As we age, our bodies and lives change, and our health interests and needs change too. The World Wide Web can be a rich source of information to meet the unique needs of seniors. The next time you seek information, whether it's on prevention, dealing with a diagnosis, or ways to help a friend who may be dealing with a health concern, here's a quick reference of popular sites known for their accurate, timely, and understandable information.

Government sites are often a good fist step for information because they

• are a trusted source for information
• are less likely to restrict information
• are less likely to promote information biased by a commercial interest
• will present information on lesser-used programs, not based only on user demand

Here are some sites for you to take a look at.

National Institute on Aging (www.nia.nih.gov)
The National Institute on Aging (NIA) provides health information pages on topics such as sleeping, eye care, alcohol use, talking with your doctor, and much more. The site also carries a long list of other Federal Web sites of interest to seniors.

NIHSeniorHealth (www.nihseniorhealth.gov)
This site was developed by the NIA in conjunction with the National Library of Medicine, both part of the National Institutes of Health. The site contains a limited number of topics now, specifically on Alzheimer's disease and exercise, with plans to add more topics later. Within each topic there are sections containing general background information, videos, short quizzes, and frequently asked questions. For access to more topics, this site includes a link to MEDLINEplus.

MEDLINEplus (www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/seniorshealthgeneral.html)
MEDLINEplus is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The main site includes an alphabetic list of health topics, drug information, an encyclopedia, a dictionary, news, directories, and much more. The Seniors' Health pages are handy because they display links to all the information in the above mentioned catagories but only that which is of particular interest to seniors.

FIRSTGOV for Seniors (www.seniors.gov)
The Social Security Administration maintains this site, which contains a link to a useful guide by an organization called SPRY, to help you evaluate online health resources. For health information, this site directs readers to MEDLINEplus.