What does it mean to age well? Social media influencers, anti-aging products and services, and even friends might say they know exactly what you should do. But the choice is yours.
If you’ve kept even remote track of the news in recent years, you’ve probably encountered a parade of ads about techniques, diets, and treatments that claim to boost longevity and let you to live out your days like some Methuselah-like titan of yore. Even fictional characters as on “Only Murders in the Building” and “Knives Out #2” demonstrate the mad pursuit for the fountain of youth.
A recent BBC report documents the rise of expensive destination longevity clinics and one-time treatments – like a flight recovery protocol from the Four Seasons Los Angeles at Beverly Hills that costs $1,000. Add-ons for the service include high-tech options like gut health exams, genetic analysis, and stem cell therapy.
But do the payoffs from these costly investments really bring longer, healthier lives? Medical professionals like Andrea LaCroix are dubious. She’s professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health & Human Longevity Science at the University of California, San Diego.
“There’s an absence of clinical trial data showing that any interventions extend healthy longevity in humans,” she told the BBC. “These treatments should be seen as self-experimentation at your own risk.”
The dark truth is that, at its worst, the longevity industry capitalizes on deep-seated fears that iconic Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, summed up so well: What to do about “decrepit age that has been tied to me as to a dog’s tail?”
The better way to age well
But many aging experts argue there’s a better path. They say the drive to cheat, best, or overcome inevitable age-related decline is fundamentally unhealthy.
“There is this sort of odd American thing where we believe that we can always be the exception, and somehow the exception becomes the goal or the standard, and we tailor everything towards that exception,” University of Massachusetts Boston Gerontology Institute director, Michelle Putnam told Kiplinger writer Alina Tugend.
Rather than chase potentially bogus miracle cures, she recommends a Serenity-Prayer-type approach that balances an acceptance of and active engagement with your own unique experience of aging. The process can vary wildly from person to person, so the goal is to stop drawing comparisons to both the younger version of yourself and peers who may seem to be less affected by time.
My father-in-law, for instance, was a champion marathoner and long-distance runner who competed well into his 60s. Then a heart issue and series of knee replacements made that impossible. While it’s healthy to mourn what’s been lost, dwelling on it as a now unattainable standard is a recipe for stagnation or even depression. Instead, experts like Putnam advise adaption. Not being able to run doesn’t mean you can’t be active. Shifting to long walks centered around an activity like, say, bird-watching not only offers exercise, but a new and rewarding hobby that has the potential to birth new friendships.
The secret isn’t forced positivity or denial, but “holding losses and acceptance together,” clinical psychologist, Julie Erickson, author of “The Aging Well Workbook for Anxiety and Depression,” told Tugend. If a physical or mental limitation prevents you from doing something you once loved or took meaning from, take time to acknowledge and grieve the loss, she said. But try to steer your thoughts away from ultimate surrender and toward the idea of simply moving into a new phase with different challenges and rewards.
“There has to be ample time to come to terms with a whole host of different feelings that need acknowledgement and working through,” continued Erickson. “It’s not about dismissing what’s happening [or forced positive thinking], but also not falling into passive resignation either.”
Change is a fundamental part of life that is largely – and often entirely – out of our control. But we can control how we respond to it. And maintaining a positive attitude about what comes next later in life has been shown to boost health outcomes for practitioners.
“Does illness start to limit us in terms of what choices we can make? Absolutely,” Erickson says. “Does it preclude us from making all choices? No, absolutely not. So, it’s … about identifying where are the opportunities to still exert choice over something, even if it’s small.”
Sometimes those decisions come down to health interventions. If our mobility is suffering, we could consult a physical or occupational therapist to see what can be done to improve it. If memory lapses trigger anxiety about potentially serious underlying conditions, we should consult a doctor to get a firm understanding of what is or isn’t happening.
Other times, healthy action could be as simple as reevaluating our position to look for silver linings. My father-in-law, for example, initially hated the idea of using a mobility scooter to shop for groceries and shifted to an in-home delivery service. But he soon realized he missed the sense of culinary adventure a store experience inspired. The epiphany enabled him to adapt – and better appreciate one of life’s small joys.
The point is, there’s no surefire right way to age well. “How could we subject anything as complex as aging to being black and white?” asked Erickson. Thinking of it as a spectrum defined by our own unique needs, attitudes, and experience is a much healthier option.
