Aging stereotypes: don’t believe them, defy them, crank up the speed!

October 5, 2006 by Mary Wynne-Wynter 

I think one of the worst effects of the ‘dot-com/dot-bomb’ phenomena is leftover, nagging beliefs that younger people have the brains and energy and older people are slow, dull and out-of-touch.  I should know.  I was fired from one of those companies and for the year I was there, all of those negative stereotypes were continually thrown in my face – some subtly, some directly.  It was 8 years ago and I can still remember how hard it was initially feeling beaten down by the ostracism I faced every day.  I turned it around with defiance: towards others beliefs about me, to society’s beliefs about me, and most importantly – to my own beliefs about aging.

I thought of that year the other night while attending a Rolling Stones concert at Gillette Stadium.  One of the supposedly ‘hip, flavor of the month’ new media reporters had circulated a newsletter that year about Mick Jagger wearing Depends.  I was incensed, let the jerk know it, and made it a crusade to get as many people off his mailing list as possible.  Watching Mick run the stage the other night I remembered that year, and renewed my vow to defy limiting age beliefs. As this study proves, believing that you are slower can literally ‘de-condition’ you and start a vicious cycle of weakening, slowing down, and frailty. So my advice – less emphasis on comfort, and more emphasis on speed.

That led to the next question. Could teaching people to walk farther and faster prevent their growing so weak they could hardly walk?

Dr. Jack Guralnik, acting chief of the laboratory of epidemiology, demography and biometry at the National Institute on Aging, hopes it can. A new pilot study that he helped direct found that, with training, people could walk faster, improve their balance and more easily rise from a chair. Now he wants to expand that study to explore whether such training helps people retain their ability to walk and improves their health.

Richard J. Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging is intrigued.

“It would be an extremely expensive study,” Dr. Hodes said, adding that its costs have not been added up. But, he said, if training could keep just 10 percent to 20 percent more people mobile, “I’m sure billions would be saved.”

If anyone doubts it, read this article or visit a rowing club like mine and see what people are capable of, physically and mentally, into their 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. And for God’s sake – enough of the age jokes and put-down birthday greeting cards. I like sick humor, but they make me sick.

The New Age: Old but Not Frail: A Matter of Heart and Head: "A central issue only now being systematically addressed is why some people age well and others do not."

(Via NYT > Most E-mailed Articles.)

Rigorous studies are now showing that seeing, or hearing, gloomy nostrums about what it is like to be old can make people walk more slowly, hear and remember less well, and even affect their cardiovascular systems. Positive images of aging have the opposite effects. The constant message that old people are expected to be slow and weak and forgetful is not a reason for the full-blown frailty syndrome. But it may help push people along that path.

Still, it is a view that can lead to blaming the victim, and some scientists at first resisted it. Now, though, more and more say they have been won over by an accumulating body of evidence.

“I am changing my initially skeptical view,” says Richard Suzman, who is director of the office of behavioral and social research programs at the National Institute on Aging. “There is growing evidence that these subjective experiences might be more important than we thought.”

Filed under: Consciousness, career, going solo
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