Now leaders from diverse areas of women's health research, education, patient care and policy will gather to discuss health problems facing older women at a conference titled "Successful Aging: Women's Health and Well-being in the Second 50 Years."

The National Conference on Women's Health and Aging will be held Friday, March 9 through Sunday, March 11 at the University of Florida Hotel and Conference Center, 1714 S.W. 34th St., Gainesville, Fla.

The conference will give health-care professionals, policymakers and educators the opportunity to explore innovative approaches to older women's health problems, develop plans to address unmet needs and gaps in research and work to strengthen the national network committed to improving the health of older women.

The conference is co-sponsored by UF's Health Science Center, Institute on Aging and the Center for Research on Women's Health.

Among the highlights:

* Top officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Association for Reproductive Health Professionals, the National Policy and Resource Center on Nutrition and Aging, the Elder Floridians Foundation and the AARP will speak on topics including mature sexuality, nutrition, health initiatives for older women and barriers that can impede women from enjoying active and healthy life senior years.

* UF College of Medicine faculty members will discuss cardiovascular health, gynecologic cancer, cognitive changes and memory, and hormone replacement therapy and osteoporosis.

New research findings also will be presented, including:

* Hormone replacement therapy decreases pain tolerance. Women past menopause who are using estrogen and other hormone replacement therapies have lower thresholds of pain than men or women not taking hormones, a UF study has found.

In a study of 70 adults, a UF scientist has now shown that women taking hormone replacements were more sensitive to heat than those in the other two groups. The UF findings provide new insight into the effects of hormone replacement therapy on the estimated 21 million American women taking it. Researcher: Roger B. Fillingim, Ph.D., associate professor, Public Health Services and Research, UF College of Dentistry.

* Nighttime activity in Alzheimer's affects home caregivers. Caring for someone with Alzheimer's disease is a round-the-clock job. Particularly difficult is dealing with the tendency for those with Alzheimer's to arise and wander the home at night. In order to prevent injuries or death, caregivers must often get up to supervise people with Alzheimer's, which a UF pilot study shows causes significant sleep disruptions. Such sleep fragmentation, in turn, can provide a major reason for placing Alzheimer's patients in nursing homes.

In this study, those caring for someone with dementia who were awakened at night had sleep episodes that lasted half of the typical 90-minute interval. Caregivers forced to get up during the night also spent considerably more time awake while they were in bed than caregivers of Alzheimer's patients who do not arise at night. This long-term sleep fragmentation and loss of necessary deep rapid eye movement sleep results in daytime exhaustion.

Researchers hope that by understanding these patterns, they will be able to help caregivers cope better with the situation, which may enable more people with dementia to remain living at home. Researcher: Meredeth Rowe, R.N., Ph.D., associate professor, UF Institute on Aging and College of Nursing.

* Kids' books provide good therapy, role models for elders. What can an older woman do to feel better about herself? A UF researcher has a "prescription" in mind: A good children's book. In a study, older women in a variety of settings were read to from children's books that contained inspirational, active depictions of women in their senior years.

The scientist found that reading the books aloud to these women could help relieve depression, break down old-age stereotypes, and make older women feel more positive about themselves. The "bibliotherapy" has shown such benefits to women in nursing homes, retirement communities and at senior centers.

Bibliotherapy has shown to be particularly beneficial to older women, who generally face more problems in old age than men do, such as economic difficulties and solitude. Researcher: Robert Beland, Ph.D., associate professor, UF Institute on Aging and College of Health and Human Performance.

Academic components of the UF Health Science Center include the colleges of Dentistry, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine.

Clinical enterprises of the UF Health Science Center include Shands Hospital at UF, the UF Faculty Group Practice and a statewide network of UF-affiliated hospitals and clinics.

Related website:

UF Health Science Center

08-Mar-2001