IAGG 2009 : A societal time bomb and little media coverage beyond this blog!

The 19th edition of the IAGG conference on gerontology and geriatrics ended on July 9th 2009 in Paris. 6000 delegates returned to their 90 countries having attended their selection from among 16 tracks representing 100 hours of conferences. Everything was gigantic at IAGG,  including the number of people on our planet who will be increasingly concerned by the subject of gerontology in the coming years.

And yet  media coverage of the event was miniscule. Go on to Google news. Type in “IAGG” and you’ll see what I mean. Approximately 32 articles listed in total, and less than 10  are not duplicates. Nothing in the NY Times, IHT, or Le Figaro. Le Monde has one article: drinking coffee is good for Alzheimer’s disease !

our blogging-journalist

Nothing either in two of the main medical dailies I checked. And this absence of information in our information-drowned society is tragic because… aging is a global issue for which we are lacking far too many answers. Moreover, the messages that were communicated at this conference concerned non-trivial matters and reflect the state of the art of knowledge about aging. And finally, of what we do know, most people are not putting the right rules into practice.

What were some of the important points?

Head and shoulders above the rest was the importance of prevention. At the risk of stating the obvious, staying in the very best shape the longest time possible is the best way to have a satisfactorily healthy old age.

And yet, obesity, sedentary life styles, loss of community participation, loss of family ties, loss of gainful employment or activity, too little time for friends, loss of faith, insufficient relaxation, almost all of which can be  improved at any age,  are not only not receiving proper attention. They are rampantly increasing.

We are creating a societal time bomb as the baby boomer generation walks, waddles, or drives slowly into the sunset years, followed by  second generation couch potatoes. If we don’t do something, life expectancy will diminish.

Get out there. Turn off your computer, tv, iphone, ipod, video game. Flee fast food like the plague. Make new friends. Engage in life long learning. Think positively.

Why aren’t there thousands of articles and videos describing the “super centenarians” (those who reach 105 in reasonable shape) instead of the dozen described in the previous posts on centenarians?
Fortunately the portal HealthAndAge.com created this blog with coverage of the event. I was fortunate enough to be one of the authors without which I would possibly not have heard of the conference either, although I live in Paris.