Celebrate Aging
ON Jan. 2, Kane Tanaka crossed a historic milestone that she shared with the Twitterverse (with some help from her great-granddaughter): The supercentenarian turned 119.
Tanaka lives in a nursing home on an island in the Okinawa region of Japan, and she’s the world’s oldest living person. Born in 1903, Tanaka worked in her husband’s rice shop from the age of 19 until the age of 103, according to CNN.
Today, she’s treated as a celebrity in Japan, even starring on Japanese reality TV. And on Keiro No Hi, a national holiday in Japan which translates to “Respect for the Aged Day,” her entire town throws her a party as elders nationwide are celebrated.
“The Japanese [treat] old age as something to enjoy, a fact of being alive, rather than something to fear or resent,” Levy writes.
If our society were to shift to an “agethriving” mindset in a similar way to Japanese culture: Levy’s research shows the impact could forever change longevity.
Much of Levy’s findings come from analyzing longitudinal studies—a gold mine for any researcher studying aging. In one study out of Oxford, Ohio, Levy discovered that the initial survey asked participants about their age beliefs, including questions like “Do you agree or disagree that as you get older you are less useful?”
The study spanned over 20 years, and Levy found that participants with the most positive age beliefs were living on average 7.5 years longer than participants with the most negative age beliefs.
Age beliefs determined the participant’s life spans even more than gender, race, socioeconomic status, age, and health — and they added an even greater survival advantage than some of our most-touted longevity hacks, like lowering cholesterol (which adds an extra four years of life) or avoiding smoking (an extra three years of life).
In her findings, published in 2002, Levy penned a call to action, writing that ageism deserved to be treated as if it were an “unidentified virus” that was found to shorten our lives by seven years. She even testified at a hearing on ageism on Capitol Hill after the study was published, alongside the late actress Doris Roberts.
“My peers and I are portrayed as dependent, helpless, unproductive, and demanding rather than deserving,” Roberts, then 76, told the senators. “The later years can be some of life’s most productive and creative.”