Interesting Facts

According to a study carried out by Imperial College London and the World Health Organization, South Korean women will be the first in the world to have an average life expectancy above 90. (The study predicts we will all be living longer by 2030 and the gap between men and women will have started to close in most countries. South Korea wins the race because South Koreans are better at dealing with hypertension, the country has some of the lowest obesity rates in the world, and in general it offers better equality, education, and nutrition, which has benefited most people.)

According to researchers from the Sao Jose Faculty of Medicine in Brazil, time goes by more quickly when you're over 50. (In the study people were asked to close their eyes and mentally count the passing of 120 seconds.  They all counted too quickly. On average, men and women in the 15 to 29 age group counted down the 120 seconds in 115 seconds.  In the 30 to 49 age group they took 96 seconds, but the over-50s took just 86 seconds. This meant the oldest group perceived time as passing 25 per cent more quickly than the youngest did. The researchers believe it is possibly due to age-related changes in levels of brain chemicals involved in concentration and memory, both of which are involved in estimating the passage of time. I think it's more likely that at 50+ you simply have more to do, and feel you have less time to do it in.) Source PS -If you want to be able to count in seconds more accurately, say the number plus the word elephants.

Jack, a Yorkshire Terrier, is the oldest living dog in Britain. (At 117 years old (in dog years), he still looks like a puppy.  He will be the eighth-oldest dog of all time if his age can be proven to Guinness World Records. There are different formulas for calculating dog years. Alot of people multiply by 7, but dogs are mature by the age of 2, so some calculate it by allowing 10.5 dog years per human year for the first 2 years, then 4 dog years per human year for each year after that. According to: http://www.onlineconversion.com/dogyears.htm, Laika is a mere 57, but according to http://www.pedigree.com/all-things-dog/dog-age-calculator/ she is 70 years old. Guess which one she prefers?) Source

According to a survey run by Age Partnership, to find out what key lifestyle changes can best improve your mood, women are made happier by getting a dog or cat, while men’s positivity is boosted by joining a club or buying a new car. (For Brits over 55 a pub lunch was viewed as an easy way of improving your mood. The three most affordable options were eating out once a month, going on a monthly organised day trip and being in a club. The three least affordable lifestyle changes are getting a conservatory, buying a new car or buying a campervan – all of which are impossible to afford on the state pension alone, and if money were no object, the most effective happiness promoter for the over-55s would be to go on holiday.) Source

According to a study by insurance company RIAS, younger workers in the UK take twice as much time off sick as people over 50. (Just a quarter of over-50s took time off sick in the past year, compared to half of those aged between 20 and 29. They are also more likely to fake an illness: 44%  of younger people were found to have faked being ill to avoid coming into work, compared to just 12% of over-50s. It's probably because older workers are more worried about getting another job.)

According to women’s car insurance specialist, Diamond, men are more likely to lie about their age than women. (1 in 10 of the men questioned said they have lied about how old they are on their birthday, compared to 1 in 14 women. However, we are less likely to lie about our age the older we get. Men and women aged over 45 are the least likely to lie about their age, whilst those aged 25 to 35 are the most likely to. I don't lie about my age, "I'm as old as my tongue, and a little bit older than my teeth.")

The following celebrities have all been caught in the oldest fib in the world, lying about their age:- ( A number of times Sandra Bullock's age has been up and down like a yo-yo, shaving off years, and then adding years, depending on the role.   Shaving off:- 6 years - a ctress  Katie Redford was caught telling porkies , when eagle eyed fans on social media pointed out that she was 25, not 19 as she had claimed to be during an audition for ITV soap 'Coronation Street'. 2 years - Singer James Blunt. 2 years - Rapper Eminem. 4 years - Paloma Faith And celebs don't always take the years off. To land that dream role, they'll even add a few:- Adding years 2 years - Nadine Coyle 5 years - Whoopi Goldberg In 1949 Time joked:- To find the age of a star, a Hollywood press-agent takes the year of her (or his) birth, subtracts it from itself, and burns the paper the numbers were written on; then adds last week's fan mail to the box-office receipts...

Good news for once! Some areas of the brain do not peak until we are in our fifties. (A published paper in the journal Psychological Science, states that each cognitive skill peaks at a different age. For example, raw speed in processing information appears to peak around age 18 or 19, then immediately starts to decline. Short-term memory continues to improve until around age 25, when it levels off and then begins to drop around age 35. The ability to recognize faces improves until the early 30s before gradually starting to decline,  but the ability to evaluate another person's emotional state peaks in our 40s or 50s. At 60 we are still learning new vocabulary skills, and between 60 - 70+: our intelligence actually peaks. I think the main point is, just keep learning, keep on learning, learn, learn learning.)

When writing a CV, over 50s in the UK are removing references to their O-levels to give themselves a better chance of getting an interview. (The O'level is a pre-1988 secondary school qualification replaced by GCSEs.  Once something to be proud of, nowadays by writing O'level on a CV you are giving away your age, and in our ageist society people just think - past it. )

90 is the new 70 (For women). According to experts women can now expect to live 4 scores years and 10, instead of the biblical 3 score years and 10. (The latest official life expectancy projections for England and Wales now show that in a growing number of areas it is already the norm for people to live until they are almost 90, and that trend is set to grow, and although women still outlive men overall, it seems men are catching up; in the last 4 years the life expectancy gap between men and women has narrowed by 10 per cent. So, it's good news all round. As long as you've got your health.)

According to Alzheimers Research UK, the estimated cost of caring for people with dementia in 2014 will be £23.6 billion. (The number or people in the UK aged 60+ who will be living with dementia is projected to double over the next 25 years and to reach 2 million by 2050, which will cost an estimated £59.4 billion. We can only hope current research will advance enough to prevent this silent plague.)

According to research from the Australian School of Business, the age you decide to retire at has no impact on life expectancy. (Did you notice the "you decide to retire" bit? Seemingly if you are forced into retirement because of redundancy or ill health, it can have a detrimental effect on your life expectancy. There are still reasons to keep working though, research carried out at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherché Médicale (INSERM) in France has shown that people who work for longer are less likely to develop dementia. They concluded that a person who retires at 65 is 15 per cent less likely to develop the condition than someone who retires at 60. It is believed that this is because intellectual stimulation and mental engagement are protective against dementia. I wonder if going to Bingo would have the same effect?)

According to a study, commissioned by the alcohol-free bar movement in London, hangovers hit you harder when you are 29 years old. (The reason is that 29-year-olds think they can hit the bottle as they did when they were younger but end up with hangovers that last an average of 10 hours and 24 minutes instead of the usual 9 hours 45 minutes. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.)

According to the ONS (Office for National Statistics) Britons in their late 60s are happier and more carefree than any other age group, including young people. (Incidence of anxiety and depression in the UK drops by almost a third between the early 50s and late 60s.  It must be the 1960s that did it.)

According to the Office for National Statistics in the UK, retirement makes people feel happier and healthier than they have done at any point since their mid-30s. (The statistics, part of the national happiness study, showed that people's sense of health and well-being goes down from their teens until late middle age and then there is a sudden bounce when they hit their 60s. Retirement experts said that for some people the relief of finally retiring made them feel happier. I can't wait to find out.)

At 16, Britain has the lowest recruitment age in Europe for young people wishing to join the army. (They do need their parent or guardian's permission, and they are not sent to any war zones.  But, human rights groups have worked out that with longer training, and a higher drop out rate, recruiting at such a young age wastes up to £94m a year.  It costs an "estimated" £88,985 to recruit, train and pay new soldiers aged 16 and 17, compared with £42,818 for each adult recruit. It might be nicer if they just pointed out that 16 year olds can't even vote as they're not considered mature enough. )

According to research led by the University of Zurich's Dr Vladeta Ajdacic-Gross, you are 14% more likely to die on your birthday than on any other day of the year. (The research analysed data from 2.5 million deaths in Switzerland between 1969 and 2008, and it doesn't seem to matter what age you are, or what sex. The researchers put it nicely, "birthdays… appear to end up in a lethal way more frequently than expected ." Chillingly Professor David Spiegelhalter, a statistician from Cambridge University, says " It's purely a birthday effect." So, if it's your birthday today... Be careful out there.)

According to a survey by online retailer isme.com, men stop caring about what clothes they wear when they reach the age of 37. (Most of the men I know never even started caring about what clothes they wear.) 

The average person in the UK goes to the toilet 2,500 times a year. (Over the course of your lifetime (assuming you live to the ripe old age of 80) that's 200,000 times! If you Google about this (go on you know you want to), you'll find a lot of web sites say you will spend 3 years on the loo. The trouble is, by my reckoning that works out at:- Supposing we live for 80 years, that's 29200 days, and we supposedly spend 1,095 days of this on the loo, that's 1,576,800 minutes on the loo, which works out at 54 minutes per day  (I'm not a mathematician so do correct me if I'm wrong).  Now I don't know about you, but I do not spend 54 minutes a day on the toilet! I wonder who worked this out.  Maybe they need to visit a doctor.) Here's what I think is more likely:- Assuming 7 visits to the loo per day, and an average of 3 minutes per visit. 21 minutes per day. 7,665 minutes per year * 80 = 613,200 minutes in a lifetime. 10,220 hours r...

Video games in the UK will now be regulated under the Europe-wide PEGI (Pan European Game Information) scheme. (This means that the age rating system for video games will try to stop inappropriate games being sold to children under the age of 12 and give the industry more straightforward rules for rating games according to age. Up till now the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has provided 15 and 18 certificates, but the BBFC was never tasked with providing 12 certificates for video games, meaning it was technically legal to sell a 12-rated game to younger children, the changes mean anyone selling a 12-certificate game to a child under that age in the UK could be jailed. Parents can find out about the suitability of games on the website - www.askaboutgames.com.) Source Video games are good for you.