How to Grow Younger

Now that doctors have made it possible for people to live longer, their next problem is to make old age tolerable. This week, in Live Long and Like It (Public Affairs Committee; 20-c-), a doctor whose specialty is old age suggested a few helpful hints. The author: Dr. C. Ward Crampton, 70, chairman of the New York County Medical Society's committee on geriatrics and gerontology.

A man does not grow old in one package, says Dr. Crampton. A man of 65 may have a 40-year-old heart, 50-year-old kidneys, an 80-year-old liver, and try to live the life of a 30-year-old. A specialist should find out just where old age has got in its worst licks. The examination should include a search for damaged organs, and a psychological study of the patient's worries and hopes. Then the doctor should recommend "antiaging" devices. For instance, diet: at 60 most men need more protein, calcium, iron than men of 30, but fewer fats and carbohydrates.

Other practical pointers: exercise to give a man a "high head, a flat belly, a capable heart"; care in the use of alcohol, which is "a dangerous enemy, an agreeable acquaintance, and a helpful friend." Doctors should tell their elderly patients whether a drink would help them (alcohol is a vasodilator, relaxing the coronary arteries) or hurt them (cocktails are bad for arthritics). Being overweight is not really a problem of old age, says Dr. Crampton, for fat men seldom live that long. But the public should put more of its money into research into chronic diseases, which make old age miserable. The U.S., says Dr. Crampton, has been spending $22 per death for cancer research, $13,000 per death for infantile paralysis, and only a few cents per victim for the most common killer of all, diseases of the heart and arteries.

In Wolverhampton, England, Dr. J. H. Sheldon, director of medicine in the Royal Hospital, made a survey of 477 old people in the community, reported that old men are either in very bad health or very good health for their age, and fairly constant about it, while aging women showed a steady reduction in general health.

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