitamin d i see vitamin d deficiencies a lot and this is across the board this this i do see it in the population over 65 but i see it in younger people too so vitamin d is called the sunshine vitamin and the reason is because the sunshine can actually convert vitamin d in your body to its active form so for most people if you can spend 15 to 30 minutes a day out in the sun you have your daily source of vitamin d 100 of your recommended daily allowances however we live in central pennsylvania most of the viewing area does and we know how little sun we get and the other issue too is we also we have a lot of cold months so even when it's might be sunny some days it's still a little bit chilly so we're not going out um and in the summer when it's warmer we're often wearing sunscreen which blocks that so here are a couple food sources of vitamin d that i wanted to share with you today there really aren't too many food sources of vitamin d unfortunately which is why we encourage sunlight as much as possible and i wanted to share this with you um sockeye salmon is very high a lot of foods are fortified with vitamin d such as dairy and milk of course is here um orange juice isn't listed here but that's another one some cereals eggs is a good source as well and if you think that you may be a little bit low in vitamin d or if you just you know you don't spend a lot of time outside and you think maybe i should get this checked do talk to your doctor and see if maybe a vitamin d supplement is right for you what vitamin d is important for is for bone health it helps with the uptake of calcium and it helps calcium and phosphorus to make the foundation of your bones and after the age of about 28 29 so after about your late 20s you stop building bone mass oh yeah so it's very important to preserve the bones that you do have so that's why i wanted to mention that today because we do know that as you age you are at higher risk for osteoporosis osteopenia all of those bone disorders all right and while we're on healthy eating and also looking if you're still out grocery shopping or you're getting your groceries looking at that label is very important right right mary you need to take a closer look at what is on that label yes so i wanted to touch on this briefly because this is a question that i get a lot and we hear a lot of concerns about how to read a nutrition label so if we could uh bring that up i would like to go over with you thank you so when you take a look at this label it's very important that you look at the serving size and how many servings per container so let's just hypothetically let's say this is the bag of chips i don't know [Laughter] but a serving size is two-thirds of a cup okay and that's two thirds of a cup there are 230 calories and there are 37 grams of total carbohydrates 3 grams of protein now most people will look at that and they'll think that's the amount for the entire bag and hopefully yes it happens so much and if you're watching your sodium if you have hypertension or congestive heart failure and you're watching your sodium intake or if you're a diabetic and you're counting your carbohydrates and you want to stay within your recommended daily amount it's very important to know how to read a nutrition label on the other side too while we're talking about carbohydrates i do want to touch on this because i get this con this uh question a lot if you are counting your carbohydrates if you are diabetic you want to look at the number of total carbohydrates not just the total sugars because it's the total amount of carbohydrates that is going to affect your blood sugar it's not just the sugar itself which i know can be a little misleading very good very interesting yeah i i know you're supposed to multiply that out by the servings but i still want to eat all that whole bag when you get it sometimes right we have to be careful of that hey we've got about just under 10 minutes left and i do want to get to an email question that we have here if we can bring that up we have amanda who has written in and asked what type of health related services are offered to do aging adults that are unable or easily can leave their home including education groups or classes so do we have those programs and again i guess we're generally speaking here but where can they seek some of these resources for again that cognition and that better brain health i guess marty do you want to start or amy why i didn't know amy did you have i i think one of the things to think about is that we've just come through a pandemic where most programs moved online and so there are even more resources than ever before and so that's good news uh for for those folks who are less mobile or less able to leave home but it does mean connecting to the internet um there there may be other programs available through wpsu um which don't underestimate the power of of those programs because there there's a variety there as well but that's something to consider is that there are more resources online than ever before and there are some specific websites that we can share that might be helpful but one of the most important ones might be your local senior center a senior center may be doing programming online right now i know several in the area that are on youtube or are doing live stream exercise classes or just doing some interactional things to keep people socially connected so so that's my first attempt at that question but i know marty had some things to add all right yeah i i think you know amy is right to get um some of these high quality educational programs having access to the internet is important um ali has been offering online courses so a shout out for ali absolutely we have one of the best check out our ali organization as well as others and if you're very ambitious aarp on their website has opportunities for continuing education uh courses as well so the two places i would look is in ali and aarp all right and i also want to include mary in this because mary you brought along some video of a healthy kitchen exercise that you're doing in person but also offering online you want to walk us through what we'll see here yes yes so we have several nutrition classes actually and they're all offered virtually right now um they're offered through the va's version of zoom but this is our healthy teaching kitchen and we offer these classes monthly and we have a new series starting up uh next week and it will be a six week series if you're interested please give us a call so this is megan she's one of our dietitians and she is making a mango salsa and in these classes we not only teach how to cook and we don't not only teach healthy recipes but we teach proper proper cooking procedures so how to use a knife how to as you saw peel a mango talk about food safety and we talk about just really basic things that not everybody knows and sometimes we will actually oftentimes we will make it a little bit more disease specific or we'll give people some ideas so we'll say if you're diabetic and you don't want to use this you can use this if you're cutting out sodium this is what you can do if you're gluten free substitute this for this and it really helps to take a lot of the guess work out and anybody who participates in our series we give them a cookbook too so that really helps a lot that's wonderful i guess again a positive as as best we can call it positive outcome of the pandemic is the connectiveness that we have been able to make through online things and i can't underestimate from my own personal life you know the effectiveness of a facetime call with my grandkids right i mean if those capabilities are available does that help marty with connectivity and keeping us in a healthy aging process to be able to connect with our own community love our own loved ones you know through our phones that we all carry now and uh ipads and those kind of things so that's a great question staying socially connected is one of the pillars of brain health so number one staying socially connected is very important the research is not yet in as to whether or not the virtual connections uh do the same trick but certainly they're very important um just serving a social and and um you know emotional well-being function to keep people talking to each other when they otherwise couldn't all right we've only got about three minutes left so i'm going to wrap this up by asking each of our wonderful panelists tonight and thank you so much to just summarize maybe one takeaway that our folks that are watching that are listening tonight can come away and say you know i i'm going to be proactive i'm going to be more conscious of having that healthy aging lifestyle that we're advocating here tonight and i'm going to start with amy let's start with amy on that well that's easy carolyn it's that learn new things find a way to be curious about the world around you or people around you to continue to learn new things um that helps us with our brain health perfect great mary i'm going to go to you next i would just like to reiterate to eat for health try new foods eating healthy does not have to be boring and be proactive with your nutrition not reactive all right and marty is the kind of research expert on this you've got a just under two minutes here give us a recap of what you think our takeaway is for all of us to embrace this healthy aging lifestyle that we're talking about tonight oh boy if i guess if there is one take-home message it would be that it's never too late to make good choices and sometimes it's always better to um uh prevention is is an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure but um at any point in time making good choices can have an impact and one thing we didn't we didn't talk about that i just wanted to mention at the end is the importance of being able to stay socially connected and to do that you have to be able to hear what people are saying and there's exciting new research maybe we'll have a chance to talk about it in the future that if you do have a hearing problem getting hearing aid can help boost your brain function and prevent the onset of dementia that's amazing and that is something that i know personally has made a big difference in my own life so you folks have been amazing with some of your insight your knowledge and resources and we can't thank you enough so marty slewinsky the center for healthy aging at penn state amy lorc also with the center uh for healthy aging and mary rafato from the v.a vansant medical center thank you so much for talking with us we greatly appreciate it of course the resources that you've heard about tonight we'll have available on our website and also a recap of this program will be available down the road so we look for you to continue to engage in your communities thank you so much for joining us in our next episode of conversations live will be coming up march 17th again get your brain thinking about this one folks for all ages it's pennsylvania's redistricting there's a lot that we can think about thank you for watching listening to wpsu's conversations live we hope you have a safe evening be careful out there and thanks again [Music] you