Steps for Successful Aging

Penguins Playing Cards, from the holiday show at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh

Are you confused by the constant stream of articles about how you can stay healthy and prevent illness? It would take all the hours of a person’s life to follow the advice about diet, exercise, lifestyle and medications.  How do you make sense of it all and what is worth doing?  

The place to start is thinking about your goals.  A lot of the research focuses on what might lead to a longer life, but that’s the wrong focus.  What’s important is the quality of life.  Extra months of life may not be desirable, if it means spending more time bedridden and in a nursing home at the end of life.  The goal that most of us have is to be able to stay active and independent for as long as possible.  And we know how to do that.

It’s really quite simple: regular exercise and maintain a reasonable diet and weight—the usual suspects. The specifics are not important. What is important is sustaining your efforts, so select a program of exercise and a diet you can realistically maintain.

A couple of other steps come from our friend and former colleague, Margaret Gatz. First, be an “interested” person.  Not “interesting,” although that’s OK, but interested--staying engaged and curious. Try new things or push yourself to get better in the activities or pursuits you already have.  Doing crossword puzzles or cognitive exercises to stay cognitively active are fine if you enjoy them, but actively engaging in life will provide cognitive stimulation.  Despite all the hype, cognitive stimulation will not prevent dementia, but it will help you remain active and engaged for as long as possible. 

Dr. Gatz’s other suggestion is to build a social circle of choice.  This means to cultivate the relationships with family and friends who are supportive and you enjoy spending time with.  It’s good to have people we can turn to for the emotionally difficult times in our lives or when we need practical help.  And it’s good to put a little distance between yourself and the people in your life who are aggravating or emotionally draining.  

The specifics of your plan are not important.  Despite all the claims, the differences between various approaches to diet and exercise are small or non-existent.  Much of the so-called evidence is correlational.  Here is a recent example.  The New York Times ran a story that claimed that weight training reduced risk of heart attack and stroke.  But this was not an experiment and so cause and effect could not be determined.  The health outcomes could have been due to selection—people who used weights were in better health to start with.  Or the health benefits were due to other factors associated with doing weights.  Maybe persons doing weights are more likely to do other things that are more likely to reduce health risks.  Or it could just be artifact.  With 12,500 subjects in the study, almost anything could be statistically significant, but not very meaningful.

In the midst of all the nonsense that appears about health in the New York Times and other places, one reliable source is Aaron Carroll, who is a Professor of Pediatrics at Indiana University and a specialist in health outcomes and health policy.  Dr. Carroll writes an occasional column in the New York Times and provides a thoughtful commentary on emerging trends in health care.

Reference:

Even a Little Weight Training May Cut the Risk of Heart Attack or Stroke, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/well/move/even-a-little-weight-training-may-cut-the-risk-of-heart-attack-and-stroke.html

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