The Secret to Really Being Younger
Jul
16
Written by:
7/16/2012 8:55 AM
We have all seen the “extreme makeovers” on television. With the help of what seems to be legions of beauty artists, a person can be remade to appear more beautiful. With the help of a troop of craftsmen, a home can become a trendy and cool new place. And with the help of a team of landscapers, the backyard desert can become a veritable Garden of Eden.
Okay, so back to the real world, what can an older person do to regain their youthful vigor? Very simply, think positive! In a Yale University study, young, healthy individuals under the age of fifty were asked about what they thought of older people. Those who had a generally negative perspective on aging, it turned out, grew into what they had envisioned. These people were followed for 40 years. Those who had a pessimistic view of what aging is had a higher risk of cardiovascular issues over the following four decades. And in general, those with a more positive outlook on life and their futures lived an average of just under eight years longer than their more pessimistic counterparts.
We also can go back to a 1979 research study by a Harvard University psychologist, Ellen Langer. Back in 1979, Professor Langer was able to gain access to a New England hotel which she had retrofitted to look, feel and sound like it might have two decades earlier. She recruited a group of 70 to 80 year old men to come stay for a week at the retro-hotel. Half of these individuals were instructed to act as if they were those twenty years younger…not reminisce, but to actually do the things they would have done twenty years earlier. The other half of the recruits were the control group who could share the same housing, but not the same instructions.
All participants in this study had baseline measures of their manual dexterity, their flexibility, and even their mental acuity. The professor even measured their reports on osteoarthritis aches and pains. In just one week, the participants in the experimental group had improved on all counts. Their postures and gaits had even taken a turn for the better. They seemed to have reversed their aging process. Not willing to settle for just what was reported by the men in the study, the professor showed pictures of men from both groups to objective judges who had no knowledge of the study framework. They, too, judged the members of the experimental group to “look younger.”
Langer and her associates at Harvard have been at it for decades now, and their studies that consistently have borne out the importance of attitude in preserving one’s youthful side. Langer’s colleagues performed another test about how “frame of mind” affects how one performs and feels.
They speculated that just maybe when people look at an eye chart with letters getting progressively smaller as one approaches the bottom of the chart that people simply expect that they cannot do as well farther down a chart as they age. They have a pessimistic view. So she inverted the chart and put the bigger letters on the bottom. Sure enough, people reading the upside down chart actually could read smaller letters than they had been able to read with the normal chart.
The simple lesson is not just to think young, but to also think positive.
Charlotte Bishop is a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of
Creative Case Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to
Charlotte Bishop.
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