Over 65 blog

Tag: obesity

  • Income and Life Expectancy

    Today’s New York Times has an excellent article on income and longevity that compares Fairfax County, Virginia, to McDowell County, West Virginia. In Fairfax, median household income is $107,000. In McDowell it’s about one-fifth of that. In Fairfax, the average life expectancy for men is 82. For women it’s 85. In McDowell, the comparable life…

  • Exercise for the Elderly

    The past year has seen mounting evidence of the strong cumulative benefits from physical activity at every age, not least for persons over 65. Yet as the time for New Year’s resolutions rolls around once again, we see the same bleak media predictions of how few people, among all those who resolve to begin a…

  • Aging, Weight Gain, and Weight Loss

    Overweight, obesity, and physical inactivity are smoking’s close cousins in preventable causes of mortality, leading to over 300,000 deaths annually.  The societal costs of these conditions* may be as high as $400 billion per year.  Therefore, upon reading the May 6 blog post from Sissela Bok and the May 20 post from Steven Schroeder, it…

  • Unreasonable Health Choices

    Long before reaching 65, most people know all too well the costs of decades of going against their own best interests by engaging in practices they knew carried risks for their health – as with smoking or overeating. In at least some respects, they resonate to Oscar Wilde’s “I can resist everything except temptation.” Even…