Hello and welcome to the San Antonio Files.

I'm Liz Ruiz.

And today, KLRN along with the San Antonio Report, looks at aging well in Bear County.

It's an important topic.

One in five Americans will be 65 or older by the end of the decade.

And here in San Antonio, the total population aged 60 and over is expected to grow by approximately 20%.

It's about 464,000 individuals by 2040.

What does the future here look like for those over 65?

Are we as a community aging well in Bear County?

Well, we've assembled a group of experts to delve into these questions.

With us today, Dr. Sadiq Seshadri, director of the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer's and Neurodegenerative Diseases at UT Health Science, UT Health, San Antonio, RATHER, and Jane Passione, managing director of Collective Impact at the San Antonio Area Foundation and leader of the Successfully Aging and Living in San Antonio Coalition.

And Christine Davila, President and executive director of MRD Housing Texas.

So thank you all so much for being here.

And now, as we said, there's some pretty heavy statistics there that we talked about as far as aging here in San Antonio, the population here and across the United States and according to the US Census Bureau, by the year 2030, for older adults, 65 and older will outnumber children.

The first time in our country.

And here in San Antonio, of course, the total population aged 60 and over is expected to grow by about 20%.

As I mentioned, 464,000 individuals by 2040.

This is a significant demographic shift.

And so what does that mean for our community and we're going to begin with Jane, the leader of successfully aging and living in San Antonio, part of the San Antonio Area Foundation, to tell us exactly what that group is about.

I love the acronym, by the way, salsa.

Everybody loves salsa.

So it does get hot and spicy over there.

So we are a collective impact initiative where we have over 50 organizations and about ten individuals working in the aging ecosystem.

And I'm known for saying this aging so cool, everyone's doing it.

So for us to benefit from the longevity dividend with all our older adults aging longer, we're looking at areas of caregiving, housing, transportation and we also house at the Area Foundation.

The reframing aging Initiative.

So it's a long term social change endeavor designed to really look at how we talk about aging.

And so it sounds it does not actually provide the services, but you have partnerships and and so you work with them to help improve the lives of older people in San Antonio.

Yeah, build efficiencies.

And Kristen's organization is a part of the social network and we're working in areas of housing because housing is a big issue for older adults.

And when I say older adults and people with disabilities also because we need accessible housing, yes, we do.

So along those lines, what do you think are the greatest needs of our aging community?

You've mentioned housing.

I think in hand with housing is transportation.

So transportation is the the other big piece to this, the latest studies show that we outlive our driving abilities by about 7 to 10 years.

So what do we do in San Antonio when that happens?

So when we think about housing, we've also got to think about that transportation plan as we're thinking about aging in place or aging and community.

And I'm going to open up that question to the rest of the panel.

Kristin, I'd add to that the the housing piece and having housing that's not only affordable, but that is accessible as well.

The city of San Antonio has a strategic housing implementation plan that calls for approximately 11,000 homes that need to be rehabbed so that people can age in place.

And those don't even include homes that just need modifications so that they're more accessible.

So we've really got to look at our existing housing stock and be mindful of accessibility when we're building new new housing as well.

And Dr. Seshadri, I mean, you work in research at UT Health on Alzheimer's and neurodegenerative diseases, but how does transportation factor into what you do?

I'm a neurologist.

I both treat and do research into how to prevent and how to treat and manage the different neurological illnesses we get as we age.

One in five of us, unfortunately, will develop dementia before we die unless we are able to do something to prevent it.

And one of the things we believe really helps build brain resilience and prevent the symptoms as well as the progression is community, social, cognitive, meaningful engagement, you know, the physical activity, the cognitive activity, the social engagement.

And for that, it's very important that people be able to live in age in place and be able to connect just as they used to.

And we're talking about housing and you're with Mitch, said Texas.

You have 15 apartment communities throughout the state of Texas.

How many here in San Antonio?

We have seven properties here in San Antonio and we have three of those properties that serve older adults exclusively.

So we're seeing that once, once residents move into those units, particularly those that are subsidized by HUD, they they stay there until they are no longer able to care for themselves.

And the demand and the waitlist for those units can be a year to two years wait to even get into one of those units.

And they're very few and far between.

It's like finding finding an affordable unit and finding one that's accessible is like finding a needle in a haystack, to be quite honest.

What about what the city is doing about affordable housing, especially for the elderly?

I guess you know about that.

So I serve on the housing commission, the city of San Antonio's housing commission, and our role is to oversee the implementation of the Strategic Housing Implementation Plan.

And there are many different strategies that the city is taking to address the need for housing for older adults.

One of those is making it easier to develop adus or accessory dwelling units in your backyard.

Some people refer to those as mother in law units or caseworkers, so that not only can you have a place for potentially an older adult, a family member to age in community and keep up that social connection.

But also it could also be a source of income for maybe an older adult that is in their home and able to age in their home, but wants to rent out that accessory dwelling unit.

And Kristin, before we go any further, I've got to thank you for being here today for making that effort, because you recently had a ball.

I did.

I did.

I did.

I had a fall in my front yard.

I just stepped the wrong way and my ankle rolled and I very quickly started to experience and understand the mobility challenges a lot of older adults and not just older adults, people everywhere in our community face all the time.

And I did go through my mind if I have to have surgery on my foot and have to be in a wheelchair, my restrooms are not accessible.

So it just it helped me to think about those things in my own home.

And I think it's important for all of us to be thinking about that and be mindful of that, not just in where do my parents live, but is my home accessible to my friends, to my family members?

Thank you so much for making that extra effort, to be sure.

Sure.

And I asked if you were in pain before we started.

You said you're by your side.

So when everybody to know that and Dr. Seshadri, there is some exciting research going on at UT Health, and I wanted you to tell us about it.

I mean, but before that, I hear people using the word dementia and Alzheimer's interchangeably.

But Alzheimer's is just one of the most common types of dementia, correct?

SSU So let me speak to that, and I'd also like to speak to some of the points.

Kristian raised.

So we use the word dementia.

When a person, an adult loses some memory thinking or emotional control abilities that they had.

So dementia is not one diagnosis, it's a syndrome.

And unfortunately it's a syndrome with a lot of negative connotations.

People are terrified to hear that word because of the implication means of loss of control, loss of autonomy, loss of respect.

But that is, of course, misplaced because it's the same person.

Do they fit the diagnosis that they were yesterday with all the abilities and lifetime of experience?

You know, Tony Bennett, two days before he passed, could sing better than any of us in this room, Right?

That's amazing.

And how how does that happen?

How is he able to do that?

So late?

And so there are abilities that we acquired throughout our life.

And these are stored in different ways.

There are certain things like cycling or swimming or for Tony Bennett singing and playing that become procedural memory.

So sometimes you may have somebody who may not remember exactly what day it is, but I had a patient who could drive 40 miles from central Massachusetts to Loganair Airport to pick up his fiancee, but not remember, unless somebody reminded him that this was the day to do that, not recommending that somebody drive, but he didn't do it safely.

So there are different types of memory there is the memory for things that are well established and often that remains as we develop dementia.

So people may remember their childhood home.

They may remember their people whom they knew at that time and events that happened at that time.

But what happened the previous day or a week earlier, that's called semantic memory.

These are recent memories and encoding that.

Getting that out can be hard.

Sometimes the emotional content of that memory remains.

So somebody may remember that they were happy yesterday, but not exactly what was done.

All the same as is the term we use when two proteins, amyloid and TAL, these are both proteins that we all have in the brain, but an abnormal form of amyloid builds up to a level where it starts interfering with the ability of the neurons to talk to each other, and then an abnormal form of this other protein called tau builds up and ends up killing the neurons and that if you see dementia in the presence of too much amyloid and too much dough, that's what we call Alzheimer's.

One of the issues you bring up is that dementia is not an illness that affects one person.

It just affects the whole family and community.

The church, their friends.

And for every one person with dementia, there are at least three others whose lives are turned upside down.

And caregiving is a medical illness in many ways.

And that's one of the things we research.

You know, caregiving has a lot of it can give joy, but it can also shocking your life span.

Where do those people go, especially if they are on a fixed income?

What happens to them?

Jane, You know, well, family, I think families, the first line of defense.

But we do have a crisis in caregiving in America.

And I think that we have to address we have to address that through policy.

And we have so many caregivers actually work a full time job and then go home and look after their loved one.

So it's not just it's not just one thing.

And I think when we look at older adults aging and some of the things that can happen, we know that 50% of the disability community are older adults, right?

But sometimes we don't look at it like that.

So we have to solve upstream from from here.

And I'm really excited about all the new medications that are coming out that show excellent promise in this area of dementia.

I will tell us about some of the exciting research because I, I think we all have heard about cancer survivors.

But are there Alzheimer's survivors?

Well, we have exciting developments this year that after nearly two decades, there's one medication that's FDA approved and other that should be FDA approved by the end of the year.

Hopefully, these are medicines that do passive immunotherapy that is, they are monoclonal antibodies that bind to this amyloid I talked about and take it out of the brain.

And so the we think, modify the course of the disease.

And they have been shown, however, they're not completely safe and they're not for everybody.

And before we move away from this topic, a lot of us forget where we left the car keys or we might forget an appointment or somebody's name since.

So if I forgive, if I forget any of your habits, forgive me because I just turned 70.

There I said it.

I'm 70.

So.

But how do we know when it's just part of the normal aging process or when it's Alzheimer's or dementia?

As we grow older, especially, we all sometimes, occasionally forget something that is important and that is normally aging.

When there is a consistent pattern of forgetting important things in a way that interferes with somebodies ability to do the professional or personally meaningful things they want to do, that's when we call it dementia.

But if there is a concern, particularly people who are very highly educated, very highly functional, they may be the first to detect that they're not performing it quite the level they did earlier.

And then if you go talk to your primary care, I talk to a neurologist.

Sometimes they can do testing which can specify whether in fact this is the early stage of a progressive illness.

And that's important because the early stage is when we are best able to treat and slow down progression.

And I know because a lot of us see celebrities and we say, Oh, well, they're aging well.

I mean, look at well, Brad Pitt is 60 years old.

I can't believe Brad Pitt is 60 years old, but Tom Hanks is 67.

And and Rita moreno is 91 and she's still making movies.

So but then we think, well, you know, they're celebrities and they're wealthy and they have access to anything they need.

But how does socioeconomic status affect aging here in San Antonio and Bear County, any of you?

It's it's huge.

I mean, it's the it's a huge impact.

The fastest growing population of people experiencing homelessness are older adults.

Saving for retirement is just unfathomable when you're living on a Social Security wage of, say, $1,000 a month.

You know, how do you how that severely limits your your options that are available to you.

And I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we're seeing with the availability of affordable housing here in San Antonio, is that the folks that are earning 30% of the area median income or less, and that's about $20,000 for a single person or less.

Those those folks are the ones that are having the most difficult time finding not only an affordable place to live, but one that's safe and one that's in healthy conditions.

But if people are on a fixed income, can they age successfully?

Can they still, you know, be active and socialize?

And here in San Antonio, Bear County, Jane, are there some services available, especially I have the centers, the our senior centers or I like to call them strong centers.

They're amazing.

If you've not been in one, I suggest you go in there.

Life is going on.

It's it's workout equipment.

It's classes.

This is a place where anybody could go for that social connectedness that we're talking about that's so important.

So, yes, I think that we have a lot of opportunity here in San Antonio to be connected and stay connected.

And when we think about our aging in place plans with or we're aging in place with a disability or not, we need to make sure that transportation and caregiver support are all connected to this thing.

The things you love doing now need to be the things that you do continually, even when you don't drive.

Well, I can speak from experience there because I have a brother with a disability and so he doesn't drive.

But I really prodded him and said, Why don't you just try the senior center?

You Babcock Road.

It's the Bob Ross Center.

The swimming pool is does they've got a swimming pool.

And there is a man there who's 101 years old and he will tell my brother, I'll be back to play bingo, but I'm going to go with the mermaids and I'm going to go swimming with it because there are some women go swimming class is the only male, but he's 101 years old and what a wonderful example that is.

But he goes to the center every day and now I have seen such a change in my brother.

Instead of sitting there looking at the four walls or looking for what's on TV, you know, he's active.

He goes, he plays bingo.

They have other activities for them.

He's learning about computers.

It's it's amazing.

I'm amazed at the exercise equipment that they have and all of the other activities.

He's even doing karaoke.

So I am to telling you, if any of our viewers are hesitant about this, just give it a try.

Go to the senior center.

He said, Well, I can't drive.

He takes video trends and that is just such a tremendous help.

I think we're very fortunate here in San Antonio to have via trends, to offer services for people who can't drink beer.

Trance is great, but there are new link service available in certain areas.

Luckily, I'm in one of those areas where it's an on demand, right?

So that's all those rights are accessible for people who look like me because not all rides, you know, Uber and Lyft don't have to take someone like me or if I have a service dog, they don't have to take it.

But I think Bay is doing a great job of connecting, making sure that we have those connections and that transportation isn't that barrier.

And I'd like to ask you, all of you that have come in contact with super agers and what do we think is the criteria for achieving that?

Because I want to be a super ager, too.

I mean, we're able to live longer because of advances in medicine and technology, but we don't want to just be living there, you know, not able to move.

And so also, how do we become super agers?

He so much.

There is a great documentary out right now about longevity.

It's on Netflix.

I can't remember the name of it, but it talks about the blue zones.

So diet part of the world.

Yeah, well, part of the blues, the blue zones are where we've seen more people reaching 100 and over, basically.

And I think locally, Linda Linda Loma in California.

In California is one of those places like parts of Greece, Japan.

But what's interesting is they look at these blue zones and find out the social connectedness and activity, physical activity, not just going to the gym and working out, but actually gardening and things where you're just doing exercise as part of your life.

Those are really big things.

And doing the salsa music is good.

There was actually a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that said dancing help prevent dementia.

So you're absolutely right.

All right.

I'll get those J-Lo videos.

And it really doesn't have to be a lot of exercise.

Right?

But it doesn't at all.

Any exercise is better than being sedentary.

And gosh, I could go on and on, but they're telling me time's almost up.

So but we have time for, you know, last your final thoughts.

Anything you would like to convey about how we can help our aging community age?

Well, I would one one thing that we can all do is change the way that we talk about aging and the way that we think about aging, because that I'm trying to remember how many years and seven and a half, seven and a half years that can add to your life simply by changing the way that you look at aging, that you're not, Oh, I'm getting older.

It's I'm older, I'm wiser.

And look what I've been able to accomplish.

Let's use that as momentum for new opportunities, new adventures.

LUTELY Absolutely.

I think as a community we can that's one way very easy way that we can really support each other as we age.

Yes, I think that aging is good, ageism is bad.

That's what we need to to look at.

We need to counter ageism as much as we can out there as we move down this I mean, as a community that we have such a great opportunity to benefit from this longevity dividend for the experience, wisdom and knowledge of older adults.

I mean, these are exciting times.

I'm excited about the work that we do and the opportunity to learn more each time about these blue zones, about the aging strong.

And on that note of glass half full, I want to point out that even something like dementia can bring gifts along the way.

There's a kind of dementia called frontotemporal dementia that can affect language but can bring out autistic ability in painting and music.

It's thought that when Ravel's wrote Bolero, he was in the early stages of frontotemporal dementia.

So always being aware that there are often gifts that come with the challenges and partners.

Thank you so much.

I'd like to thank our panelists.

I'd like to thank our guests, Dr. Studer Seshadri, director of the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer's and Neurodegenerative Diseases at UT Health, San Antonio.

Jane Passione, managing Director of Collective Impact at the San Antonio Area Foundation and leader of the successfully aging and Living in San Antonio Salsa Coalition.

And Christine Davila, president and executive director of Mercy Housing, Texas.

We sure appreciate your time today.

Many thanks to our partner for this presentation, San Antonio Report.

And thank you for being with us as well.

I'm Liz Ruiz.

Take care.