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Senior Living Article - click here

Today’s older people are “younger”

It’s not your imagination: Many of today’s seniors actually are more youthful (both physically and mentally) than their peers in previous generations, and a 30-year study out of Finland confirms it.

In the study, the first cohort of 500 Finns were born in 1910 and 1914 and were assessed in the mid-1980s when they were age 75 and 80 years, respectively. The second cohort of 726 people were born in 1938 or 1939 and 1942 or 1943 and were assessed 30 years after the first cohort, but also at age 75 and 80 years, respectively. The modern group (those born in the 1930s and ‘40s) showed substantial differences:

• Their walking speeds were .2 to .4 meters per second faster than the earlier cohort’s.
• Grip strength was 5 to 25 percent stronger than the earlier group’s.
• Their knee extension strength was 20 to 47 percent higher.
• They had better verbal fluency, reasoning, and working memory than the earlier cohort.

Overall, the later cohort showed “markedly and meaningfully higher results in the maximal functional capacity tests,” which suggests that Finns who are currently 75 and 80 years old are living longer and have better physical functioning.

Today's seniors can and often are more active. Senior citizens have much more options today than even 20 years ago. Building a network of friends can certainly have beneficial effects. One way of building a network of friends is by connecting to a widely diverse population of senior citizens on Second Life!