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Healthy Aging: The new term may be 'oldhood' Sunday Aug 20, 2017 at 12:01 AM By Sharon Johnson for the Mail Tribune I have it on good authority that “90 is not the new 70.” You may have heard it stated differently in the past — maybe it was suggested “50 is the new 30” or “60 is the new 40.” Those observations are supposed to make us feel younger at heart, I think. And maybe they do. But let’s be real. Most definitely, 90 is not the new 70. I meet people older than 90 all the time who are lovely and vibrant agers and appear much younger than their years. But there is a wear-and-tear theory in play when it comes to getting older, and it needs to be respected. A recent Sunday New York Times article and several AARP online postings in the past few weeks have prompted me to think about a concept called “oldhood.” We have childhood, and we have adulthood. Why not oldhood? It will apparently be central to a forthcoming book by a geriatrics professor at the University of California, San Francisco. I like the term “elderhood" better, but I am not writing a book. Think about it like this: In terms of health care across demographic age groupings, “there are 17 subgroups of children from birth through age 18. There are five groups for adults. But Americans 65 and older, including the two fastest-growing segments of the population — the 80- to 90-year-olds and those older than 100 — are lumped into a single group, as if bodies and behaviors don’t change over the last half century of life.” One huge example of how that impacts older adults is vaccines. As we age, our immune system weakens, and we are more vulnerable to infections that can lead to illness, hospitalization and death. We are reminded to get flu shots, pneumonia vaccinations and tetanus boosters, but the protective effects may be very different than they are for younger populations. In addition, some vaccines — and many of the prescription medications we take for the conditions we get when we don’t get vaccinated — have not gone through clinical trials on old bodies, so “older adults may need different dosing or even biologically different vaccines.” We just don’t know enough about healthy aging. Harken to this, health care experts and advocates: There are a lot of us coming toward you. “We need better guidelines — nuanced for people over age 65 as for those below.” Let’s use shingles as an example. My parents had a wretched time with shingles. Neither received the vaccine and both of them experienced painful episodes, which made me relentlessly determined to get a shingles vaccination as soon as I turned 65. I am glad I did, but a few years later I still got shingles. Fortunately I got a less-debilitating version, nothing close to the anguish my mother and father went through. My health provider tells me I might get it again. So I have learned as much as I can (www.webmd.com). I am aware it is sometimes exacerbated by stress or injury, and early diagnosis is important. Ever learning. After all, “life is a three-act play.” We need to play our part well if it is to have a happy ending. — Sharon Johnson is a retired Oregon State University associate professor. Reach her at [email protected].