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'Daily Dose'; Wisdom for the Aging

Aired June 17, 2004 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Daryn Kagan at CNN Center in Atlanta. Let's check the headlines at this hour. Military and civilian aviation officials could do nothing to stop the September 11th hijackings. That's according to a staff report prepared for the 9/11 Commission. It says officials had never been trained to deal with that situation. The 9/11 Commission is holding its final day of public hearings in Washington.
The Bush/Cheney presidential campaign will take a brief break from advertising next week. A campaign official says voters won't be tuned in to political ads due to the June 30th transfer of power in Iraq and the 4th of July holiday.

The Olympic torch leaves Los Angeles today. It will head to St. Louis. That's the second stop on its four-city U.S. tour. The flame is visiting previous U.S. Summer Olympic cities, lighting up Atlanta on Friday, and then on to New York before heading back across the Atlantic.

Here's something that President Bush and his Democratic opponent John Kerry have in common. They are both reaching out to some former rivals, but they're doing it for very different reasons.

Bob Franken joins us from Washington with those stories.

Also...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stand by.

KAGAN: Stand by.

A sneak peek at Bill Clinton's new book.

You got the warning live there on national television, Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I am snapping to attention.

KAGAN: Good morning.

FRANKEN: And as for President Bush -- good morning -- he is following the old adage go West in his political travels today. After meeting with his cabinet and business leaders here in Washington, he travels to the presidential battleground of Washington State.

But the must-see photo-op comes tomorrow, when Bush will appear in Nevada with supporter and sometimes thorn in his side GOP Senator John McCain. This comes on the heels of reports that John Kerry unsuccessfully courted McCain to be his running mate. Kerry is scheduled to leave for Detroit this hour, where he'll attend a fund- raiser for Representative Caroline Kilpatrick's Senate campaign, followed by a fund-raiser of his own.

Meanwhile, CNN has learned Kerry met yesterday with his formal rival for the Democratic nomination, Congressman Richard Gephardt. He's among those said to be on the short list of potential Kerry running mates.

Former President Bill Clinton says his battle against impeachment is, quote, "a badge of honor." In an interview promoting his new book, Clinton tells "60 Minutes," the impeachment process was, quoting again, "illegitimate." CBS Evening News played a clip of the interview, in which Clinton discussed his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM J. CLINTON, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think I did something for the most indefensible reason, just because you could. I think that that's just about the most morally indefensible reason that anybody could have for doing anything, when you do something just because you could, and I've though about it a lot, and there are lots of more sophisticated explanations, more complicated psychological explanations, but none of them are an excuse. Only a fool does not look to explain his mistakes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FRANKEN: A report released today by the 9/11 Commission shows aviation and military officials were unprepared for the disastrous attacks. Will the report influence the race for the White House? 9/11 commissioner John Lehman joins Judy Woodruff live this afternoon. Plus, you think the Big Dig was bad, well, with the Democratic Convention a little over a month away, Dan Lothian takes a look at how all the hustle and bustle may seriously inconvenience Bostonians. We'll have all that and much more when Judy goes "INSIDE POLITICS" at 3:30 Eastern.

But right now, let's go back to Daryn in Atlanta.

KAGAN: All right, Bob Franken in Washington, thank you.

Liposuction could help you lose some weight, but new research suggests that health concerns are another story, details on that next. And if you or someone you love is acquiring the status of senior citizen, we're going to have something you're not going to want to miss. Here's your last chance to finish your questions about life's little and big details. You do need a guidebook to navigate the world of being a senior. We have a savvy senior, Jim Miller, with us. Send your questions to livetoday@cnn.com.

We are back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) KAGAN: All right, dog owners, how smart is your dog? Does he or she understand words? There's some evidence that dogs may understand human language. Really? A report in the "Journal of Science" focuses on a 9-year-old border collie named Rico. You'll see him in pictures now. Rico lives in Germany. Apparently responds to a vocabulary of 200 words, and he uses what scientists call fast mapping to figure out what people are saying. On the phone with us right now is Julia Fischer. She's with the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. She has been studying Rico, and is the lead scientist on the report.

Dr. Fischer, thank you for being with us.

JULIA FISCHER, MAX-PLANCK INST.: Hi, how are you?

KAGAN: Now I will be the first dog owner to tell you how smart my dog is. What is it exactly? Is Rico a special dog, or are you learning more about how dog brains work?

FISCHER: Well, I think it's two things. On the one hand, Rico certainly is special in terms of his motivation, his eagerness. He's totally focused. We call him a workaholic. You know, his owner has to tell him to stop and get some rest, and drink and eat, you know, things that other dogs would put first on their list.

On the other hand, we are getting more and more e-mails from dog owners and they tell us about their dog's abilities. So it seems that after all he may not be that special, that there are other dogs with comparable abilities.

KAGAN: We are watching a video that is taken of you and Rico in a room. And it looks like you're telling Rico to do something and pick up a toy. Can you tell us what the exercise was and how this shows you that Rico understood individual words?

FISCHER: So I mean, when we talk about understanding words, we have to specify a little more and says that he knows the names of his toys. So he has got these 200 toys, and what can you do is ask him, or anyone actually can ask him, even men with lower voices or children, they can ask him to bring a toy the name he knows of, and he establishes that first. There's no trick. You know, he's not attending to other cues or anything.

And then second, we also showed that he was able to figure out, when you place a new toy with his familiar toys and then said a new word, that he figured out that this new word probably belongs to that new toy he's seen before, and so he makes that relationship.

KAGAN: And so what does it tell us bigger picture about what's happening in doggie brains?

FISCHER: In the doggie brains, well, it means he has an understanding that certain sounds refer to certain things, and also he can do some logical operations with it. He can sort of do learning by exclusion and he can figure out new relationships, and this is -- the way he figures this out is comparable to the way human do it when they're about 3 years old. So it's just sort of making -- forming hypotheses, or you know, making assumptions about what people may need when they are talking about something in the environment, but of course children take off and become much more complicated quickly, and they learn much more about what people are saying than the dogs do.

KAGAN: They do, but in some cases some people's dogs are better behaved than their children.

FISCHER: Yes, that's true.

KAGAN: Better trained.

Dr. Fischer, thank you. I know there are a lot of dog lovers and dog owners out there very interested in your study. Thanks for joining us by phone.

FISCHER: You're welcome. Bye-bye.

KAGAN: Appreciate it. All right, we go from dog owners to savvy seniors. Are you one of them? We are answering your questions one more time. Send your questions, livetoday@CNN.com. Jim Miller is going to be along with his guidebook to navigate you through the world of being a senior.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Liposuction is one of the most popular plastic surgery procedures. It can help you slim down and look better, but does it make you healthier?

Our medical correspondent with an answer in our "Daily Dose" of health news.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh!

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): About a year and a half ago, Cheryl Strahm had 20 pounds of fat sucked out of her stomach. She did it to look better and...

CHERYL STRAHM, LIPOSUCTION STUDY PARTICIPANT: To lower my blood sugar, lower my cholesterol and lower my blood pressure. That's what I was hoping for.

COHEN: But it didn't turn out that way. Strahm is part of a new study that found that having liposuction, even having lots of fat removed like she did, does not help lower blood sugar, lower cholesterol or lower blood pressure. Strahm says she was surprised. She thought losing all that weight would help those health problems. So why didn't it?

DR. SAMUEL KLEIN, WASH. UNIVERSITY IN SAINT LOUIS: It's not how much fat but how you lose the fat that's important.

COHEN: Dr. Klein says only diet and exercise actually reduce the fat in the liver and in the muscles, which are important for health benefits. Liposuction doesn't touch that kind of fat.

Strahm says she is still glad she got the quick weight loss with lipo. Now she can move more easily, take walks every day.

STRAHM: When you feel better about yourself, dieting is easier.

COHEN: Now she's not looking for that quick fix but for a slow and steady weight loss that will make her slimmer and healthier.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: And Elizabeth Cohen is here to tell us more. We are sitting here talking about gastric bypass versus liposuction. Not always the same type of people who are looking to get it, but sometimes, the same people...

COHEN: Right, sometimes the same people and sometimes they have the reason for getting it. The woman who we just had in our story said that she got liposuction, because she wanted to look better and she wanted to get healthier. Well, it turned out, as we said in the piece, that the getting healthier part didn't quite work out the way that we thought it would

But we want to make a distinction between gastric bypass and liposuction. In gastric bypass surgery, the stomach is made smaller, and that forces the people eat less. So in that case, you probably would see those health benefits, because you have to change your eating.

With liposuction, you don't have to change your eating. You can go right back to eating the way you did, unfortunately.

KAGAN: Well, you can, but who among us hasn't done the...

COHEN: It would be so nice to pick your place. We all have our place.

KAGAN: And you get the liposuction, it sucks the fat away. but what keeps it from coming back in the exact same place?

COHEN: It doesn't. That's the point, is that maybe not in the exact same place, but if you keep up your eating habits the way you were doing it before, you will get fat again. Again, unlike the gastric bypass, which forces you to eat these little meals because your stomach can't handle anything more than that. With liposuction, you can go back to eating the way you did. Maybe it won't come back in exactly the right place, but it kill come back.

KAGAN: Yes, maybe in an even less desirable place.

COHEN: Right, exactly.

KAGAN: You can't get ahead on that one. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you for that.

COHEN: Your daily dose of health news is always just a click away. Log on to CNN.com/health for the latest medical news, a health library -- there it is -- and information on diet fitness.

We are back after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Let's take a look at some sports news unfolding at this hour. First, the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills in Southampton, New York. The biggest names in golf are competing for a purse totalling more than $6 million. The winner gets just over $1 million. The defending champ is Jim Furyk. He's playing, by the way, for the first time since he had wrist surgery in March.

Thousands of fans of the Detroit Pistons turned down -- turned out in downtown Detroit this morning. The city is celebrating with a mile-long parade for the new NBA champions. The Pistons beat the Lakers Tuesday night 100-87 to take the big prize.

And there's a happy ending for the 4-year-old shoved aside by a man who was diving for a foul ball. It happened at the Rangers game in Texas on Sunday. The rangers say that Matt Starr (ph) has now agreed to give the boy a ball, future game tickets and a written apology.

We are sorting out Social Security benefits, getting the best price for prescriptions. Those are just some of the issues facing the growing population of senior citizens in the U.S. A new book tackling those topics and more, it is called "The Savvy Senior: The Ultimate Guide to Health Family and Finances for Senior Citizens." The author is syndicated columnist Jim Miller. He's with us from Oklahoma City to answer some of your questions.

Jim, good morning.

JIM MILLER, AUTHOR, "THE SAVVY SENIOR": Good morning, Daryn.

KAGAN: Well, you are looking savvy, but I got to tell you, my friend, you don't look senior.

MILLER: Well, I'm 40. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm growing into the job.

KAGAN: That you are. And when you get there, you'll be so ready, because you've been doing a lot of research. You really do need a guidebook to get through what should be the easy golden years.

MILLER: Yes, yes. "The Savvy Senior Book," it's a real comprehensive book, covering all kinds of aging issues. I get a lot of questions from readers around the country, and the book is kind of based on that. It covers aspects about programs, and services and discounts that are available to older people swell the need-to-know basics of things like Medicare and Social Security. And there's a lot of good information in there about housing, caregiving, grandparenting. It's just a host. It's very user friendly, it's comprehensive with lots of resources, too.

KAGAN: OK, we had an advanced preview there. Our viewers so eager to ask you questions. We have some e-mail. Let's go to the first one, I think comes from Chicago. Can we put that back up/ There it goes.

Lola from Chicago wants to know, "When a senior has no family living and friends are dead, who does one appoint as an estate executor?" Very good question.

MILLER: Yes. You know, that is a good question. There's several things you can do as far as like an executive for the state, legal services really would be the outlet to go for something like this. Speak with your attorney.

But, you know, as far as an executor for the estate, you know, a family member a friend, somebody that you can depend on and somebody that you have reliability on as well.

KAGAN: And if there's no one you feel comfortable in that role, because it sounds like that's where Lola, as you said legal services. There are (UNINTELLIGIBLE) legal services for seniors?

MILLER: There is, Daryn. There's an organization called Legal Hotlines. And LegalHotlines.org has a Web site. Every state has access to legal services. There's actually about 25 states that have access to free legal services. And you can call their number and they'll be able to give you all kinds of information and help you with any of your legal questions as well as questions about estate issues.

KAGAN: All right. We have a lot of animals in the news today. So our next question is going to concern a senior's pet. This one, "Does keeping a pet really improve a senior citizen's health?" It's also taking on a big responsibility, Jim.

MILLER: Yes. It is. And I think it does. I've written very little about that, but I think that does. It's a great companion and I -- I'm a dog lover myself. And I think it does make a difference. You know, that unconditional love aspect is very good. It's great for older people, too that don't have family or friends around as much.

KAGAN: How great for you that you have a job where you do get to work with older people. Not treasured enough commodity we have here in America.

MILLER: Yes, yes, yes.

KAGAN: Thank you very much.

MILLER: You bet.

KAGAN: One last thought?

MILLER: I was going to say, thanks for having me on. And I hope the book is very useful. It's very satisfying to reach out and answer people's questions on all kinds of topics. And I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show today.

KAGAN: Once again, it's called "The Savvy Senior." You're doing good work for an important part of our population. Jim Miller, thanks for coming by. We'll have to bring you back when we have some other senior-related topics.

MILLER: Great. Thanks, Daryn.

MARKET UPDATE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER UPDATE)

KAGAN: Well that's is going to do it for us on that big hairy note. I'm Daryn Kagan. I'll be right back here tomorrow morning. Wolf Blitzer takes over from Washington, D.C.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired June 17, 2004 - 11:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Daryn Kagan at CNN Center in Atlanta. Let's check the headlines at this hour. Military and civilian aviation officials could do nothing to stop the September 11th hijackings. That's according to a staff report prepared for the 9/11 Commission. It says officials had never been trained to deal with that situation. The 9/11 Commission is holding its final day of public hearings in Washington.
The Bush/Cheney presidential campaign will take a brief break from advertising next week. A campaign official says voters won't be tuned in to political ads due to the June 30th transfer of power in Iraq and the 4th of July holiday.

The Olympic torch leaves Los Angeles today. It will head to St. Louis. That's the second stop on its four-city U.S. tour. The flame is visiting previous U.S. Summer Olympic cities, lighting up Atlanta on Friday, and then on to New York before heading back across the Atlantic.

Here's something that President Bush and his Democratic opponent John Kerry have in common. They are both reaching out to some former rivals, but they're doing it for very different reasons.

Bob Franken joins us from Washington with those stories.

Also...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stand by.

KAGAN: Stand by.

A sneak peek at Bill Clinton's new book.

You got the warning live there on national television, Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I am snapping to attention.

KAGAN: Good morning.

FRANKEN: And as for President Bush -- good morning -- he is following the old adage go West in his political travels today. After meeting with his cabinet and business leaders here in Washington, he travels to the presidential battleground of Washington State.

But the must-see photo-op comes tomorrow, when Bush will appear in Nevada with supporter and sometimes thorn in his side GOP Senator John McCain. This comes on the heels of reports that John Kerry unsuccessfully courted McCain to be his running mate. Kerry is scheduled to leave for Detroit this hour, where he'll attend a fund- raiser for Representative Caroline Kilpatrick's Senate campaign, followed by a fund-raiser of his own.

Meanwhile, CNN has learned Kerry met yesterday with his formal rival for the Democratic nomination, Congressman Richard Gephardt. He's among those said to be on the short list of potential Kerry running mates.

Former President Bill Clinton says his battle against impeachment is, quote, "a badge of honor." In an interview promoting his new book, Clinton tells "60 Minutes," the impeachment process was, quoting again, "illegitimate." CBS Evening News played a clip of the interview, in which Clinton discussed his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM J. CLINTON, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think I did something for the most indefensible reason, just because you could. I think that that's just about the most morally indefensible reason that anybody could have for doing anything, when you do something just because you could, and I've though about it a lot, and there are lots of more sophisticated explanations, more complicated psychological explanations, but none of them are an excuse. Only a fool does not look to explain his mistakes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FRANKEN: A report released today by the 9/11 Commission shows aviation and military officials were unprepared for the disastrous attacks. Will the report influence the race for the White House? 9/11 commissioner John Lehman joins Judy Woodruff live this afternoon. Plus, you think the Big Dig was bad, well, with the Democratic Convention a little over a month away, Dan Lothian takes a look at how all the hustle and bustle may seriously inconvenience Bostonians. We'll have all that and much more when Judy goes "INSIDE POLITICS" at 3:30 Eastern.

But right now, let's go back to Daryn in Atlanta.

KAGAN: All right, Bob Franken in Washington, thank you.

Liposuction could help you lose some weight, but new research suggests that health concerns are another story, details on that next. And if you or someone you love is acquiring the status of senior citizen, we're going to have something you're not going to want to miss. Here's your last chance to finish your questions about life's little and big details. You do need a guidebook to navigate the world of being a senior. We have a savvy senior, Jim Miller, with us. Send your questions to livetoday@cnn.com.

We are back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) KAGAN: All right, dog owners, how smart is your dog? Does he or she understand words? There's some evidence that dogs may understand human language. Really? A report in the "Journal of Science" focuses on a 9-year-old border collie named Rico. You'll see him in pictures now. Rico lives in Germany. Apparently responds to a vocabulary of 200 words, and he uses what scientists call fast mapping to figure out what people are saying. On the phone with us right now is Julia Fischer. She's with the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. She has been studying Rico, and is the lead scientist on the report.

Dr. Fischer, thank you for being with us.

JULIA FISCHER, MAX-PLANCK INST.: Hi, how are you?

KAGAN: Now I will be the first dog owner to tell you how smart my dog is. What is it exactly? Is Rico a special dog, or are you learning more about how dog brains work?

FISCHER: Well, I think it's two things. On the one hand, Rico certainly is special in terms of his motivation, his eagerness. He's totally focused. We call him a workaholic. You know, his owner has to tell him to stop and get some rest, and drink and eat, you know, things that other dogs would put first on their list.

On the other hand, we are getting more and more e-mails from dog owners and they tell us about their dog's abilities. So it seems that after all he may not be that special, that there are other dogs with comparable abilities.

KAGAN: We are watching a video that is taken of you and Rico in a room. And it looks like you're telling Rico to do something and pick up a toy. Can you tell us what the exercise was and how this shows you that Rico understood individual words?

FISCHER: So I mean, when we talk about understanding words, we have to specify a little more and says that he knows the names of his toys. So he has got these 200 toys, and what can you do is ask him, or anyone actually can ask him, even men with lower voices or children, they can ask him to bring a toy the name he knows of, and he establishes that first. There's no trick. You know, he's not attending to other cues or anything.

And then second, we also showed that he was able to figure out, when you place a new toy with his familiar toys and then said a new word, that he figured out that this new word probably belongs to that new toy he's seen before, and so he makes that relationship.

KAGAN: And so what does it tell us bigger picture about what's happening in doggie brains?

FISCHER: In the doggie brains, well, it means he has an understanding that certain sounds refer to certain things, and also he can do some logical operations with it. He can sort of do learning by exclusion and he can figure out new relationships, and this is -- the way he figures this out is comparable to the way human do it when they're about 3 years old. So it's just sort of making -- forming hypotheses, or you know, making assumptions about what people may need when they are talking about something in the environment, but of course children take off and become much more complicated quickly, and they learn much more about what people are saying than the dogs do.

KAGAN: They do, but in some cases some people's dogs are better behaved than their children.

FISCHER: Yes, that's true.

KAGAN: Better trained.

Dr. Fischer, thank you. I know there are a lot of dog lovers and dog owners out there very interested in your study. Thanks for joining us by phone.

FISCHER: You're welcome. Bye-bye.

KAGAN: Appreciate it. All right, we go from dog owners to savvy seniors. Are you one of them? We are answering your questions one more time. Send your questions, livetoday@CNN.com. Jim Miller is going to be along with his guidebook to navigate you through the world of being a senior.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Liposuction is one of the most popular plastic surgery procedures. It can help you slim down and look better, but does it make you healthier?

Our medical correspondent with an answer in our "Daily Dose" of health news.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh!

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): About a year and a half ago, Cheryl Strahm had 20 pounds of fat sucked out of her stomach. She did it to look better and...

CHERYL STRAHM, LIPOSUCTION STUDY PARTICIPANT: To lower my blood sugar, lower my cholesterol and lower my blood pressure. That's what I was hoping for.

COHEN: But it didn't turn out that way. Strahm is part of a new study that found that having liposuction, even having lots of fat removed like she did, does not help lower blood sugar, lower cholesterol or lower blood pressure. Strahm says she was surprised. She thought losing all that weight would help those health problems. So why didn't it?

DR. SAMUEL KLEIN, WASH. UNIVERSITY IN SAINT LOUIS: It's not how much fat but how you lose the fat that's important.

COHEN: Dr. Klein says only diet and exercise actually reduce the fat in the liver and in the muscles, which are important for health benefits. Liposuction doesn't touch that kind of fat.

Strahm says she is still glad she got the quick weight loss with lipo. Now she can move more easily, take walks every day.

STRAHM: When you feel better about yourself, dieting is easier.

COHEN: Now she's not looking for that quick fix but for a slow and steady weight loss that will make her slimmer and healthier.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: And Elizabeth Cohen is here to tell us more. We are sitting here talking about gastric bypass versus liposuction. Not always the same type of people who are looking to get it, but sometimes, the same people...

COHEN: Right, sometimes the same people and sometimes they have the reason for getting it. The woman who we just had in our story said that she got liposuction, because she wanted to look better and she wanted to get healthier. Well, it turned out, as we said in the piece, that the getting healthier part didn't quite work out the way that we thought it would

But we want to make a distinction between gastric bypass and liposuction. In gastric bypass surgery, the stomach is made smaller, and that forces the people eat less. So in that case, you probably would see those health benefits, because you have to change your eating.

With liposuction, you don't have to change your eating. You can go right back to eating the way you did, unfortunately.

KAGAN: Well, you can, but who among us hasn't done the...

COHEN: It would be so nice to pick your place. We all have our place.

KAGAN: And you get the liposuction, it sucks the fat away. but what keeps it from coming back in the exact same place?

COHEN: It doesn't. That's the point, is that maybe not in the exact same place, but if you keep up your eating habits the way you were doing it before, you will get fat again. Again, unlike the gastric bypass, which forces you to eat these little meals because your stomach can't handle anything more than that. With liposuction, you can go back to eating the way you did. Maybe it won't come back in exactly the right place, but it kill come back.

KAGAN: Yes, maybe in an even less desirable place.

COHEN: Right, exactly.

KAGAN: You can't get ahead on that one. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you for that.

COHEN: Your daily dose of health news is always just a click away. Log on to CNN.com/health for the latest medical news, a health library -- there it is -- and information on diet fitness.

We are back after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Let's take a look at some sports news unfolding at this hour. First, the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills in Southampton, New York. The biggest names in golf are competing for a purse totalling more than $6 million. The winner gets just over $1 million. The defending champ is Jim Furyk. He's playing, by the way, for the first time since he had wrist surgery in March.

Thousands of fans of the Detroit Pistons turned down -- turned out in downtown Detroit this morning. The city is celebrating with a mile-long parade for the new NBA champions. The Pistons beat the Lakers Tuesday night 100-87 to take the big prize.

And there's a happy ending for the 4-year-old shoved aside by a man who was diving for a foul ball. It happened at the Rangers game in Texas on Sunday. The rangers say that Matt Starr (ph) has now agreed to give the boy a ball, future game tickets and a written apology.

We are sorting out Social Security benefits, getting the best price for prescriptions. Those are just some of the issues facing the growing population of senior citizens in the U.S. A new book tackling those topics and more, it is called "The Savvy Senior: The Ultimate Guide to Health Family and Finances for Senior Citizens." The author is syndicated columnist Jim Miller. He's with us from Oklahoma City to answer some of your questions.

Jim, good morning.

JIM MILLER, AUTHOR, "THE SAVVY SENIOR": Good morning, Daryn.

KAGAN: Well, you are looking savvy, but I got to tell you, my friend, you don't look senior.

MILLER: Well, I'm 40. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm growing into the job.

KAGAN: That you are. And when you get there, you'll be so ready, because you've been doing a lot of research. You really do need a guidebook to get through what should be the easy golden years.

MILLER: Yes, yes. "The Savvy Senior Book," it's a real comprehensive book, covering all kinds of aging issues. I get a lot of questions from readers around the country, and the book is kind of based on that. It covers aspects about programs, and services and discounts that are available to older people swell the need-to-know basics of things like Medicare and Social Security. And there's a lot of good information in there about housing, caregiving, grandparenting. It's just a host. It's very user friendly, it's comprehensive with lots of resources, too.

KAGAN: OK, we had an advanced preview there. Our viewers so eager to ask you questions. We have some e-mail. Let's go to the first one, I think comes from Chicago. Can we put that back up/ There it goes.

Lola from Chicago wants to know, "When a senior has no family living and friends are dead, who does one appoint as an estate executor?" Very good question.

MILLER: Yes. You know, that is a good question. There's several things you can do as far as like an executive for the state, legal services really would be the outlet to go for something like this. Speak with your attorney.

But, you know, as far as an executor for the estate, you know, a family member a friend, somebody that you can depend on and somebody that you have reliability on as well.

KAGAN: And if there's no one you feel comfortable in that role, because it sounds like that's where Lola, as you said legal services. There are (UNINTELLIGIBLE) legal services for seniors?

MILLER: There is, Daryn. There's an organization called Legal Hotlines. And LegalHotlines.org has a Web site. Every state has access to legal services. There's actually about 25 states that have access to free legal services. And you can call their number and they'll be able to give you all kinds of information and help you with any of your legal questions as well as questions about estate issues.

KAGAN: All right. We have a lot of animals in the news today. So our next question is going to concern a senior's pet. This one, "Does keeping a pet really improve a senior citizen's health?" It's also taking on a big responsibility, Jim.

MILLER: Yes. It is. And I think it does. I've written very little about that, but I think that does. It's a great companion and I -- I'm a dog lover myself. And I think it does make a difference. You know, that unconditional love aspect is very good. It's great for older people, too that don't have family or friends around as much.

KAGAN: How great for you that you have a job where you do get to work with older people. Not treasured enough commodity we have here in America.

MILLER: Yes, yes, yes.

KAGAN: Thank you very much.

MILLER: You bet.

KAGAN: One last thought?

MILLER: I was going to say, thanks for having me on. And I hope the book is very useful. It's very satisfying to reach out and answer people's questions on all kinds of topics. And I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show today.

KAGAN: Once again, it's called "The Savvy Senior." You're doing good work for an important part of our population. Jim Miller, thanks for coming by. We'll have to bring you back when we have some other senior-related topics.

MILLER: Great. Thanks, Daryn.

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KAGAN: Well that's is going to do it for us on that big hairy note. I'm Daryn Kagan. I'll be right back here tomorrow morning. Wolf Blitzer takes over from Washington, D.C.

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