Some things are said to get better with age: wine and cheese, for example.
But human beings?
Our muscle volume decreases, our cognition declines, our energy tanks and our risk of certain conditions, especially the so-called disease of aging, spikes.
No wonder the prospect of aging paints a very negative picture.
But is age-related decline an inevitable fact of life? Are we looking at it the wrong way?
And there’s this: Do our negative thoughts on aging create a self-fulfilling prophecy?
A team of scientists at Yale University decided to find out…
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Is it all downhill from here?
Researchers followed more than 11,000 participants in the Health and Retirement Study, a federally supported longitudinal survey of Americans aged 65 and older.
They tracked changes in cognition using a global performance assessment and physical function using walking speed. Why walking speed?
Geriatricians often describe walking speed as a vital sign due to its strong links to disability, hospitalization and mortality.
The results were stunning…
Over a follow-up period of up to 12 years, 45% of participants improved in at least one of the two domains: 32% improving cognitively and 28% improving physically. Plus, many experienced gains that exceeded clinically meaningful thresholds.
That’s not all. When including participants whose cognitive scores remained stable over the follow-up period, more than half debunked the assumption of inevitable cognitive decline.
“What’s striking is that these gains disappear when you only look at averages,” says lead author Becca Levy of the Yale School of Public Health. “If you average everyone together, you see decline. But when you look at individual trajectories, you uncover a very different story. A meaningful percentage of the older participants that we studied got better.”
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What was their secret?
Why do some people improve during aging while others do not? The researchers linked it to attitude…
Participants who held more positive beliefs about aging were significantly more likely to show improvements in both cognition and walking speed.
These findings held up even after accounting for factors such as age, sex, education, chronic disease, depression and length of follow-up.
The results build on Levy’s Stereotype Embodiment Theory, which posits that age stereotypes absorbed from a range of cultural domains, including social media and advertisements, eventually become self-relevant and biologically consequential.
Previous studies by Levy have established a connection between negative age beliefs and poorer memory, slower walking speed, higher cardiovascular risk and biomarkers associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
“Our findings suggest there is often a reserve capacity for improvement in later life,” Levy says. “And because age beliefs are modifiable, this opens the door to interventions at both the individual and societal level.”
Interestingly, the improvements weren’t limited to people who started with impairments. Even a substantial proportion of participants who had normal cognitive or physical function at baseline improved over time.
According to the researchers, this challenges the assumption that only people who are sick or experiencing setbacks can make later-life gains.
The researchers hope their findings will reverse the popular perception that age-related decline is inevitable and support programs to help older people draw on their potential resilience as they age.
“Many people equate aging with an inevitable and continuous loss of physical and cognitive abilities,” Levy says. “What we found is that improvement in later life is not rare, it’s common, and it should be included in our understanding of the aging process.”
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A change in attitude goes a long way
Now, these findings don’t mean that you can simply think your way to better health as you age. But they do highlight the importance of mindset in your overall plan for aging healthfully.
When you find yourself thinking negative or anxious thoughts about aging, notice them as soon as they occur. Then institute one of these strategies for replacing them:
- Identify your strengths: Focus on the skills, strengths and positive attributes you have to offer.
- Rephrase your negative thoughts in the positive: Take a thought like “I can’t do anything right” and change it to “There are many things I do very well.”
- Change your perspective: Think of it this way — if a loved one has a negative thought, what would you say to them to dispel it?
- Chunking: If you feel a task or situation is too overwhelming or difficult, break it down into steps. Clean just one room at a time instead of thinking about the whole house… Walk to the mailbox first, then when you’re up to it, go up the street — next time you may be ready to go around the block.
Once you gain control over the negative thoughts and your attitude starts turning you back up the proverbial hill, it’s time to turn your attention to a key driver of physical aging called inflammaging and five key ways to fight it off.
Sources:
New study challenges notion that aging means decline, finds many older adults improve over time — Yale School of Public Health
Aging Redefined: Cognitive and Physical Improvement with Positive Age Beliefs — Geriatrics
The Power of Positive: Reframing a Negative Outlook — Brown University Health
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