Amtrak Discounts For Seniors

Save 15% When You Choose Amtrak

Amtrak travelers 62 years of age and over receive a 15% discount on the best available adult rail fare on most Amtrak trains. Take advantage of the Amtrak senior discount to see more of what America has to offer. Start planning your next trip today.

Please note that this discount does not apply to:

• Sleeper accommodations
• The Auto Train
• Weekday Acela Express service

Valid proof of age is required. Additional restrictions may apply.

Seniors are also eligible to receive a 10% discount on the purchase of North America Rail Pass, providing an affordable way to see the United States and Canada.

Laughter Helps Everyone Involved

A priest, a rabbi and a chicken walk into a bar . . . You’ve heard the jokes but did you know they could actually be saving your life? It’s true, improves both your physical and mental health. So don’t give up on your silliness just yet.

When we are stressed, we produce hormones that disrupt the balance of our immune system. Laughing lessens that production and instead produces more gamma-interferon t-cells, or disease fighting cells. Laughter occurs when a negatively charged electrical impulse is sent through the cerebral cortex - but why we laugh is much more complex. It involves several parts of your brain and also your body depending on the extent of gesturing or jiggling that your chuckling incurs. From mild giggling to doubled up, eye tearing hysteria, you are aerobically benefitted through lowered blood pressure, thus reducing your chance of a heart attack or stroke and increased oxygen intake improving your brains capability to retain and process information.

When people hear laughter, it releases a neurotransmitter to their brain that responds by triggering other neural circuits to generate more laughter. It’s contagious!

So add 20 minutes of comedy to your daily exercise regime and laugh yourself healthy. If you can’t manage that, at least smile to release some endorphins. if you don’t feel like smiling, then fake it until you make it. Just the mere physical act of curling your mouth up and a little squint to the eyes will release all sorts of happy hormones dancing through your body and before you know it you actually ARE happy!

Death of Spouse Ups Odds of Nursing Home Care

An older person's likelihood of entering a nursing home or other long-term care facility is particularly high immediately after the death of a spouse, new research indicates.

There could be various reasons for this, Elina Nihtila, of the department of sociology at the University of Helsinki, Finland, who led the research, told Reuters Health.

"It may be related to the loss of social and instrumental support, in the form of care and help with daily activities such as help in cooking, cleaning, and shopping formerly shared with the deceased spouse," Nihtila said.

"Second, grief and spousal loss may cause various symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, loss of appetite, sleep disturbances, fatigue and loss of concentration that could increase the need for institutional care." She added. "Furthermore, grief may cause increased susceptibility to physical diseases."

The research team analyzed how the death of a spouse affects the likelihood of entering institutionalized care among nearly 141,000 Finnish adults aged 65 and older. All of them were living with a spouse at the beginning of the study and were followed for five years.

"The data were unique in that they covered a large number of persons bereaved during the follow-up and gave the dates of bereavement and of first admission into institutional care," Nihtila and colleagues explain in the American Journal of Public Health.

Results showed that the risk of entering long-term institutional care was higher among older adults who had lost their spouse than among those living with their spouse. "The excess risk of institutionalization was highest during the first month after the spouse's death - more than three times higher among both men and women - and decreased with time from bereavement, stabilizing at approximately 20% to 50% higher over 1 to 5 years," Nihtila noted.

The researcher thinks home help services "should be targeted to the bereaved immediately after a spouse's death to reduce the need for institutional care."

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, July 2008 (online May 29, 2008).