Heaven on Earth

The idea of an Eden Alternative almost seems too good to be true. In a world where nursing homes are run according to strict and often times carefully monitored guidlines we can hardly think of a nursing home being taken over by animals and children. Working in a nursing home myself, I can see what they mean in the article by describing these facilities as un-friendly and life-draining. Eden Alternative programs are a great way to bring life back into these nursing homes today. I think that animals, children and plants are positive solutions to bring something new into nursing homes. I can also see that these are not the only changes that need to occur. Changes from all areas of these institutions would be required for permanent change to come. Bill Thomas and his wife are taking the right approach to intrducing The Eden Alternative to facilities across the country. The process is slow but if they went any faster I think nursing home administrators would be overwhelmed. It is true that all of the staff need to be commited to change to an Eden Alternative program before the program is implemented. If one staff member does not go along with the changes then there will certainly be a hault in progress. By creating these special environments for our Elders we can help them age in a more positive light. I hope in the future we see more nursing homes using the Eden philosophy and creating wonderful sanctuaries for the aging members of our society.

Nature V Nurture?

The Study of Adult Development done at Harvard seems to be one of the most informative and reveling studies done on aging so far. By following those three groups of people and doing a longitudinal comparison we can really see how people age physically and mentally. It was good that they accounted for attrition in their study because the people who died during the study obviously differed from those who lived the whole course. As far as psychological health went it wasn't surprising that those who had a better mindset felt better as they aged. By becoming emotionally mature you become better able to handle situations that may have otherwise been distressing. On the flip side if you don't take situations as they come you may fail to emotionally mature and end up not being able to deal with stressful situations. The "sad-sick" were overall mentally and physically undermining themselves. I feel that they didn't fully take into account much genetic pre-disposition to certain ailments and didn't explain what they did find on genetics very thoroughly. I think that genetics may have played a bigger role than they let on. In response to the "Seven Keys to Aging Well" many of those were obvious for living a healthier life. This study must have confirmed what we already knew and added a few more aspects. I think that we do have control of how we age for the most part but we can't rule out factors that we can't control.

Red, Red Wine...

The studies on aging have been slow to come but they seem to finally be looked at more seriously. This is a great advancement seeing as how our older population is going to sky rocket in the years to come. The research on STACs is particularly interesting because it is looking at extending the human lifespan. The research done on animals has been promising in showing that STACs may be able to extend human life as well. The only problem with this is that we don't really know what quality of life will be if people start living longer. STACs may extened the life but, we don't know to what extenet. It was said in the article that the animals who took the compounds lived realitively well into old age. This is good to know but, as with any animal research, we don't know the exact effects on humans. I think that we shouldn't jump the gun an tell people to start drinking red wine for this particular compound just yet. As it said in the article, it would take 1,000 glasses of red wine to equal the amount of the compound given to the rats! With more research in this area we can learn more about STACs and their benefits to humans.