Sixtyplus Place

By Madeleine Kolb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do we really know about aging, and is what we know really true?  Unfortunately, most of what we know is a confusing mix of fact and fiction, of myth and reality. 

Some of the common myths are dispelled in the book “Successful Aging” by John W. Rowe, M.D. and Robert L. Kahn, Ph.D., published in 1989. The book discusses results of extensive studies of aging funded by the John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation. An earlier post dealt with Three Common Myths of Aging. This one discusses another myth. 

Myth 4.  The horse is out of the barn

This is the idea that after years of bad health habits—like smoking, drinking too much, eating too much, and being physically inactive—the damage is done. That horse is out of the barn, and it ain’t never comin’ back! 

Reality: 

1.  It’s (almost) never too late to give up your bad habits 

There’s no question that it’s better to maintain healthy habits throughout your whole life. But much research shows that it’s almost never too late to change old bad habits, and it’s almost never too late to benefit from new good habits. 

Smoking, for example, increases the risk of lung cancer and other lung diseases, coronary heart disease, stroke, and other illnesses. If a person stops smoking, however, here’s what happens:

• Within 5 years, he’s not much more likely to have heart disease than a person who has never smoked. And this is true regardless of age, the number of years he smoked, or how heavy his smoking habit. 
• The risk of lung concer also falls, although much more slowly. “It takes at least fifteen years after quitting for a smoker’s risk of lung cancer to become as low as that of a lifetime nonsmoker.”

2.  Maybe your age isn’t the problem

Over the years, bad habits may affect your overall health and level of fitness far more than age itself. In fact, according to Rowe and Kahn:

[Reductions in physical performance] are often the cumulative result of lifestyle–what we do with our bodies and what we take into them–rather than the result of aging itself.  Years of cigarette smoking, excessive use of alcohol, too little exercise and too much food, especially fats and sugars, do physical damage that is often wrongly attributed to age.

One example concerns a condition called the Metabolic Syndrome, a cluster of risk factors that together increase the risk of a heart attack. The factors include high blood pressure, high cholesterol and triglycerides, and “the pot-bellied obesity so common in middle-aged and elderly people (especially men).” 

It turns out that–for people with the Metabolic Syndrome–the increased risk of heart disease is related to weight, not age. When weight drops and stays down, so do the risk factors for heart disease.  

Another example is the change in systolic blood pressure with age. (Systolic blood pressure is the first number, as in 140/80.) In the United States and other prosperous countries, systolic blood pressure generally increases with age. This increase is so common, say the authors, that it is often taken for granted, and considered the inevitable result of “normal” aging.

“But,” they say, ”in developed countries, not all older people show increases in blood pressure, and…in less-advantaged countries—where people eat less meat, more grains and vegetables, and keep physically active—blood pressure tends not to rise with age.”

This is good news. If you have good health habits, keep doing what you’ve been doing, as my doctor says to me. And even if you have some bad health habits, you can change and become  healthier and more active as you grow old.  It’s up to you.

Tags: Aging and health, Myths and realities of aging

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 8:39 pm and is filed under Myths of Aging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.