Times Colonist

Aging comes with benefits, including being happier

- W. GIFFORD-JONES info@docgiff.com

Aristotle, the Greek philosophe­r, remarked, “There are no boy philosophe­rs.” Fortunatel­y, most of us do get wiser as we age. However, it’s never been a top priority of mine to rush into old age so I could be a wise, elderly, medical journalist philosophe­r. Could I be wrong? Consumer Reports on

Health says there are several good things about aging. So I had to read on.

It appears I was wrong on one point. I’ve always believed that the elderly suffered from more depression than younger people. After all, they see old friends die, illnesses become more frequent, their wife runs away with the local preacher, and it’s not as much fun to look in the mirror.

But according to the prestigiou­s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, rates of depression actually go down after age 60.

This fact is confirmed by several other sources. For instance, a study of 340,000 people, published by the National Academy of Science, reports that those in their 60s and 70s were less troubled by negative emotions.

Dr. Laura Carstensen, professor of psychology at Stanford University, agrees this is the “paradox of aging.”

She says that, as people grow older, they worry less about the future than younger people and focus more on the here and now.

And if they’ve just recovered from a coronary bypass operation, and are happy to have survived, they’re more likely to stop worrying about the small stuff and smell the roses. (Maybe she’s right. But I vividly recall that after my bypass surgery, I decided I’d better sit by the lake watching birds. After half an hour, I decided I’d had enough.)

How do marriages and relationsh­ips fare as we age?

Groucho Marx, the comedian, once joked: “I was married by a judge, I should have asked for a jury.”

Today, since 50 per cent of marriages end in divorce, there’s an element of truth in Marx’s remark. I doubt if a judge or a monkey could have a poorer batting average in choosing mates.

Socrates, another Greek philosophe­r, realizing marriage was a game of Russian roulette, is credited with saying: “By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosophe­r.”

The good news is, if they’re lucky and stay together, couples enjoy better health and quality of life than their unmarried peers. In 2011, the Journal of Social and Personal Relationsh­ips reported that elderly couples, even when they quarrel, have more positive experience­s with their partners. Researcher­s at the University of California added that, when recalling spats, older people even tend to rate their spouses more positively. This might be due to the fact that they begin to acknowledg­e their own mortality.

Consumer Reports says that satisfacti­on with social relationsh­ips also grows as we age. Seniors have a smaller, but closer, circle of friends. Unfortunat­ely, it’s also a time when we see close friends departing. (How true — I’ve just returned from my 67th reunion at the Harvard Medical School, and just a few of us are left.)

But since we cannot stop getting older, researcher­s also suggest several medical keys to healthy aging. They’re concerned that more than 70 per cent of those over age 60 exhibit hypertensi­on, and suggest seniors reduce weight and stop smoking. Starting a sound lifestyle at an early age, they confirm, is the prudent move.

Lastly, seniors must cultivate new social contacts, but this is not easy.

Aristotle stressed that to have a good friend, “you must take the requisite amount of salt together.”

Good friends are not born overnight. It’s usually history that binds people together.

Maybe in the end, whether we’re comedians or Greek philosophe­rs, we all in our own way become philosophe­rs.

Next week, how I became the oldest person to descend on a rope (rappelling) from the top of Toronto’s city hall.

My wife was not amused. But it was an experience I will never forget.

Why did I do it?

 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada