When It Comes to Aging Well, It’s
Mind Over Matter
November 14, 2014
Story
at-a-glance
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Older people who view aging in a positive light
score better on memory tests, can walk faster, and
have greater mobility
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Seniors with positive self-perceptions of aging live
an average of 7.5 years longer than those who
entertain negative stereotypes about aging
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Subliminal intervention aimed at strengthening
positive age stereotypes resulted in seniors
improving their physical capabilities to a greater
degree than those who actually exercised
By Dr. Mercola
For many, "aging" is synonymous with aches and pains,
forgetfulness, loneliness, and ultimately death. Aging is
inevitable, but research actually shows that how you think about
it can make a big difference in how gracefully you age.
As it turns out, holding on to negative stereotypes about aging
may have a significant impact on your quality of life, preventing
you from living to full capacity as you age.
In one study,1
psychological intervention designed to strengthen positive age
stereotypes actually resulted in increased mobility and strength. As
reported by the New York Times:2
“Over and over, they’ve found that those who hold more
positive age stereotypes behave differently as they age from
those with more negative stereotypes, even when the groups are
similar in other ways, including health status...
Older people with more positive views of aging do better
on memory tests. They have better handwriting. They can walk
faster. They’re more likely to recover fully from severe
disability.Those with more positive self-perceptions of aging
actually live longer, by an average of 7.5 years.”
Mind Over Matter—Your Mental Outlook Affects Your Fitness
This year i turned 60 and thought I would learn to do a handstand.
With the help of my trainer Arnold
Kolozsvari he helped me learn how to do one. It took me over
four months but as you can see in the video above, persistence paid
off. Would definitely not try it without a spotter though.
The study in question, published in Psychological Science,3
investigated ways to uplift people’s views on aging, and then looked
at how this new mindset affected their physical strength.
Proving the mind-body connection yet again, the results showed
that taking a more positive view actually led to stronger
physical functioning, even without added
exercise.
One hundred seniors living in New Haven, Connecticut participated
in the study. The average age was 81. Once a week for one month,
some of the participants were exposed to what the researchers refer
to as an “implicit association” exercise, while others engaged in an
“explicit association” exercise.
Follow-up tests revealed that the implicit (subliminal)
intervention had a significant impact, strengthening positive age
stereotypes and self-perceptions of age over a longer term.
At one week, and again three weeks after the final association
exercise, the participants were asked to perform a variety of
physical tasks, such as repeatedly standing up and sitting down,
walking across a room, and holding challenging poses to test for
balance. As reported in the featured article:
“The group exposed to implicit positive messages showed
significant improvement in physical function, compared to their
status before the experiment began. Those who participated in
the explicit intervention and wrote essays showed no
improvement.
In fact, the people who underwent four brief
exposures to implicit positive messages showed greater physical
improvement than a group of a similar aged, enrolled in a
different study, that actually exercised for six months.
...The implicit approach may have more impact than
explicitly positive messages, Dr. Levy said, because it thwarts
resistance. ‘People have encountered negative stereotypes for so
long, in media and marketing and everyday conversations, that
people build up ways to hold onto them,’ she said. ‘Implicit
interventions can bypass that.’” [Emphasis mine]
Real Age versus Perceived Age—A Matter of Choice
When thinking about aging, it's important to remember that your
age in years is only a number. I know it sounds cliché, but it's
very true, especially if you begin to apply foundational health
principles in your life that allow your body to function at its
peak. Recently Norwegian researchers created an
online calculator for
determining fitness age.4
You can take the online test for free.5
This year, I turned 60 but my fitness age according to this
calculator is half that—30 years old.
As my test shows, it is possible for a 60-year-old to be just as
fit, biologically speaking, as a 30-year-old, or even more
fit, depending largely on lifestyle. So your age in years is just a
numerical measurement, but your real age is your biological
age as dictated by your choices and habits.
Your lifestyle has far more influence on your health at any age,
and this includes not only the obvious like healthy eating and
effective exercise, but also tending to your emotional
needs by deciding to be happy, thinking positively, socializing and
seeking out new and exciting experiences, and yes, associating aging
with positive stereotypes instead of negative ones.
While society now programs us to think of the elderly as
hopelessly incapable in just about every way, you can choose to take
a different view. It really wasn’t all that long ago that people
revered their elders for their accumulated wisdom and life
experience. Barring access to positive subliminal programming,
such as that used in this test, you can choose
to think of aging as having benefits—regardless of your current age
today.
Tips from Centenarians
The way you think about aging may in fact play a role in how old
you “allow” yourself to get. The majority of
centenarians—people who live to be 100 years old or older—report
feeling about 20 years younger than their chronological age, and
their mindset has a lot to do with this self-perception. Most
centenarians, regardless of their health status, tend to have
positive attitudes, optimism, and a zest for life. Could it be that
personality characteristics and worldviews play a more significant
role than genetics, diet, or exercise? Perhaps!
One way to determine this is to ask centenarians questions about
how they see the world, what they value, and to what they attribute
their own longevity. What are their secrets to
aging well? These individuals represent centuries of wisdom that
should not be overlooked. Mining the minds of centenarians for
nuggets of wisdom, researchers have been able to detect a definitive
pattern of thinking and behavior among the eldest among us.
Centenarians overwhelmingly cite
stress as the most important thing to avoid.
Those who have lived 100 years or more on this earth have
undoubtedly experienced a number of stressful events, but as a
general rule, they manage their stress really well. Rather
than dwelling on it, they let it go. And most often, they choose
to be happy—despite everything. In interviews and surveys
with centenarians, the following themes also come up time and time
again when asked to explain “why they've lived so long:”6
Keeping a positive attitude; living with passion |
Eating good food |
Exercising moderately (most report basic activities,
like walking, biking, gardening, swimming, etc.) |
Clean living (not smoking or drinking excessively, etc.) |
Living independently |
Family and friends |
Staying mentally active and always learning something
new |
Faith/spirituality; being able to forgive and let go of
stress |
Eating Well for Graceful Aging
For a comprehensive guide on healthy eating, please see my
optimized
nutrition plan. Generally speaking, you’ll want to focus your
diet on whole, unprocessed, ideally organic foods (vegetables,
grass-fed meats, raw dairy, nuts, and so forth). In terms of foods
to avoid, processed foods and beverages of all kinds top
the list, as they’re chockfull of
sugar, refined
fructose, and grains—all of which promote insulin and leptin
resistance when eaten in excess. Insulin/leptin resistance in turn
is at the heart of most chronic disease, from obesity to arthritis,
cancer, and dementia. A sugar-rich diet is also a major cause of
accelerated cellular aging, breaking down your body well before its
time.
According to Professor Cynthia Kenyon, whom many experts believe
should win the Nobel Prize for her research into aging,
carbohydrates (glucose) directly affect the genes that govern
youthfulness and longevity. Her research suggests you may actually
be able to extend your life and stay fit throughout your old age
with a simple dietary change that
switches on your "youth" gene.
Kenyon's research with C. elegans roundworms showed that
decreased carb intake can lead to significant life extension and
improved long-term health. One of the most interesting details of
her findings is that not only did the roundworms live up to SIX
TIMES longer than normal, but they kept their health and youthful
vigor until the end—and isn't that what "healthy aging" is really
all about? Besides being high in sugar/fructose, processed foods
also contain a wide variety of other harmful substances that can
wear down your health, including synthetic chemicals (colors,
flavors, preservatives, stabilizers, etc), genetically engineered
ingredients, and pesticides, just to name a few.
Exercise Is an Excellent ‘Anti-Aging’ Tool
Besides diet and maintaining a positive mindset, exercise is
perhaps one of the best “anti-aging” interventions available. It’s
worth noting that exercise has also been shown to have a positive
effect on depression, and may in fact help you see the sunnier side
of life. Staying active is particularly important for the elderly. I
recommend incorporating a variety of exercises into your regimen,
but
strength training may be particularly beneficial if you’re
older. A 2010 study published in the journal Mechanisms of Aging
and Development7
confirmed
the "anti-aging" effect of high-intensity training, which forms
the foundation of my
Peak Fitness regimen.
Strength training can be turned into a high intensity exercise by
slowing down your movements, and it also tends to be safer than
conventional weight lifting or sprinting exercises. One of the key
benefits of high-intensity exercises is that it boosts
human growth hormone (HGH) production, which is important for
optimal health, strength, and longevity. To boost the “anti-aging”
benefits of high intensity exercise even further, consider combining
it with
intermittent fasting. This may in fact be a revolutionary way to
keep your body biologically young. The combined effect of
intermittent fasting and short intense exercise may help you to:
Turn back the biological clock in your muscle and brain
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Boost growth hormone |
Improve body composition |
Boost cognitive function |
Boost testosterone |
Prevent depression |
To Live Longer, Learn to Manage Your Stress and Think Positively
Interviews with
centenarians across the world reveal that having a positive
world view is part and parcel of enjoying a longer-than-normal life.
This makes sense when you consider how potent a component your
emotions are for your health. Your emotional state plays a role in
nearly every physical disease -- from heart disease and depression,
to arthritis and cancer. And as demonstrated in the featured
research, just associating aging with positive stereotypes
instead of negative ones has the power to affect your ability to
perform physical tasks.
Having effective coping mechanisms to deal with everyday
stressors are a major longevity-promoting factor in part because
stress has a direct impact on inflammation, which in turn underlies
many of the chronic diseases that kill people prematurely every day.
Meditation, prayer, social support, and exercise are all viable
options that can help you maintain emotional and mental equilibrium.
I also strongly believe in using simple tools such as the
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
to address deeper, oftentimes hidden, emotional problems. In short,
living a long life boils down to an overall healthy lifestyle, where
mind, body, and spirit all get the appropriate attention.
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