The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's proposal to rescind a regulation for payday lenders could be detrimental to seniors, reports MarketWatch . The rule requires lenders to determine if the borrower could afford loan payments and still cover basic living expenses. The high-cost, short-term payday loans are usually applied to payouts of no more than $500, to be paid at time of the borrower's next paycheck. They have an average yearly percentage rate of 391 percent and are available from lenders' storefronts or online, says the Center for Responsible Lending. "It puts them in harm's way and is keeping people trapped in an unaffordable cycle of debt that leaves them worse off than when they started," notes Diane Standaert at the Center for Responsible Lending. Seniors living on a fixed income with little savings are frequently the most common individuals at risk of needing payday loans. They often need them to cover medical bills or rent. But because they may be unable to pay them off from a following paycheck, Standaert said they wind up with higher overdraft fees, high interest, and possibly bankruptcy. Payday lenders concentrate on older populations, especially because they receive guaranteed income in the form of Social Security benefits. "Continuing to target legal and licensed state-regulated lenders through regulatory restrictions on their ability to offer short-term credit options will push consumers into dangerous, harmful alternatives," warned the Community Financial Services Association of America.

Changing sleep patterns can be a key effect of aging, with lighter sleep cycles often asserting themselves in middle age, reports the Portland Press Herald . "Morningness," or the tendency to rise before or with the birds, occurs as people's preferred bedtime skews earlier with age. In addition, older adults take longer to fall asleep, and wake up more frequently; they tend to linger in the deepest phases of sleep for less time than younger adults, and they receive less rapid eye movement sleep. Studies have determined poor sleep can be especially hazardous to older adults, contributing to a preponderance of falls, depression and anxiety, memory problems, and heightened suicide risk. Certain sleep disorders also have been linked to a higher risk of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and dementia. According to the University of Washington's Michael V. Vitiello, researchers have documented the changes in circadian rhythms that transpire with aging, but they are still learning why they happen.

The January 2019 jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculated that the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 4 percent and the economy added 304,000 new jobs, with almost 40 percent of all employment gains driven by Americans 55 and older, according to Forbes . Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said the net increase in employment between 2000 and 2017 was concentrated among workers 55 and older. The job market's prosperity is directly related to older workers' lengthening participation in the labor pool, with one hypothesis suggesting the Great Recession's effect on older workers gave them a financial impetus to stay employed. Yet an analysis of data over the previous 20 years shows the workforce participation rate for all employees has fallen more than four percentage points, while younger workers, ages 16 to 19, have experienced the sharpest drop in workforce participation, nearly 17 percentage points. However, workers aged 55 to 64 have expanded their participation nearly six percentage points, and those over 65 saw an even bigger increase of 7.7 percentage points from 1998 to 2018. BLS forecasts that baby boomers' workforce growth rate will overtake all other age groups between 2014 and 2024.

A study of 7,609 U.S. Medicare beneficiaries published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society examined the prevalence and effects of pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety, breathing difficulty, and sleep problems to determine that almost 50 percent of adults ages 65 and older have two or more of these symptoms, and 20 percent have three or more, reports ScienceDaily . Yet clinicians often overlook these symptoms and the more serious health issues they augur, because beneficiaries only discuss one or more symptoms during a visit. "Our results indicate that the overall burden of symptoms is something the clinician should consider, as it may have an impact that is not apparent when just dealing with diseases and symptoms individually, one at a time," said University of Washington School of Medicine Professor Kushang Patel. "For many older adults, symptoms often interfere with accomplishing daily activities." These findings have spurred the University of California, San Francisco's Lauren Hunt and Alexander Smith to urge more investment in pharmacologic and nonpharmacological interventions and improved training among healthcare workers to address the symptom burden in older adults.

The Black Pelican Oceanfront Restaurant in Kitty Hawk, N.C., is one of 12 participating eateries in the Healthy Carolinians of the Outer Banks Dementia Task Force, a collaborative project among businesses, government agencies, restaurants, and The Outer Banks Hospital in Nags Head, N.C., to train employees to become dementia-friendly, reports the Virginian-Pilot . Task force volunteers have spent three years training restaurant staff in how to interact with people with dementia. Employees view a presentation about dementia and its signs, engage in roleplaying, and take a quiz about how to respond when those with dementia come into restaurants. Volunteer Jan Collins says she wants to get at least half of local dining establishments to enroll in the program. She notes that families and caregivers often cope with "despair and isolation" because they cannot leave the house, which the task force hopes to alleviate. "There are so many people that need assistance and we have a lot of resources, but if we don't talk about it, they don't find them," Collins says.

New research has found that older women with sleep apnea could be more likely to have a certain kind of heart trouble, reports CBS Philadelphia . Sleep apnea is a common but potentially dangerous disorder where people temporarily stop breathing in their sleep. The new research shows that sleep apnea risks are different between men and women. "We know that obstructive sleep apnea is two to four times more common in men than it is in women," Dr. Reena Mehra of the Cleveland Clinic said. "But when women become post-menopausal, then our risk for obstructive sleep apnea actually increases." The increased risk for older women could be due to hormonal changes, but doctors say it might also be due to functional changes in the upper airway. The study examined data for more than 4,800 people and found that for individuals who reported obstructive sleep apnea or snoring, heart imaging showed an increased thickness in the left ventricular wall — the heart's main pumping chamber — and the thickness was greater for women. Doctors say changes in the heart of the snoring group could be an indication of undiagnosed sleep apnea, which appears to be potentially more dangerous for women as they age.

USA Today warns that an array of health and financial problems are converging on African-Americans as they age and could have a devastating impact on many. Black people as they age are more likely than white people to suffer medical conditions that lead to more severe health problems, not to mention higher health care costs and higher insurance costs. These problems are exacerbated by financial woes that range from inadequate savings to lower homeownership rates than whites as a group. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, CEO of the Global Policy Solutions social-change strategy firm, adds, "By the time we reach an age when chronic diseases catch up with us, we are ... dropping out of the workforce and relying on disability or taking early Social Security retirement." A recent CIGNA Health Disparities study found that: four in 10 African-American males aged 20 or older have high blood pressure; African-American women are 40 percent more likely to die of breast cancer than white women; African-Americans are 80 percent more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than non-Hispanic whites; and, finally, black people are more than twice as likely as white people to have various kinds of dementia. With a new report from Prudential Financial showing that 57 percent of black households have no retirement savings versus 44 percent of the general population, working longer becomes imperative for many. To help improve the finances of older African-Americans, an AARP Foundation program dubbed Work for Yourself@50+ has been successful putting low-income seniors back into the job sector. Also, the Senior Community Service Employment Program funded through the Older Americans Act has helped employ unemployed lower-income adults 55 and over.

A new study into the mental health of seniors, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society , has found links between the onset of late-life depression, walking speed, and pace length, reports Cosmos Magazine . Researchers in Dublin worked with more than 3,600 people aged 50 and over who had not previously been diagnosed as having depression. The researchers used the GAITRite system, a computerized mat with pressure sensors, to analyze gaits. Participants completed two walks in each of three conditions: at a usual walking pace, walking while carrying out a manual task, and walking while carrying out a cognitive task. Data from walks in each condition were averaged to arrive at information for gait speed, step length, step width and other actions. The report found that older men and women who were newly diagnosed with depression had a slower walking speed and a shorter step length, versus those without the condition. "Both depression and gait problems commonly coexist in later life, and it appears that older people with a combination of both conditions are at particularly high risk of functional decline," the researchers said. "Additionally, these findings raise the possibility that gait analysis could be used as a tool to identify those at higher risk of late-life depression." Researchers said the study also suggests that exercise programs aimed at improving walking speed and balance may help prevent the onset of depression in later life.

Blood cells could hold the key to aging, according to a new Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine study cited by Medical Xpress . The research, published in Aging Cell , found human blood cells have an intrinsic clock that remains steady even after transplant. According to the research team, the clock could control human aging and may underlie blood cancers. Dr. Shigemi Matsuyama, an associate professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine, led the international team of researchers. Together, they measured cellular age in blood cells transplanted from healthy donors to leukemia patients, focusing on donor-recipient pairs of widely different ages. According to Matsuyama, "We found young blood cells stay young in older people. There was no accelerated aging of young blood cells in an older human body." The researchers found the opposite was also true — i.e., blood cells from adult donors transferred to a child stay older. The cells retained their intrinsic age almost 20 years after transplant.

CBS Boston recalls previous research that suggested having more education earlier in life could build up a robust enough brain reserve to slow down the harmful effects of cognitive decline that often can occur late in life. However, in a new study published in the journal Neurology , a research team found that education may not be as important in combating cognitive decline and dementia as once thought. The study involved almost 3,000 older men and women who were followed for an average of nearly eight years. The researchers found that attaining more education did not seem to protect people from eroding thinking skills once the process of cognitive decline started. People with higher levels of education at the start of the study did show richer thinking skills on a number of tests. However, education levels did not seem to have an effect on how quickly people progressed once cognitive decline, and in some cases dementia, began.