Dr. Caroline Cicero

Cambodia feels like a magical, exotic and tragic destination to the Western traveler. The Angkor Wat temples around Siem Riep, accessorized with elephant rides and vermillion-clad monks are indeed majestic and surreal. On the road from Siem Riep to Phnom Penh, tourist attractions offer those with hearty palates the opportunity...

March 9, 2012 Shanghai, China

Although the common sentiment on Wall Street is that Shanghai streets are paved in gold for American companies, walking along the sidewalk in this bustling Chinese city does not necessarily make Americans feel at ease. Shanghainese cultural norms that include pushing, shoving, spitting, staring, pointing...

As most of you already know, baby boomers, by definition, were born between 1946 and 1964. Their presumed rosy childhoods in the 50s and early 60s, prickly coming of age in the 60s and 70s, and glorified success in the yuppie workforce in 80s -- along with their diverse musical...

I recently flew from Los Angeles to Seoul and then on to Hanoi, Vietnam. On the first plane, I watched five movies. I don't recommend watching Contagion while on a packed trans-Pacific flight and when your final destination is a crowded developing world city, but I did it anyway because...

I get a little annoyed when I sit through awards ceremonies at my kids' schools each spring. In June, the Perfect Attendance award seems like a straightforward recognition of a job well done. Indeed, in high school, where teenagers take attendance into their own hands, rewarding the responsible ones is...

How old were you when Jessie's Girl hit the top of the charts and won a Grammy? Do you remember that Rick Springfield first appeared as Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital during that same year--1981? In An Affair of the Heart,...

While waiting out a second day of prolonged rain at the US Open Tennis Championships in Flushing, NY, Martina Navratilova took some time to reflect on life after 50. Navratilova, who turns 55 on October 18, won 59 Grand Slam titles in her long, celebrated career....

As a college student in 2007, Mike Masten spoke to his peers at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. In a week-long series of events, Masten, an International Relations major, described women their same ages being sold into sex slavery in unlikely places across Southern California and around the...

When I was diagnosed with cancer in 2005, lots of well-meaning friends suggested that instead of chemotherapy, I try alternative remedies and cures. While I was grateful for their interest and acknowledged that chemotherapy's origins are toxic, I responded that I was confident in my course of chemotherapy because it...

When you see news about athletes, such as sprinter Allyson Felix, preparing for the London 2012 Summer Games, do you ever remind yourself about your childhood dream of competing for the Gold? Even the most competitive amateur athletes know that by the time we reach the ripe old...

With dwindling federal and state budgets, rising health care expenditures, and politicians' calls for fiscal savings, you need to know that the cost of older adults' fall injuries is expected to reach $55 billion by the year 2020. Whether you trip over a tree root while jogging and...

The 19th Amendment's 91st birthday came and went with little fanfare this week. Granting American women the right to vote in 1920, the amendment's ratification is something most of us women take for granted. However, I do explain to my daughter that my grandmothers were born in a time when...

When I was receiving 6 months of ABVD chemotherapy for Hodgkin's Lymphoma, the drugs were administered by the kindest and most patient professionals -- day hospital nurses. Nonetheless I hated these women because they pricked me with needles, their work made me vomit and after I spent the...

My grandmother died from a brain tumor on my 20th birthday. I was a junior at Davidson College. Before that, I had little experience with cancer. Two years later, I had moved to Los Angeles and was working at Caltech, in my first real job. A...

In case you don't know why your mom's or grandma's Social Security and Medicare benefits are being used as puppets in Washington's budget and election season debates: 1.) Our government has a spending problem (which you probably know by now) and 2.) Our population is aging. Baby Boomers...

The Census Bureau is doling out its 2010 data a little at a time, leaving cities, counties and demographers who count on the updated information to wait for their turn. Filling out the forms last year may have been an inconvenience to you, but the results are a...

Recently, my husband and I took a beach vacation, along with our kids, to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. Driving along the coastal roads, it was hard to ignore the cutesy names of the beachfront homes in the vicinity of our rented condo. Some of them include Kai Sera Sera,...

I am a Gerontologist, which means I study older people and the social dimensions of the aging process. Visual Gerontology (VG) explores how aging is portrayed in visual media. I developed the VG framework, along with film scholar Craig Detweiler, because we anticipate having a lot of visual images to...