In the long run, ‘what’s in your heart blows away what’s in your genes’
‘Super agers’ show there’s a powerful mental component to positive aging
Eight years ago, Masters track star Olga Kotelko sat writer Bruce Grierson down and told him to smarten up. Her advice worked. “At that time I felt 80, and now I feel 40,” said Grierson, now 53.
Almost 90, Olga told the 40-something writer what he was doing wrong, and to get his lifestyle sorted out. She encouraged him to take up running, and to sign up for a race.
“I’m heading in the right direction now, and it’s partly her doing,” he said, in an interview from Vancouver. “A lot of it is having the right attitude. I was kind of defeatist and she set me straight.”
Much of aging is attitude, he said, “something to believe in and be committed to, a reason to get out of bed. The Japanese term is ikigai, a reason for being.”
The result of what he learned from Olga is his book, What Makes Olga Run? The Mystery of the 90- Something Track Star and What She Can Teach Us About Living Longer, Happier Lives.
“I was turning in the wrong direction, and she was turning in the right direction,” he said. “What we’re learning from the science is that your body responds to exercise and can get stronger and fitter more than you’d think after retirement age. Olga was still getting fitter at 90.”
He discusses “youth primes,” a term coined by Dr. Ellen Langer, for anything that makes you feel young. “Am I surrounding myself with youth primes or the opposite — old-age primes?” he asks. “What’s in your heart blows away what’s in your genes.
“If older people are confined to chairs, their health quickly deteriorates,” Grierson said. “It’s the opposite of the youth prime. You observe what you’re doing and you draw conclusions, in a positive or negative direction. Masters sports is a huge youth prime. You start to do things you hadn’t imagined you could do, and it all starts to spiral in a positive way. It’s the functional age that matters. Olga’s body data was 30-plus years younger than her birth certificate said she was.”
One youth prime in the Master’s track world is age-graded result tables, he said. “The age-graded time is a way to adjust for aging. Now you feel like you’re improving! You’re full of jam again. That’s what’s neat, not a raw number that gets worse and worse.”
As feature speaker at the Se- niors’ Month celebration at the Nepean Sportsplex, Grierson will be looking at the extent to which we can shape the aging process. The show is being presented by Age Well Solutions as part of Seniors’ Month.
The five-time Canadian National Magazine Award-winning feature writer lives in Vancouver with his wife and two daughters. At his talk in Ottawa, he will be describing “Olga’s Rules,” offering take-aways from her life, as discussed in the last segment of his book.
He will also be talking about the powerful mental component of aging. “The three biggest things that affect aging are smoking, diet and exercise,” he said. “But people know about that, and that you have to stay moving. I talk in greater depth about the surprising attitudinal data. Positivity and the way you think about aging, and psychological interventions you can do can really affect the speed at which you age. That’s something that’s available to anyone. You can’t choose your genes but you can get Olga’s habits of mind and body, like the youth primes, making sure that you have a purpose to your life.”
By living in a granny suite while her daughter and son-in-law lived upstairs, she had contact when she wanted it, he said. “Autonomy and freedom are important. She was very well served there. Older populations can learn from that. She was driving her car at 95.”
While a lot of Olga’s success and freedom was the result of her lifestyle decisions, “she was also lucky,” Grierson said. “But luck wasn’t the biggest part of the story.”
A schoolteacher for three decades, Olga advocated a life of moderation, exercise and positive attitude. She joined a slo-pitch softball team, a hiking club and a bowling league, and tried track and field at age 77.
In her last years, she won hun- dreds of medals in events such as the high jump, long jump, triple jump, shot put, javelin, hammer, discus, and 100-metre, 200-metre and 400-metre races. The previous weekend before her death, in cold and rain, she competed in three events at the Langley Pacific Invitational meet. She died in June 2014 at the age of 95.
“If you take nothing else away from Olga’s life, take ‘exercise and volunteer,’ ” said Grierson. “Social isolation is the Number 1 health risk. When you’re in a community, that’s as important as any other lifestyle choice. There were 400-plus people at Olga’s funeral – church people, her Grade 1 students from when she taught, her bowling group, all these communities showed up. She felt loved.”
Grierson will be speaking in Ottawa as part of the 5th annual Seniors’ Month Celebration at the Nepean Sportsplex on Friday, June 10 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. There will be more than 35 exhibitors and service providers, talks by Fitminds on brain health, and on grandparenting by the Vanier Institute of the Family.
Tickets are $10 online and $15 at the door. Parking is free. For more information view www.agewellsolutions.ca.