A Scholarly Guide to Wellness and Aging
As retired academics we have spent our professional lives reading and producing scholarly work in our discipline. It makes sense for us, as emeriti, to draw on the scholarship related to wellness and aging to guide the latter part of our lives. As you may know, Georgia State University has several resources to support the well being of emeriti:
- Gerontology Institute does research on issues related to aging.
- Physical Therapy and Wellness Clinic is a faculty-run clinic which offers diagnostic and rehabilitation services. To make an appointment, contact Amanda Stillings; [email protected] .
- Speech and Hearing Clinic has reduced prices on hearing screenings and comprehensive hearing tests (schedule appointments at 404-413-8044).
Following are a couple of books and websites that you may find to be helpful:
Blue Zones by John Buttner takes an anthropologist’s view of aging well. Buttner investigates areas of the world in which an unusually high number of people live to be more than 100 and calls these areas Blue Zones. He then studies their life styles and identifies nine life patterns that they share that seemed to promote long, healthy lives (e.g., a primarily plant-based diet, supportive community, moving naturally and actively each day, a spiritual community). Buttner successfully replicates elements of the nine patterns with increased health benefits in areas of the US.
In The Telemere Effect, Nobel Lauriat in medicine, Elizabeth Blackburn, and her co-author, Elissa Epel, provide a microscopic look at wellness and aging. They present ground-breaking research on telomeres, the protective tip on the end of genes. Each time a gene reproduces the telomeres become shorter. The Telomere Effect describes how the length of the telomere is an indicator of health for genes and how life events, such as stress, diet, and activity levels impact telomere length.
Two other good sources of news about new developments in wellness and aging are the New York Times Wellness Blog (e.g., Growing older and how to embrace it) and the Twitter feed Aging Research News .