What’s your attitude about aging? Do you hate it? Love it? Or, like me, simply try to deny it! Research now shows our negative attitudes about aging affect our physical and mental health as we age.
I’m a long-time practitioner of the revered art of denial. I don’t lie about my age; I simply don’t believe in it. Maybe they made a mistake on my birth certificate?
Part of the reason for this is that I’ve looked younger than my age even when I was younger. I acted younger (immature, that is), dressed youthfully, and looked at everyone else as being older. I guess I thought “it” wouldn’t happen to me. I avoided using the “O” word. I wouldn’t mention any clichéd senior moments.
Aging Isn’t a Bad Thing
Because everyone in my immediate family died young (50s and 60s), I didn’t have familiarity with the aging well. With dying, yes; with cancer, yes; I know people die. But growing old and living well as an older person―well, I had no experience seeing others live into their 70s, 80s and 90s. I guess I never thought I’d be around that long.
How you age isn’t determined by genes. Your attitude about aging has a lot of influence. It turns out longevity experts got it wrong. Instead of life expectancy being determined 90 percent by genes and 10 percent by lifestyle; it’s the other way around.
If your parents lived into their 90s, you’ve been blessed with good genetics, so lucky you. But what determines longevity is what you do with the genes you’ve got―in other words, your lifestyle and health habits. And that’s something you choose to focus on.
Negative Attitudes and Poor Health
The Irish Longitudinal Study on Aging (TILDA) at Trinity College Dublin looked at the impact of attitude on senior health. The study, summarized in Medical News Today, resulted in these major findings:
- Older adults with negative attitudes towards aging had slower walking speed and worse cognitive abilities two years later, compared to older adults with more positive attitudes towards aging.
- This was true even after participants’ medications, mood, their life circumstances and other health changes that had occurred over the same two-year period were accounted for.
- Furthermore, negative attitudes towards aging seemed to affect how different health conditions interacted. Frail older adults are at risk of multiple health problems including worse cognition. In the TILDA sample frail participants with negative attitudes towards aging had worse cognition compared to participants who were not frail. However frail participants with positive attitudes towards aging had the same level of cognitive ability as their non-frail peers.
Choose Your Aging Attitude
My former attitude about aging was simply, “nope.” I acted as if it weren’t happening. Total denial. I can’t do that any longer. Both my looks and body have changed. I get harsh reality signals from the mirror, the tennis courts, and the doctors’ offices.
Today, I say “yes” to aging well. I’m going to do something today that’s good for me. I can play sports and exercise. I can eat better food that is nutritional and tasty. And I can decide to be in a good mood, friendly and upbeat.
How to Shift Your Attitude About Exercise
Here’s a prime example of how to shift your aging attitude toward exercise, for example. Inactive men and women over age 30 slowly lose muscle tissue every year. At about age 50, this loss of muscle (and strength and endurance) starts happening faster. And after age 65, it accelerates even more. (Look! There goes another bit of tricep!)
Scientists have a name for muscle loss: sarcopenia. It is from the Greek, meaning “poverty of flesh.” It is what we see in frail, elderly people who are bent over from a combination of osteoporosis and low muscle mass, the wasting away of both bone and muscle tissue.
But here’s the thing: when we embrace the reality of muscle loss, we have an opportunity to do something about it.
If you don’t send any signals to grow, decay will win, but even a modest signal to grow—a decent workout, even a good, stiff walk—will drown out the noise. Thing is, you need to do something every day to tell your body it’s springtime. …you have to work at it every day. ~ Dr. Henry S. Lodge, coauthor of Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit and Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond (New York: Workman Publishing)
The good news is that the exercise and eating program we recommend for seniors fighting the War on Aging is mostly common sense, simple, and fun, with some work―but we try to make that work more like play.
While it’s never too late to start exercising, the earlier we begin and the more consistent we are, the greater the long-term rewards.
Of course, it goes without saying, it’s never too late to change your attitude about aging. Like me, you can stop denying it (it will catch up with you anyway), and join the War on Aging!
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