Health

Test Your "Aging IQ" with New Online Quiz

What is "normal aging"? Do you know what to expect as you or your parents, relatives, and friends age? Popular culture perpetuates images of older people as frail, forgetful, and depressed, yet as more and more Americans live longer, it's important to separate fact from fiction. The National Institute on Aging (NIA), one of the National Institutes of Health, offers a fun and informative online quiz, "What's Your Aging IQ?" to dispel myths and spread the facts about healthy aging. To take the quiz, go to: http://www.niapublications.org/quiz/index.php.

You'll read eight short stories about fictional older people who are dealing with age-related issues like staying fit, preventing falls, and taking medications, along with concerns about sexuality, sleep, and driving. The stories are followed by 28 multiple-choice, true/false, and yes/no questions to test your knowledge. Correct answers come up after each question, with factual information on that topic and links to NIA publications for further reading. At the end of the quiz, you'll get a score for your total "Aging IQ."

Information on a wide variety of healthy aging topics is available from NIA's publications Web site at http://www.niapublications.org. You can also call the NIA Information Center at 1-800-222-2225 to request free print copies of materials.

NIA is one of 27 Institutes and Centers that constitute the National Institutes of Health. The NIA leads Federal efforts to support and conduct basic, clinical, epidemiological, and social research on aging and the special needs of older people. Press releases, fact sheets, and other materials about aging and aging research can be viewed at the NIA's general information Web site, http://www.nia.nih.gov.