Aging

In a quest to look younger, be healthier and feel more vital later in life, increasing numbers of men, just like Jeffry Life, are turning to testosterone and human growth hormone. Use of both hormones is controversial. Read on: Testosterone: "Older men . . . go to their physicians and say, 'I don't have energy, I don't have sex interest, I can't get around,' " said Dr. Thomas Gill, professor of geriatric medicine and director of the Center on Disability and Disabling Disorders at the Yale University School of Medicine.

Though THE wisdom that comes with age can help navigate metaphorical bumps in the road of life, actual, physical obstacles can cause stumbles and falls. Increasingly, to combat a natural loss of balance that comes with the passing years, many people are turning to balance training classes. About one-third of Americans age 65 and older fall each year -- roughly 12 million people.

I have traveled to the Palm Springs Life Extension Institute in search of Dr. Edmund Chein. Instead I find Tiffany Caranci. Tiffany is 20 years old and looks exactly how you might expect a 20-year-old named Tiffany to look: platform heels, low-slung skirt, hair streaked blond and black. She's brazenly sexy, and so very young. I am a man and not very young.

The broken rib could have been a disaster for Claire Soroko. She had been saying goodbye to friends Christmas Day when she stumbled from an outdoor step and banged into an iron handrail, breaking a bone in her chest. Afterward, she couldn't clean, drive or even dress herself. "I really don't have anyone," says Soroko, a Park La Brea resident in her 70s. "My daughter and son-in-law are very busy. I couldn't ask them to come and stay with me."

In his corner office, Mr. Botox looked his age. He hadn't had a shot of botulinum toxin in a while, and the furrow between his brows was back. "You would never know I'm really 75 years old," David E.I. Pyott said, trotting out a well-worn joke that he likes to make "because of who I am." He's the man who made a muscle-controlling poison the most fashionable weapon against aging. And he's really 54. When Allergan Inc. hired him as chief executive in 1998, it was generating annual revenue of $1.

Consider the older man who slips into the bathroom before bedtime and surreptitiously swallows a Viagra pill. He decides against telling his wife, afraid she might think he's having a problem because he's no longer attracted to her. Now consider the older woman who admits to her girlfriend that sex with her husband isn't what it used to be. She'd like to suggest he try Viagra but hasn't, afraid that he'll feel more inadequate than she suspects he already does.

Never mind growing old with dignity. You can do better, say doctors who now treat aging as a disease. You can grow old with daring, with drive, with a good forehand and a lush libido. Enter a marathon instead of a nursing home. Be good in bed rather than confined to one. At the very least, say these doctors, give yourself the chance to travel, learn, truly "live," well into your 70s, your 80s, even beyond.

One woman was on her second career and married to a man who already had children. She was certain she didn't want a child of her own. Then she hit 45, and suddenly having a baby was the only thing that mattered. Other women were busy with medical, law or graduate school and then long hours at the office. Their 40s just seemed to sneak up on them.

IN 2004, "The L Word" was hailed as a groundbreaking look at the sexed-up lives of lesbians in Los Angeles. Now in its fourth season, the Showtime series' cast has expanded to the point where its women seem to constitute a small city unto themselves. Increasingly, "The L Word's" new additions are well-known actresses who have found themselves outside of the narrow range of options available -- or, rather, not available -- to them.

CENTENARIANS were a rare breed when Jeanne Louise Calment was born in 1875. But by the time she died in 1997 at the record-setting age of 122 years and 164 days, her club was distinctively less elite. Today, centenarians comprise the fastest-growing segment of the population. In developed countries, their numbers have been doubling every five to seven years, and the age that they achieve has been rising steadily -- from 110 in 1930 to 120 in 1995.

In a quest to look younger, be healthier and feel more vital later in life, increasing numbers of men, just like Jeffry Life, are turning to testosterone and human growth hormone. Use of both hormones is controversial. Read on: Testosterone: "Older men . . . go to their physicians and say, 'I don't have energy, I don't have sex interest, I can't get around,' " said Dr. Thomas Gill, professor of geriatric medicine and director of the Center on Disability and Disabling Disorders at the Yale University School of Medicine.

When a theater critic calls a play a sitcom, it's usually meant as a rap on the knuckles. But let's make an exception in the case of "Superior Donuts," the bracingly funny new play by Tracy Letts, and compare the work in a complimentary way to one of those Golden Age 1970s television comedies by Norman Lear -- character-centered, socially and politically alert and, for all the formulaic plotting, brightly entertaining and even occasionally surprising....

Los Angeles City Council members said Wednesday that they intend to more closely monitor upgrades to the city's aging, leaky water system after burst pipes in the San Fernando Valley inundated one neighborhood and caused a sinkhole in another that nearly swallowed a firetruck. "Most folks recognize this as a wake-up call," said City Councilman Paul Koretz, who represents the Studio City and Valley Village neighborhoods where the burst lines created havoc, chewing up pavement and flooding homes and businesses.

Etta Cummings stood in the back of a small room filled with sympathetic faces. Her failing eyes were obscured by big, dark glasses. She leaned on her cane, clutched her bright caftan and prepared to take one very big step. "My name is Etta Cummings. I'm a diabetic. My diabetes is totally out of control. I didn't take it seriously for many, many years," she said by way of introduction. "By this time, my health started deteriorating, so I'm on the run to correct it." Heads nodded in support.

The battle of youth versus age is one of the defining economic struggles of our era. Therefore, speaking as someone who hasn't been referred to as "the Kid" for a decade or three, I would like to salute Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, 57, for holding up my team in the war of the generations. Capt. Sullenberger is the pilot who ditched his crippled airliner in New York's Hudson River a week ago, saving every soul on board.

A 56-year-old woman who gave birth to her triplet granddaughters a month ago is recovering from a Caesarean section and thrilled. Jaci Dalenberg of Wooster, Ohio, offered to be a surrogate when her daughter, Kim Coseno, and her husband were waiting to adopt. The embryos produced from Kim Coseno's eggs and fertilized in vitro by her husband, Joe, were implanted in Dalenberg's uterus. Dalenberg said she wasn't afraid to be pregnant at her age, but the multiple births did give her pause.

NICE article on the perennial subject of the graying of classical music audiences ["The Ageless Audience" by Diane Haithman, Oct. 5]. It was clear, concise and brought authoritative sources to bear, told with admirable fluency. Dare I say, hip? Things I hear from colleagues and audience member friends across the country bear out the continued interest in this type of performance. And I note there always is a generous slice of younger listeners for opera, symphony, chamber music, etc., doubtless drawn from the rather constant number of classical-loving nerds that comes up every generation.

The AUDIENCE for live classical music, theater and dance is, like, dying -- OMG! They're sitting in the dark in the concert hall or theater, aging so fast that their gray hair will be white by intermission. And someday soon, the last of the bunch -- a doddering sourpuss who writes letters to his local newspaper with a fountain pen -- will keel over in his velvet seat, done in by the effort of yelling "Brava!" at a plus-sized soprano.

The Air Force said it had ordered immediate inspections and repairs to about 130 of its A-10 aircraft to fix possible cracks in the wings. An increasing number of cracks have been found in the thin-skin wings, largely related to fatigue in the aging fleet, the service said. The Air Force has a little more than 400 of the A-10s.

Countering the prevailing theory that aging is the accumulation of wear and tear in cells, scientists studying worms have found that aging may be hard-wired, a sort of unintentional sabotage by genes gone wild. The study, published Thursday in the journal Cell, found that metabolic processes important during development may shift later in life in ways that harm the worms, causing them to age and die.