Age Wise

THIS WEEK’S AGE WISE CRACK “Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before.” —The late Elizabeth Edwards, lawyer, health activist Hey folks. This week’s essay is personal. I’ve avoided overloading it with science or advice. It’s my story. If it helps you think about your own resilience as you age, that would be a wonderful outcome.

The most important factors that help keep our bodies and minds functioning well later in life — maintaining the ability to move well, perform basic tasks and find joy — are the basics you’ve heard about: Be physically active, eat well, sleep well, find joy and purpose in life and foster good relationships. But wouldn’t it be nice if there was a pill we could pop that would offer some additional aging benefits?

THIS WEEK’S AGE WISE CRACK Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75. — Benjamin Franklin People on average live considerably longer in the modern world compared to Ben’s time, so a revised version of his quote might have people dying at 40 and not being buried until 80. Either way, it’s a dismal way to stay. And so this week we focus not on how long you might live, but on how well. You’ll see that one has a lot to do with the other. —Rob Image: AlessandroBiascioli/Shutterstock.

Image: marekuliasz/Shutterstock. Used under the writer’s license. Since the early 1900s, average lifespans have grown tremendously around the world, thanks largely to improvements in public sanitation, vaccines for several of the deadliest diseases, and advancements in surgery and other aspects of healthcare. The lifespan improvement continued in many parts of the world through recent decades, but has recently dropped in the United States.

THIS WEEK’S AGE WISE CRACK “The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.” —Mark Twain Hey wise agers: In Bits of Wisdombelow, you’ll learn the difference between an MD and a DO (sort of) and how Katharine Esty, 91, has fun with aging. Now let’s get into this week’s deep-dive feature story. This is an updated version of a story I published previously on Medium.

San Neill. Image: Luis Javier Villalba/Shutterstock. Used under the writer’s license. I’m a habitual obit reader. When I was younger, I thought obits served as a pretty good gauge of how long people lived. Now that I’m older, I find obits to often reflect how well people lived. They be cautionary tales or cause for celebration, depending on the age of the departed, how they approached life, and the circumstances of their demise.

THIS WEEK’S AGE WISE CRACK Why should I act my age? Or more to the point, how is someone my age supposed to act? —Dick Van Dyke, at 100 years old Hey wise agers: Don’t miss Bits of Wisdomnear the bottom of this newsletter, where you can read about the wanna-live-forever biohacker who’s developed an incurable disease, a woman’s take on how regrets ease with age, some anti-aging gummy baloney, and much more. Now let’s get into this week’s deep-dive feature story… Image: PeopleImages/Shutterstock.

Image: Kampus Production/Shutterstock. Used under the writer’s license. Strength training is a no-brainer for anyone who hopes to age well. If you don’t work out your muscles, you risk losing 40% of your muscle mass by age 70, compared to your peak at age 30 (it’s called sarcopenia, and it just happens). That makes it hard to perform routine tasks and sets you up for dangerous falls. But how much strength training is enough?

Age Wise emails normally arrive in your inbox on Fridays. Sometime, though, I just gotta send an extra one. This is one of those… Image: ShotPrime Studio/Shutterstock. Used under the writer’s license. Despite plenty of research on the prevalence and preventability of dementia, many myths remain stuck in our minds. Dementia is commonly thought of as widespread and inevitable, a natural outcome of aging. Don’t be fooled.

To keep your mind sharp, it helps to challenge your brain with productive and creative tasks, much research has shown. Learning languages is known to be among the effective approaches. New research measured brain activity in a group of people using magnetoencephalography to gauge the brain’s biological age (which can differ from chronological). On average, the brains of those who spoke multiple languages appeared younger than those who spoke only one language.