Studies show that staying optimistic about aging can be as beneficial to your health as exercising or eating well
After my father died, my mother joined a community center with a pool and started swimming laps several times a week. Dorothy was nearly 80. She met people, learned about local programs and services for older folks, and discovered a senior center that remains her hangout 18 years later. It serves hot lunch for a dollar. A dee jay comes in and she dances.
Social connections may influence health through what the researchers call “stress buffering.” Support from others helps us adapt emotionally to illness, the death of a loved one, or other challenges that often pile up as we get older. Better coping, in turn, eases the flow of stress-induced hormones that weaken our immune system and increase susceptibility to deadly infections, heart disease, and stroke.
Her ideas about aging beliefs jelled when a national holiday, Keiro No Hi, which translates as Respect for the Aged Day, rolled around in September. Seniors packed parks and dined at restaurants for free. Schoolchildren delivered meals to shut-ins. In Japan, she observed, older people commanded respect, even reverence. They were not shunted aside or ridiculed as “geezers” or “over the hill.”
Levy’s research also suggests that rose-colored perceptions of aging offer protection against cognitive decline, even in adults who are genetically susceptible. Levy and her colleagues studied people who carried thegene, which increases the risk of Alzheimer’s. At the start of the project, all her subjects were dementia-free.
She also has had study subjects keep a journal of portrayals of elders on TV. It opened people’s eyes to the condescending and ugly stereotypes that bombard us and twist our perceptions and assumptions about aging. “The idea is to make people more aware of both their own age beliefs, and the age-belief messaging they encounter in everyday life,” Levy says.
Reading research by scientists trying to unravel the mysteries of aging can make it hard to feel good about growing older. The idea of “curing” aging casts it as pathology. Published studies start, relentlessly, with bad news. “Aging is a degenerative process that leads to tissue dysfunction and death,” begins a typical paper.
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