Older Adults facts

While investigating facts about Older Adults, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Older adults have a disproportionately good memory of events which occurred when they were 16 to 25 years of age. A phenomenon known as the reminiscence bump.

In the US 42.6 million adults age 45 and older are chronically lonely.

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 32 of the best facts about Older Adults I managed to collect.

1. Genetic sexual attraction,where people with similar genes tend to be mutually attracted. This is often cancelled by the Westermarck effect:children raised together rarely become mutually attracted when older. Thus,separated siblings who reunite as adults have a high risk of sexual attraction.

2. Teens are more likely to engage in risky behavior when they are in a group than when they are alone, but having just one slightly older adult in the group decreases the risk-taking tendencies.

3. There's usually only a single male lion in a pride and that a lot of male cubs don't live until adulthood. Many male lions are forced out of their prides as they get older and frequently attempt to kill another pride's adult male in order to find a new home or die trying.

4. While grading the tests, Piaget noticed that young children consistently made certain types of mistakes that older children and adults didn"t make.

5. Over half of limb amputations (about 67 percent) in the United States are attributable to diabetes and related complications. In 2010, about 73,000 lower-limb amputations were performed in adults aged 20 years or older with diagnosed diabetes

6. Iguanodon was able to walk both on two and four legs. Young animals were spending more time on two legs, while older, heavier adults were spending most of the time on four legs. Iguanodon was able to quickly switch from quadrupedal to bipedal locomotion to escape from the predators.

7. A study in 2009 found that older adults who reduced calories for three months fared better in memory tests. The results, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offered the first evidence that calorie restriction could prevent age-related mental decline in humans.

8. A study of older adults showed that a mindfulness-based stress reduction program, consisting of things such as daily meditation, reduces feelings of loneliness, as well as pro-inflammatory gene expression.

9. The 1918 Spanish Flu killed through a "cytokine storm" (overreaction of the body's immune system). Therefore the virus mainly killed healthy young adults by ravaging the body with strong immune reactions, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and older adults resulted in fewer deaths.

10. Older adults with low levels of vitamin K (found chiefly in leafy greens) were nearly 1.5 times more likely to develop limitation and nearly twice as likely to develop mobility disability compared to those with sufficient levels.

What is true about older adults?

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Lamb, hogget, and mutton are terms for the meat of domestic sheep at different ages. The meat of a sheep in its first year is called a lamb, the meat of a juvenile sheep older than one year is hogget and the meat of an adult sheep is mutton.

Adult Protective Services, a program that helps older adults, and younger adults with disabilities, who are victims of abuse. - source

Tiger sharks are named that way because of their tiger-like, black stripes that cover the body of young animals. As animals become older, these stripes fade away, becoming almost invisible in adult animals.

Human breast milk banks exist around the world and provide milk for infants and even older children or adults who have some sort of medical need that breast milk can address

Newborns have greater concentrations of gold in their hair compared to older children and adults. - source

The fastest growing group of adults in prison in the US are older adults. It's estimated that by 2030, older adults will account for one third of all incarcerated people in the US.

Older adults with lower levels of Vitamin D are at significantly higher risk of developing Alzheimer's and other dementia.

When blue-footed boobies manage to not get killed by their older sibling, they don't show the effects of bullying when they're adult birds

The average American step count per day is 5,117 steps. Switzerland 9,650. Japan 7,168. Western Australia 9,695. Older studies of an Amish community found that both the adults and children logged between 14,000 & 18,000 steps per day. My average step count per day for this week was 12,346.

At birth, babies can't see as well as older children or adults and they learn to see over a period of time.

41.7 percent of African-born adults age 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 28.1 percent of native-born adults and 26.8 percent of all foreign-born adults."