And There Is Hope!

I was sent this today by my HR department. I am not sure how frequently I was "licked and groomed" as a child, so I am not sure whether this news bodes well for me or not. But - it is nice to know there is a possibility of avoiding the lunacy of old age:

"Some interesting research has been launched by looking more carefully at data on older people. We've all heard about how just about everything declines with age: muscle strength, memory, reflexes, balance, etc, etc. It used to be that gerontology statisticians were simply a little annoyed that the variation in these characteristics increases, that is, there is more spread in functioning as the average functioning declines. It made their graphs less attractive. Then some people said: "Hey, wait a minute. That means some of us aren't getting worse as we get older. How come?" That led to research with rats which showed that some "age successfully," and one correlating factor that has been well documented is their treatment at infancy. The ones that were handled a lot by humans, or groomed and licked a lot by their mothers, aged more successfully than average. Just when nice treatment no longer counts isn't known, but this observation does provide some hope that we can learn how to minimize old age decline. It is speculated that managing stress better may be one equivalent to being licked a lot by a mother rat."

We can hope.