Privacy, Practicality, and Potential: The Use of Technology for Healthy Aging

That wearable fitness device on your wrist is measuring so much more than your exercise levels. Digital tools offer unprecedented opportunities in health research and healthcare but it can come at the cost of privacy. Six days of step counts are enough to identify you among a million other people – and the type of inferences that can be made from other everyday behaviors is growing rapidly.

Camille Nebeker, EdD, MS is Associate Professor of Behavioral Medicine in the Department of Family Medicine & Public Health at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. She discusses the ethical considerations of informed consent and potential harms and benefits of these technologies. She also shares ideas on how we can work together to create systems that define and encourage safe digital health research and practice.

Watch — The Digital Revolution: Ethical Implications for Research on Healthy Aging

Wisdom Combats Loneliness

Loneliness and social isolation have become silent killers and studies have shown that they’re as dangerous to our health as smoking and obesity. But what can be done? “Behavioral epidemics need behavioral medicines,” says Dilip Jeste, MD, a geriatric neuropsychiatrist who specializes in successful aging.

Jeste suggests harnessing wisdom as a vaccine – a trait that can be honed over the lifespan. Jeste’s research demonstrates a strong correlation between creating a balance of self-reflection, compassion, emotional regulation, accepting diversity, and spirituality with lowered feelings of loneliness and isolation. Hear more about the science of wisdom during this insightful talk from the Stein Institute for Research on Aging.

Please visit https://www.uctv.tv/stein for more programs on healthy aging.

Watch — The Modern Epidemic of Loneliness: Using Wisdom as Behavioral Vaccine with Dilip Jeste – Research on Aging

Bone Health: Beyond Supplements

“This is what I learned when I thought I knew everything already about healthy eating and living,” says Vicky Newman, MS, RDN. Her informative talk goes beyond the basics of calcium intake for bone health to highlight the importance of a healthy diet combined with physical activity. Learn about the exercises that increase weight bearing and strength in addition to activities to improve your balance. Get insights into what a bone-healthy diet looks like and how to work with your doctor to minimize medications that could be taking a toll on your bones.

“Boosting Bone Health to Prevent Injury and Speed Healing” marks the 2019 return of the Stein Institute for Research on Aging lecture series to UCTV. For more with Vicky Newman, and to view the complete archive of lectures, visit https://uctv.tv/stein/.

Watch — Boosting Bone Health to Prevent Injury and Speed Healing – Research on Aging

An Update on Osteoporosis

Our skeleton is not a fixed structure. We are building bone and breaking down bone throughout our entire life. When and how does normal musculoskeletal aging become a medical issue?

Gina Woods, MD, a board-certified endocrinologist, explains the ways bone density changes over time and what internal and external factors can influence bone density. She shares how you can evaluate your fracture risk as well as new approaches to prevention and treatment.

Watch Osteoporosis 2018: Approaches to Prevention and Treatment – Research on Aging