It’s Up to You to Age Gracefully
Although “Successful Aging” (Pantheon) sounds like the title of yet another how-to book promoting wonder pills or miracle exercises, this new work is in a different league.
Heralded as a benchmark in reshaping society’s historically negative view of aging, it approaches the subject by exploring aging in terms of health and vitality rather than expected disease and decline. Offering guidance to intelligent lifestyle choices to everyone from baby boomers to octogenarians, the book addresses such fundamental questions as these:
What does it mean to age successfully? What can each of us do to be successful at this most important life task? And what changes in American society will enable more men and women to age successfully?
Without making excessive promises, “Successful Aging” debunks a number of myths including the common belief that genetics are destiny, and physical and mental deterioration are coded into our genes. In fact, say the authors, the influence of genetics shrinks with the years while lifestyle choices become increasingly important in shaping the quality of later life.
“There are many books on aging, but two things set ours apart,” said University of Michigan psychologist and co-author Robert L. Kahn. “The first and most important is that this is science-based. The second is that we are very explicit about our concept of successful aging and we are not promising instantaneous or revolutionary change by gulping some pill.”
What the authors do say is that it is never too late to make healthy behavioral choices such as exercising, cultivating new friends and becoming engaged in activities, three of the most powerful determinants of health and functioning in seniors.
“The bottom line is, we studied people at different ages and we found no evidence for a point at which it was too late to start exercising or treating disabilities aggressively or doing anything else to improve health,” Kahn said.
And they lay out guidelines for changes in personal behavior, societal expectations and public policy.
The book summarizes the MacArthur Foundation Study of Aging in America, a 10-year project involving an interdisciplinary network of researchers. “Essentially, we are defining a new gerontology,” said Kahn, who is co-author of the book with Dr. John W. Rowe, president of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital and School of Medicine. Both were members of the 16-scientist network that studied thousands of older people, including sets of twins.
They were looking for success stories, Kahn said. How do many people remain healthy, mentally acute and independent well into their 90s? The researchers, studying biology, neuroscience, epidemiology, physiology and other specialties, focused on the factors that permitted older people to continue to function well.
As a result, the studies dispel a handful of cliches about aging that have long shaped individual and institutional attitudes, including: “To be old is to be sick,” “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” and “It’s all in the genes.”
The researchers found that memory decline can be reversed, that loneliness can kill and that well-intentioned help can teach old people to be helpless.
The traditional approach to gerontology has been a careful documentation of a series of losses, Kahn said. “That’s a reasonable way to start accumulating data. We do lose lung function, bone density and cardiac capacity with each successive year. And, of course, there is an ultimate reality--we are all mortal.”
But if that was all, we would behave with resignation and just give up. Kahn cited a once-popular “disengagement” theory of aging in which the main task of old age was letting go of one thing after another until one eventually “lets go of life.”
“We’re saying that instead of the rocking chair and the shawl, it’s OK for older people to be active and do all the things within their capability,” Kahn said. “Right now, because we measure only paid employment in determining productivity we generally have a wrong idea about what older people are doing. We aren’t counting such things as child care, home care, volunteer work and all the other things that keep society glued together.” In funding the research, the MacArthur Foundation was prodded by several realities that might be summarized as the “new longevity.”
“This generation is the beneficiary of tremendous medical advances,” Kahn said. Faced with the gift of unprecedented extended years, he noted, our next challenge is to improve the quality of those years.
And although their emphasis on diet and exercise merely reaffirms today’s common wisdom, he said, the research has produced new insights. “The findings that exercise helps to maintain mental and cognitive skills as well as physical ability in old age is new and interesting and exciting.”
“Successful Aging” provides guidelines. Chapters deal with avoiding disease and disability in later life, the positive role of exercise and nutrition, and strategies to maintain and enhance both physical performance and mental function.
The final chapter suggests government and private sector changes that could create more flexibility in the lifelong mix of education, employment and leisure. Productivity could be redefined to include unpaid work, the workday reorganized into four-hour modules and health insurance separated from employment.
The 250-page book, which was compiled from hundreds of scientific studies published over the research period, is footnoted but not academic. “We struggled to make it user-friendly, but not dumb it down,” said Kahn, 80. As professor emeritus at Michigan, he continues his work at the Institute for Social Research.
Noting that “Successful Aging” is now third on the bestseller list at the online bookstore at https://www.amazon.com, Kahn thinks he and Rowe have succeeded. “The whole point was to get the word out because we are convinced that people can really transform their later lives.”
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Five Myths of Aging
* Myth: To be old is to be sick.
Fact: Only 5.2% of older people (over 65) live in nursing homes, down from 6.3% in 1982. Of Americans in the 75-to-84-age bracket, 73% reported no disability in 1994.
* Myth: You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Fact: The less people are challenged, the less they can perform. Older people can, and do, learn new things and do them well. In one experiment, older people who had declined in inductive reasoning and spatial orientation made significant and long-lasting improvement after five training sessions.
* Myth: The horse is out of the barn. Years of eating fatty foods, not exercising and smoking have done irreversible damage.
Fact: Nature is remarkably forgiving. The risk of heart disease starts falling almost as soon as you quit smoking. The accelerating beneficial effects of quitting hold true regardless of age. The same is true for obesity, blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol and decreased physical functioning.
* Myth: The secret to successful aging is to choose your parents wisely.
Fact: With rare exceptions, only about 30% of physical aging can be blamed on genes and only about half of changes in mental function. This leaves substantial room for healthy lifestyle to protect the mind and body. Also, as we grow older, genetics take a back seat to environmental factors.
* Myth: The elderly don’t pull their own weight.
Fact: The unstated assumptions are that everybody who works for pay is pulling his or her weight, and those who do not are a burden. The truth is some people who are paid do little or nothing useful while unpaid but productive work--in the home or as a volunteer--goes uncounted. Also, millions of seniors are ready, willing and able to increase their productivity, both paid and voluntary, given a chance.
--Excerpted from “Successful Aging”
