On Aging

Once known for bland, institutional fare, hundreds of senior living centers across the U.S. now tout healthy meals made from scratch. Centers say this approach to food is tastier — and cheaper, too.

Things like activity trackers and sensors might make it easier to keep people with dementia safe and help caregivers. Researchers are going to test that idea in the real world.

Psychologist Laura Carstensen says that as people get older, they usually become less stressed and more content.

For more than 100 years, the Boston Post Cane has been awarded to the oldest residents of 700 small New England towns. More than 400 of the canes are still in circulation, passing from one elder to the next. But it's becoming harder to find people who appreciate an award for being old.

A program in Hawaii aims to reduce the number of older people who spend their final days of life in a hospital. Hawaii has one of the highest rates of hospital deaths for those over age 65 in the U.S.

Sometimes Greg O'Brien gets a tingling in the back of his brain that tells him a hallucination is coming. Lions. Spiders. Birds. Sometimes the creatures are friendly. Too often, they're not.