Purpose, connection, money and the social side of ageing.
Living Well
The claim that isolation is as harmful as smoking gets quoted constantly and is more slippery than it sounds. The underlying finding is real, and the useful part is what distinguishes loneliness from being alone.
Living Well
Sense of purpose predicts mortality, disability and even the rate at which people use preventive healthcare. The effect survives adjustment, and it is more practical than it sounds.
Living Well
Age itself is a poor predictor of driving safety. Specific capacities are much better ones — and losing a licence carries real health costs that are rarely weighed against the risk.
Living Well
Appetite falls with age for reasons that are physiological as much as emotional. The combination of eating alone and cooking for one is one of the more reliable routes into undernutrition.
Living Well
Home hazard modification works, but only in the people who are already at high risk — and only when it is done properly rather than as a checklist of removed rugs.
Living Well
The move is far easier at seventy than at eighty-two, and the features that matter are not the ones estate agents advertise. Most people decide during a crisis, which is the worst time to choose.
Living Well
Fraud aimed at older people is designed around urgency, authority and isolation rather than gullibility. Knowing the structure of the approach is more protective than knowing the individual stories.
Living Well
Spousal carers have measurably worse health outcomes than matched non-carers, and the effect is concentrated in those who report strain. Most of the protective measures are refused as luxuries.
Living Well
Persistent pain affects around half of older adults living at home and is both under-treated and badly treated. The shift away from opioids has been right in principle and patchy in what replaced them.
Living Well
The design principles are well established and cost very little. Most of them work by reducing the demand on memory and judgement rather than by adding equipment.
Living Well
The documents matter less than the conversations. Most families making decisions in an intensive care unit have never been told what the person would have wanted, and are asked to guess.
Living Well
Excess deaths in heatwaves and cold snaps fall overwhelmingly on people over 75. The physiology behind that is specific, and most of the protective measures have to be taken before the weather arrives.
Living Well
After several hundred articles about individual interventions, the honest summary is short, unglamorous, and considerably less interesting than the supplement industry would like.
