CHINESE NEW YEAR LUNCHEON!

恭喜发财

GREATER HILLSBOROUGH SENIOR SERVICES PRESENTS A HAPPY NEW YEAR LUNCHEON AT THE DEERING TOWN HALL CELEBRATING THE CHINESE NEW YEAR, FEBRUARY 18, 2016 AT 12:00 P.M.

The first day is to welcome the deities of heaven and earth and begins at midnight.

It is a tradition to light fireworks and burn bamboo sticks to keep evil spirits and bad luck away on this day.  It is the day to pay respect to elder members

(Senior citizens) of the family including the grandparents and great-grandparents.

 

猴年大吉 hóu nián dà jí Monkey Year Happiness

 THIS LUNCHEON IS EXTREMLY POPULAR AND YOU MUST CALL TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT

 MARIE (464-3067) OR MARIE (464-4726

Suggested donation $7.00

THIS LUNCHEON IS BEING CATERED BY

MING DU

 

DO YOU SMELL THAT?

Scratch-a-sniff smell tests are a good indicator of problems in the brain, and these tests could become an inexpensive and easy way to detect brain trauma and neurodegenerative brain ailments. This is the subject of a brief review that was published recently in Scientific American.

Recent research found that a diminished sense of smell predicted frontal lobe damage in 231 soldiers who had suffered blast-related injuries on the battlefield. In the Department of Defense study led by Michael Xydakis of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, subjects with low scores on a smell test were three times as likely to show evidence of frontal lobe damage during brain imaging than those whose sense of smell was normal.
When the sense of smell is working properly, it acts as a matchmaker between odorant molecules in the air and memories stored in the brain. Those memories are not housed in a single place, Xydakis says, but extend across many regions. Because different smell signals have to take a variety of paths to reach their destinations, arranging their travel requires a lot of coordination. “This unique feature makes an individual's ability to describe and verbally name an odor extremely challenging and cognitively demanding,” he says.

A damaged sense of smell, therefore, can indicate that the ability to make those connections has been hampered by disease, a lack of sleep or, as shown in Xydakis's study, injury to the brain. The new results add to a growing understanding of the link between brain damage and an impaired sense of smell. Researchers have been working for years to use olfaction tests to track damage to the brain caused by neurodegenerative ailments such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.

Kim Good, an associate professor in the psychiatry department at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, is currently recruiting subjects for a cohort study that aims to better understand the link between olfaction and Parkinson's, which could improve early identification and intervention. “Olfactory deficits are as common as tremor in Parkinson's, and they help rule out other competing diagnoses,” Good says.

Smell is also the first sense to be affected by Alzheimer's, with the hallmark protein tangles of the disease appearing early in the olfactory bulb, says psychiatrist Davangere Devanand of Columbia University. Last January he and his colleagues reported the results of a four-year-long cohort study in Manhattan, which found that scores on a multiple-choice scratch-and-sniff test in which participants had to identify 40 scents were good predictors of cognitive decline.

It's not hard to imagine such exams becoming a routine part of primary care for older patients. “The beauty of olfaction,” Good points out, “is that testing is easy and can be done in the family physician's office.” —Ian Chant

Why Smell Is Special
The unique characteristics of our sense of smell make sniff tests ideal for diagnosing brain injury. Here are some of the most interesting scientific findings about this unusual sense:

• The adult brain can generate new neurons in the olfactory bulb, the brain region that processes smells. This area is one of just a few regions that continue to grow new neurons during adulthood.
• Individuals vary in how they perceive odors and whether or not they can detect certain scents, and yet humans seem to universally enjoy the smell of vanilla.
• Anosmia, a condition in which people completely lose their sense of smell, can be debilitating. Sufferers often report feeling disconnected from their surroundings, and many become severely depressed.
• Romantic couples can unconsciously sense their partner's emotional state from their sweat—and the longer they have lived together, the better they are at it.
• Babies locate their mother's nipples in part by learning a smell map of the breasts.

—Victoria Stern

GHSS TRIP TO GIFT OF LIGHTS CANCELLED

In case you have not heard,and contrary to some few predictions, winter will make an appearance in Hillsborough County in 2015. More specifically, we're looking at a nasty snow storm for tomorrow Tuesday 29 December. In the interests of prudence GHSS reluctantly must cancel the Tuesday evening trip to the NH Motor Speedway and their Gift of Lights.

December issue of Seniors Alive!

Click this link for the December issue of Seniors Alive!

See back issues at the tab above.

IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS

Despite the many differences that exist among people and families, I suspect that  throughout our lives we all have variations on some basic conversations. These conversations usually take place between the elders and their  younguns.  So, for example, the Easter Bunny, Santa, Boys and Girls and What Happens, disappearing Grandma and Grandpa, Assisted Care (or not),  and Death. 

Say what!? Death? Remember 2007, the year of Sarah Palin's Death Panels? If we pass the Affordable   Care Act, then government panels will decide who lives and who dies. Or variations on that theme from those determined to prevent passage of the ACA. What was proposed back then, and then withdrawn after the shameless efforts of pols like Palin, was that people should discuss with their doctors end life issues and Medicare  should reimburse doctors for the time spent in helping people to formulate an advanced care plan. 

This past summer my  younger sister passed away. When I got to her in the hospital in Florida I found that she had not made out an advanced care directive, but we were discussing what she would do after leaving rehab and without any expectation that  her death was imminent. Well.... we had that conversation anyway and a day or so  before her heart gave out  she filled out an advanced care directive. With her permission, and between visits to her in the hospital, I also found that she had pre-purchased a funeral plan.  Her will was well hidden and was not where  she said it was but I found it in the end. She passed away after about a week, in the morning just as I was leaving my motel to  visit her. As sad as her death was, I cannot easily express how thankful I was to know that she had planned in advance for exactly what happened. 

In September a Kaiser Foundatin poll found that 80% of respondents said that Medicare and private insurers should pay for the end-of-life conversations but that fewer than one in five respondents reported actually having had such a discussion with a health care provider, including only about a third of those over age 75 and about a third of those with a debilitating disability or chronic medical condition.

Many patients and families want to have these discussions, and this past summer the Myth of Death Panels was laid to rest when Medicare authorized such conversations. Under the final rule patients and families can have the discussions when and where they want — before patients become ill, after they receive a diagnosis of cancer or other serious illness, or while they are receiving hospice or palliative care. 

In such conversations, patients could discuss whether and how they would want to be kept alive if they became too sick to speak for themselves. Doctors can advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

The conversation that you have with your  kids and/or your  doctor about the end of your life is  every bit as important as the one you and your kids had about Santa, or  any of those other essential conversations. Please do not put it off.

Nifty Science: a nano-sized submarine to deliver your prescriptions?

A SINGLE MOLECULE SUBMARINE DOES HOME DELIVERY INSIDE YOUR BODY ?

We seniors have certainly benefited from the super advances in drug therapies that have been developed since WW II. Probably all of us are taking one or more on a daily basis for any number of medical conditions. I think though that much of what we may take for, for example, some cancers is a rather blunt instrument. One goal of drug therapy would be to specifically target the site at which the drug should work. How to do that? In a report I read today, scientists at  Rice University have developed a phenomenal 'nanosubmarine,' a single molecule, comprising 244 atoms, that is driven by a kind of propeller (actually a flagella such as is found on some bacteria and other protozoan organisms). The nanosubmarines could conceivably be loaded with medicine and sent up a person's bloodstream for precision delivery, or made to ferry toxic chemicals out of water filters. The paper describing the molecular machine appeared in the journal Nano Letters and was reported by NBC news. It is indeed a brave new world in which we live!

SENIORS ALIVE! THE NOVEMBER ISSUE

THE NOVEMBER ISSUE OF SENIORS ALIVE! IS OUT. HERE IS A LINK. TO ACCESS BACK ISSUES OF SENIORS ALIVE! AND SENIOR MOMENTS CLICK ON THE TAB ABOVE.

There is a bunch of good things in this issue. I especially liked Pat's editorial about November. Truly, it is November. Typically it's a 'neither here nor there' sort of month, with cold-ish temperatures, gray sky, some rain and maybe some snow. The colorful leaves are gone. Maybe some golden birch leaves are hanging around but mainly what remains are the brown beach and oak leaves. Surely it's the fastest month of the year. I really do believe there is at least a week fewer number of days in November than in any other month. I mean, Thanksgiving is sort of a week away and the Christmas commercial hullabaloo is in full swing now.  

I like November. Some might think of this somber month as a time of dead but really Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year: your 'responsibility' is to reflect on your (hopefully) many blessings. Just now, even before Thanksgiving, we celebrate and honor those who have gone to war in order to ensure our thankfulness at Thanksgiving. We  honor those guys, men and women, in November. Thanksgiving, unlike Christmas, is not laiden with guilt  about gifts, cards -- 'got to,' and 'should have' stuff. It is no wonder Christmas is, for some, a very depressing season (the whole reason for celebrating the season by many having been overlooked or hijacked by commercial interests: didn't Christ throw the money lenders out of the temple after all? time for us to reconsider what this season is about?). No, I like November and Thanksgiving  My wood is stacked, we've got gas for the generator. Most importantly, the fruitcake fruit is marinating now in good dark rum.

Anyway, back to Seniors Alive!. Read Pat's introduction. Then note that there will be a Thanksgiving feast at the Hillsborough .American Legion on Saturday, 21 November at 1:00. It's free thanks to the Hillsborough Lions Club. 

Note also that the Senior's Bus will make its' monthly trip to Walmart onWedneday, 18 November, leaving from Shaw's parking lot at 10 am. Call Marie Mogavero (603 464 4727) to reserve  your spot.

I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving!