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badgerboomer | February 23rd, 2010 | Continued

About this Site

BadgerBoomers.com aims to inform and engage you, boomers age 45 or better, by compiling news stories specific to your interests and concerns — keeping the focus Wisconsin-based as much as possible.
This site was created by fellow boomer Terry Burrington, founder and CEO of Financial Marketing Corporation, a marketing consulting firm based in Palmyra, Wis.

Other Recent Articles

It’s heart month: Time to live healthier!

February 16th, 2010 • badgerboomer • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

One out of every three American women will experience heart disease in her lifetime.

One out of three! Heart disease is the leading cause of death among women age 65 or better, and the second leading cause of death among women ages 45-64.

In fact, a 2007 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2000 baby boomers, both men and women, had more hospitalizations for heart disease than the 45-to 54-year-olds born 10 to 20 years before them, U.S. News & World Report wrote.

Relatively speaking, Wisconsin boomers have a lower overall incidence of death from heart disease, as shown on the Centers for Disease Control web site.

Simple steps can keep women healthier and living longer.

Consider this: fitness is the most powerful predictor of deaths from heart disease and other causes, says Rita Redberg, MD, a cardiologist from the University of California at San Francisco, on GoodHousekeeping.com. People who exercise regularly have up to a 50 percent lower risk of having a heart attack or chest pain, and they have a lower risk of other diseases too.

Other experts add that exercising is more important than being thin, and may even help those who smoke for maintaining heart health.

Eating right is crucial as well. Learn about heart-healthy fats, reading labels and getting the most from your grocery store trips at the American Heart Association’s Nutrition Center.

And breathe easier knowing you’re doing the right thing. The Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line is a free, easy-to-use resource to quit smoking for good. Get phone coaching, medications and more at no cost. Call 1-800-QUIT-NOW or go to the Quit Line home page to get started now.

More resources:

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The boomer spin on social networking

February 7th, 2010 • badgerboomer • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

Nearly half of all baby boomers (47 percent) are using Facebook, MySpace, Eons or another social networking site these days, according to the report Boomers and Social Media.

Although their contacts include family, friends and co-workers of all ages, you aren’t likely to see boomers touting themselves as “fans” or “friends” of a product or service unless they’re particularly passionate about it, the study found.

The report also shows that only 10 percent of boomers use the microblogging site Twitter and even fewer are reading blogs.

Boomers are using social networking sites differently too. This generation is more than twice as likely as younger generations to use these sites for professional advancement, according to CNNMoney.com.

Where to draw the line between the personal and the professional, and sharing news about one’s career vs. self-promotion? CNNMoney.com offers the following advice:

  • Do ask pals to be fans of your latest project.
  • Don’t ask them to be fans of you personally.
  • Do add a personal message to your friend requests.
  • Don’t friend business contacts you’ve never met.
  • Do create a Facebook page for business.
  • Don’t automatically import friends to that page.

Read more.

How do you use Facebook, MySpace, Eons, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo and other social networking sites? Have you made mistakes that you later corrected? Have you successfully reconnected with friends or generated new professional contacts? Or are you reluctant to get started?

Popularity: 2% [?]

Fewer baby boomers have hearing loss

January 31st, 2010 • badgerboomer • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

Fewer baby boomers are experiencing hearing loss, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who herself was warned about listening to loud music earlier in life.

“I’m less likely to have a hearing loss when I get to be 70 years old than my grandmother did when she was 70,” said UW researcher Karen Cruickshanks, the author of the study, in a news article.

Overall, boomers have 31 percent less hearing loss than their parents’ generation. The experts aren’t certain why older Americans have better hearing compared with earlier generations, but they theorize that there are fewer very noisy jobs and better ear protection at worksites, immunizations and antibiotics that prevented certain diseases, and maybe even a decline in smoking.

Cruickshanks said that the earbuds worn day in and day out by today’s young people is chronic exposure that could prove more hazardous than the briefer loud exposures that baby boomers had.

According to HearingLossWeb.com, “Most people lose their hearing slowly — over a 15- to 20-year period — because regular and repeated noise exposure damages the wonderfully complicated and intricate hair cells of the inner ear that interpret sound vibrations as words, music or other sounds.”

The resource advises individuals to wear earplugs while exposed to loud noises — such as the lawnmower — and to use headphones responsibly. If someone else can hear the music, it’s too loud.

Read more in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

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41,000 Wisconsin boomers have glaucoma. Do you?

January 16th, 2010 • badgerboomer • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

More than 41,000 Wisconsin residents ages 40 and better have glaucoma, the second leading cause of blindness, according to Prevent Blindness America and the National Eye Institute.

Glaucoma damages the optic nerve, affecting peripheral vision, and if left untreated, impacts central vision as well. Vision loss can be reduced through early detection, according to an article in the Milwaukee Courier.

Women are more likely than men to develop glaucoma before age 65; after, the risk is equal between genders. The disease is six to eight times more prevalent among African Americans, who also develop it an average of 10 years earlier than individuals of other races. Glaucoma is more likely to cause blindness in African Americans and Hispanics.

Glaucoma costs patients between the ages of 40 and 64 more than $3,000 annually. For those 65 and older, the annual costs increase to $5,243 per person. Those costs will only increase as an aging baby boomer population increase the prevalence of the disease, said Bob Goldstein, President & CEO, Prevent Blindness Wisconsin.

In honor of National Glaucoma Awareness Month in January, Prevent Blindness Wisconsin is educating the public on maintaining their eye and vision health.

Read more in the Milwaukee Courier.

For more information

Prevent Blindness America resources:
www.preventblindness.org

Prevent Blindness Wisconsin: Reduced cost glasses/financial assistance:
www.preventblindness.org/wi/adult_resources.html

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Avoid the biggest scams of the year

January 11th, 2010 • badgerboomer • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

“Free trial” offers for supplements, stimulus/government grant scams, and so-called “robocalls” urging people to renew an expired auto warranty or reduce their credit card interest rates led the Better Business Bureau’s list of the Top 10 Scams and Rip-Offs of 2009.

“Not surprisingly, many scams sought to take advantage of people who were suffering under tough economic circumstances — such as the unemployed,” the Wisconsin Better Business Bureau wrote in a news release.

The other leading scams for the year were:

  • Lottery/sweepstakes scams
  • Job hunter scams
  • Google work-from-home scam
  • Mortgage foreclosure rescue/debt assistance
  • Mystery shopping
  • Over-payment scams
  • Phishing emails/H1N1 scam

To read more about each of these scams, or to report being a victim of a scam, see the Wisconsin Better Business Bureau web site, www.wisconsin.bbb.org, or the national site, www.bbb.org.

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Beyond age, generation in the workplace

January 6th, 2010 • badgerboomer • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

If you feel like being a “baby boomer” doesn’t define you at work, you’re not alone.

Employees want to be viewed beyond their age and generational stereotypes — for good reason.

“Because of when you were born, your manager or co-workers may talk to you differently, react to you in specific ways or have preconceived notions about what you like and dislike,” writes Anita Bruzzese, author of 45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy … and How to Avoid Them, in a Green Bay Press-Gazette column.

To best engage workers, managers must “look beyond an employee’s age and the generational stereotypes that go with it,” according to Kathy Lynch, director of employer engagement at the Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College.

Rather, Lynch suggests, employees should be viewed more in terms of life stage and career status.

“For example, while baby boomers may be thought of as nearing retirement, the truth is that many in their 50s these days have begun new careers in new industries and may be more than 20 or more years from retiring — if they retire at all,” according to Lynch.

Read more in the Green Bay Press Gazette.

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‘Party advice from an aging boomer’

December 29th, 2009 • badgerboomer • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

A good party is one where you think of your guests, “I like you to the extent that I will be a fool before you.”

So says television producer John Roach in the January 2010 edition of Madison Magazine.

“With an impending New Year’s Eve, it would seem unlikely to take party advice from an aging boomer. But hold on. Boomers invented parties. They were in mud, but they were fun nonetheless,” Roach writes.

What makes a great party? All you really need is singing and dancing, Roach says. With a few “Secret Party Tools” and some techniques to get — and keep — the fun going, you’ll be ready to rock on Dec. 31. Read Roach’s column “How to Party.”

For more information:

What are your favorite New Year’s traditions, toasts or songs? Share them here.

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