A wise man once said, "___"

Dr. Robert H. Goddard once said, " Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the old, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and the wrong. Sometime in your life you will have been all of these."

Population Continues to Grow...

As we hear about all of these diseases more and more each and every day, the population continues to grow at an accelerated rate. Heart diseases, cancer, diabetes etc. have become a part of our daily vocabulary. One example is Pakistan, their population of people over the age of 60 is increasing rapidly. Below is a chart ...(thanks to http://www.specialsedu.com/2011/01/situation-of-elderly-population-in.html)

Shameful

a women went to collect pension money..,
but the govenment ignored to give pension to her..,
she begged and cryied out.., but they thrown her out side on the road.., she directly falls on big stone and died...,

but the two childrens they dont know that, her mother died..,
they crying for her mother...,

but you know that.., her pension is 200 rs per month....,
her life cost is 200 rs..., so is the life is cheaper than money...,

so friends..., i am begging & requesting you all.., dont waste ur money .., by unwanted partys.., start your year with helping others..,
please share sum pocket money what you have in the new year....,
party may give happy for sum time..., but helping poor people in the new year gives year time happy..,

but sad to say that...,friends do u know that..., no media and no political leader came to them..

A Story circulated on Facebook

Delhi govt committed to providing all help to elderly: CM Dikshit

New Delhi:- Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said her government is committed toewards extending all possible help to the senior citizens in the city.

A senior citizen council has been constituted by the city government which meets on a regular basis to monitor the progress of the schemes meants for the Elderly. An important aspect of the scheme is to provide a monthly pension of Rs. 1,000 to 2.5 lakh to senior citizens per month. Not only this the government is also running a number of Old Age Care Homes and recreation centers for the Elderly.

“The elders must be given due respect in society. Our government is committed to provide all possible help to them by sincerely implementing various schemes meant for them,” said she

Exercise cuts risk of fractures in elderly

Washington:- A new study states that home based exercises which r followed by home training cuts down risk of hip fractures among Elderly women.

According to the researches exercise is linked with long term effects on balancing and manner of walking and also helps in protection of hip fractures in Elderly women.

“Falls are responsible for at least 90 percent of all hip fractures. Hip fractures place the greatest demands on resources and have the greatest effect on patients because they are associated with high mortality rates and increased morbidity,” the author writes as background in the article.

Dr. Raija Korpelainen, of Oulu Deaconess Institute, Oulu, Finland, and colleagues performed an extended follow-up at reducing risk factors for fractures in elderly women with osteopenia (a reduction in bone mass, or low levels of bone calcium.

160 women who participated in the randomized control trial, 84 were assigned to an exercise group, while the remaining 76 were placed in the control group.

The training session was held once a week for a 6 month period from October to March each year from 1998 to 2001, in which the women in the exercise group attended supervised balance and leg strength..

The authors found that, “ fractures were proximal in 52.2% of the control group and 17.6 % of the exercise group. Moderate lifelong physical activity decreased the overall risk of having any fractures during the total follow-up period.”

Additionally, there was no hip fractures in exercise group while there were five fractures found in control group.

The ratio of death between exercise group  and control group was 1:8 which is 0.003 per 1000 women per year in exercise group and 0.03 was the rate in control group.

According to the authors findings, “ 30 months of supervised, mainly home based exercises followed by voluntary home training had a positive long-term effect on balance and gait in high-risk elderly women”.

The study has been published in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Vitamin C deficiency rampant in India’s elderly population

Washington: Up to three quarters of older people in India have vitamin C deficiency due to poor dietary habits, smoking and consumption of tobacco, a new study has suggested.

The study, coordinated by Professor Astrid Fletcher of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in collaboration with Aravind Eye Hospital Pondicherry and the All India Institute for Medical Sciences in Delhi, is the first-ever large screening of vitamin C blood levels in the elderly Indian population.

Vitamin C is an essential nutrient for human health, playing a role from maintenance and repair of tissues to antioxidant activities. This study Vitamin C deficiency is primarily due to a diet, which is low in fruit and vegetables.

Smoking or chewing tobacco and cooking with fuels such as wood crops or dung (used by 70 percent of the rural population) can cause depletion of Vitamin C blood levels.

One of the effects of tobacco and inhaling fumes from home or cooking fires is oxidative stress (which can cause damage to cells) and the body uses vitamin C to combat this.

The research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, highlights marked differences between the study locations in the north and south of the country, although in both regions the percentages of vitamin C deficient people over 60 years of age were extremely high, with 74 percent in the north and 46 percent in the south.

Only 11 percent and 26 percent respectively, met the criteria for adequate levels. Vitamin C levels were also found to vary seasonally, in conjunction with the monsoon months, thought to reflect the lower intake of fruit and vegetables.

The large population-based study involved over 5000 people aged 60 years or over from rural villages and small towns and included interviews about their diet, blood analysis and malnutrition assessments.

“ While much attention has focused on increasing levels of obesity in India, the problem of poor nutrition in the older population has received much less attention even though India has one of the fastest growing older populations,” Dr Ravindran, principal author of the study said.

“In poor communities, such as in our study, consideration needs to be given to measures to improve the consumption of vitamin C rich foods, and to discourage the use of tobacco and biomass fuels,” he added.

The study has been published in PloS One.

Injuries and illnesses ‘increase levels of elderly disability

Injuries and Illness increase levels of elderly disability

Washington: The new study reveals that the older adults land up in the hospitals due to deteriorating functional abilities, basically among those who are physically frail.

The research was undertaken by Yale School of Medicine researchers  under the supervision of Thomas M. Gill, a Human foundation Professor of internal medicine (geriatrics).

“We now have a much better understanding of the complex and highly dynamic disabling process” said Gill

Gill and his team examined 754 adults age 70 and older for 10 years with monthly tele-phonic conversation and interviews starting in 1998.

The team learned that out of the 637 participants, 90.7% had been hospitalized at least once and 94.3 % people’s activities have been restricted for a month.

“To address this increase, more aggressive efforts will be needed to prevent and manage intervening illness and injuries, given their apparent role in precipitating and perpetuating the disabling process,” said Gill.

 The report was published in Jama Journal

Hats off to the great man..

A legend hangs up his boots On the last Month . Finally, Elattuvalapil Sreedharan has been allowed to retire, at the age of 79. A man who built the Calcutta Metro, Konkan Railway and the Delhi Metro. But he is best remembered for re-building in just 46 days the Pamban bridge which in 1963 was blown away by a cyclone into the sea. Here is a man who is honest to core, brooked no nonsense and set an example for others. A true leader who walked his talk. He truly deserves the Bharat Ratna. Now he is Coming to Kerala to Fulfill the dreams of Malayalis "The Kochin Metro "


India has much gratitude for this great engineer. He is Elattuvalapil Sreedharan known as the The "metro man of India". He is quite a sensational project manager, who almost always gets the project complete on time or before schedule, he fought all the delays caused by bureaucratic red tape, corruption and lack of funds.
Sreedharan's willpower has moved mountains. He is not just a dreamer but also a builder, but most of all one who has dedicated his achievements to every Indian. He stands out as a legend in the Indian Engineering history. His major projects being the Delhi Metro and the Konkan Railways.

This 75+ year-old Managing Director of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation only desires the progress of his country. He wanted Delhi to have a world-class metro rail project to change the meaning of urban transport in India. And he did it.

The Konkan Railway project came to him in his retirement. It was a challenging task----760 km of rail tracks from Mumbai to Kochi through the rugged hills of the Western Ghats. As usual the Environmentalists protested, politicians said it shall not be done and the project ran short of money. But Sreedharan raised public bonds to finance it, taking everyone ahead.

Kiran Bedi explains why Sreedharan is worthy of the title: “He is not in his 40s or 50s, but he is in his 70s, a time when we normally retire. Sreedharan has given the best metro concept for the railway of the country with integrity, vision, with commitment and with remarkable professional skills. There is no other person better than him in this category.”

Sreedharan insists he does not have any special skills to get the best out of people. "I always found that people cooperate if you work for a good cause," he says.

India says thank you sir.
What a joy it is to take a ride in the Delhi Metro!

Something to Think About

“Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.”

Pearl S. Buck quotes

Memories