AGEING POSITIVELY

Feeling frail, boring or irrelevant can result in a person dying much younger than if they have a positive outlook towards ageing.

Feeling frail or irrelevant can result in people dying younger.

Stop grumbling about getting older – it just may add seven-and-a-half years to your life. We’re told that if we want more good years, get plenty of sleep, eat well, exercise and learn something new. But many of us don’t realise that a positive attitude can make us live longer, according to Yale University professor Becca Levy and colleagues in a paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Their research found that the more positive older people were about ageing, the greater their will to live became, which contributed to a longer life.

Do we want to live to a very old age? For many, ageing, like winter weather, does not comfort us. In modern society, youth, beauty and productivity is what counts. From a young age, we’re told that grey hair and wrinkles are bad and that old age results in us becoming sick and frail, or developing dementia, and becoming a burden on society. Around middle age, we start to feel the physical and mental decline conveying a sense of the ultimate outcome: death. We internalise the negative stereotypes, accepting them as the truth. We risk becoming who we think we are: frail, boring and irrelevant, just marking time until death.

How do older people stay positive and relevant in their later years? Professor Perminder Sachdev, co-director of UNSW Sydney’s Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing, says there are personality characteristics that help older people age well. “They are conscientious and committed to carrying out their duties carefully. They are low in neuroticism – that is, they are less reactive to emotionally stressful events and better able to cope with uncertainty and hardships.

It’s even better if they are high in extraversion, meaning they are more outgoing and socially interactive.”

Optimism and resilience are key attributes for older people who are coping with hardships but still actively engaging with life, says Sachdev. “Older people are not in prime health. Illnesses will start to creep in. But it is not the freedom from disease that is important. It’s the self-belief that despite any hardship, they will be able to achieve their goals. Those who are optimistic will attend to the hardship and acknowledge the positive.” They pay attention to information about their medical condition, they get medical treatment and do whatever exercise has been prescribed for them. The medical condition becomes part of the journey as they learn how to get back on their feet and move out into the world.

SOCIAL ANIMALS

Older people who are optimistic also tend to actively engage with the world. With children no longer their responsibility and few, if any, work deadlines, they look after their health and cardiovascular fitness. In a 2012 paper, published in the journal Aging Health, author Dr Christopher Peterson and colleagues wrote that optimistic people who expect good things to happen tend to behave positively: they eat more sensibly, they exercise, they refrain from drinking and smoking, and seek medical care in the belief that it will make a difference to their long-term health. The authors noted a large body of research linking optimism to better immune-system functioning, quicker wound healing, healthier blood-pressure levels and healthier regulation of cortisol. In a 2019 paper, published in medical journal JAMA Network Open, authors Dr Alan Rozanski and colleagues found that optimism is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

Sachdev says that resilience in older people, along with optimism, means they don’t dwell on their failures and setbacks. “They focus on their capabilities and are disciplined in mastering new skills and engaging productively with society: a new hobby, an encore career, volunteering or mentoring younger individuals. And with experience in loss and trauma, they are able to reframe their adversity in a more positive light. They become less reactive to negative stimuli and start to see the emotional meaning to life, building strong and intimate connections with their family and the community.”

We are social animals. We are wired to belong. If older people are looking forward to a rich and full life, they start to appreciate that relationships are the key to a happy and meaningful life. They want to share positive experiences with family, friends and their social networks. They are loving caretakers and sturdy role models. They join a group with a shared passion, such as painting, photography, singing in a choir or volunteering for a charity. They seek guidance and support from their religious or spiritual community. When

we are socialising, we are feeling, sensing, reasoning, learning. Friendships contribute to our cognitive reserve. A 2010 meta-analysis of 148 studies, tracking 300,000 people for nearly eight years, found that socially connected people live longer. On the flip side, social isolation is associated with a loss of cognition, depression and Alzheimer’s disease.

THE HERE AND NOW

Many people feel isolated standing on the retirement cliff with no job to go to anymore. They may be divorced and their children have left home. Stuck on the couch in front of the TV, they spends a lot of time in default mode: thinking, worrying, ruminating.

There’s a stream of negative thinking about getting older as aches and pains multiply. Some people worry they won’t have enough money in their retirement and will be lonely, chronically ill and living in a nursing home. They catastrophise about future events that may not happen. If they are stuck in this unhappy mind for too long, they become anxious and stressed.

In a 2018 paper, published in open access scientific journal PLOS One, Levy and colleagues found that those who carry the e4 variant of the APOE gene, one of the strongest risk factors for dementia, had a 49.8 per cent lower risk of dementia if they held positive age beliefs compared with those holding negative age beliefs.

Of the many interventions, mindfulness can help older individuals cultivate a positive mindset. Monash University associate professor Craig Hassed, an internationally recognised expert on mindfulness, says that a person who is mindful is not feeding the negative mental attitude about ageing. “Instead, they are paying attention to the here and now. It’s through our senses that we scan our environment; a natural consequence is curiosity, creativity and learning.” He says we’re exercising the brain in a very positive way. “We’re switching on the attention and sensory circuits in the brain. Our head feels a bit clearer. Our attention is more engaged, we start to work better and our memory improves.”

On the flip side, worrying about our future ageing activates the stress circuits in the brain, says Hassed. “Over-activation of the stress response is allostatic load [accumulated wear and tear on the body]. High allostatic load is associated with more rapid brain ageing.”

Professor Elissa Epel of the University of California, San Francisco, has found that mindfulness meditation, which reduces stress and increases positive states of mind, protects telomeres – the small caps on the end of our chromosomes and probably the best marker of biological age. This may not only slow genetic ageing, but also enhance genetic repair.

Formal mindfulness meditation is paying attention to the body through our senses, most commonly with a body scan and using breathing meditation. These formal meditations are available on apps such as Smiling Mind and Headspace. Hassed recommends practising these mindfulness meditations before breakfast and between the time the main part of your day finishes and sometime before dinner. “However, it is important that you also informally practice mindfulness in everyday life if you want to cultivate a permanent positive mindset. There is no point practising mindfulness with a formal meditation for 10-20 minutes each day

“AGE IS MIND OVER MATTER. IF YOU DON’T MIND, IT DOESN’T MATTER.”

MARK TWAIN

and the rest of the day you are on automatic pilot missing out on what life has to offer and ruminating about the perils of old age.”

Being mindful is taking notice of the simple pleasures, savouring them and enjoying life as it unfolds. Hassed says that on your morning walk (or run), feel the crisp morning breeze, smell the flowers, listen to the birds, notice passers-by and smile and say hello. “As you turn your attention outwards, life becomes more interesting, people are friendlier and you start to feel better,” he says. “Next time you have lunch, take the time to look at your food, smell it, savour the texture and flavours, chew the food slowly. You increase the intensity and duration of that pleasant meal, amplifying the positive sensations.”

Research has found that if we tune into these experiences for 10 seconds or more, they get transferred from our short-term memory to our long-term memory and we more easily recall them later. This rewiring of the brain also means we spontaneously notice more pleasant things in our everyday life. We learn to savour these, too, thereby hardwiring them into our brain.

Look around to seek things to be grateful for: your partner who made you breakfast that morning; the rose bush in full bloom in your garden; the cup of coffee with a friend. Gratitude brings you joy, love and contentment. Hassed recommends keeping a gratitude journal.

“It helps you tune in and reflect on the positive experiences that happened during the day. Practising gratitude every day builds the neural pathways to the reward centre of the brain. Over time, these neural pathways become stronger and the habit of gratitude becomes more automatic, creating in us a permanent positive nature.”