John Robbins From the Intro to: Healthy at 100

“Every young man,” wrote Ernest Hemingway, “believes he will live forever.” And the same could be said for every young woman. But whatever our beliefs and thoughts about life, there remains an undeniable and ever-present fact: We are, each and every one of us, growing older. This is true in every country and among every people throughout the world, but the way different cultures have responded to this reality has varied widely.

For many of us in the industrialized world today, our aging is a source of grief and anxiety. We fear aging. The elderly people we see are for the most part increasingly senile, frail, and unhappy. As a result, rather than looking forward to growing old, we dread each passing birthday. Rather than seeing our later years as a time of harvesting, growth, and maturity, we fear that the deterioration of our health will so greatly impair our lives that to live a long life might be more of a curse than a blessing.

When we think of being old, our images are often ones of decrepitude and despair. It seems more realistic to imagine ourselves languishing in nursing homes than to picture ourselves swimming, gardening, laughing with loved ones, and delighting in children and nature.

In 2005, the famed American author Hunter S. Thompson took his life. He was only sixty-seven, and had no incurable disease. He was wealthy and famous, and his thirty-two-year-old wife loved him. But according to the literary executor of Thompson’s will, “he made a conscious decision that he . . . wasn’t going to suffer the indignities of old age.”

It doesn’t help to live in a society where there is so little respect for the elderly. Television shows and movies frequently portray older people as feeble, unproductive, grumpy, and stubborn. Advertisements selling everything from alcohol to cars feature beautiful young people, giving the impression that older people are irrelevant. Colloquialisms such as “geezer,” “old fogey,” “old maid,” “dirty old man,” and “old goat” demean the elderly and perpetuate a stereotype of older people as unworthy of consideration or positive regard.

Greeting card companies routinely sell birthday cards that mock the mobility, intellect, and sex drive of the no longer young. Novelty companies sell “Over-the-Hill” products such as "fiftieth-birthday coffin" gift boxes containing prune juice and a “decision maker to assist in planning daily activities” (a large six-sided die, with sides labeled “nap,” “TV,” “shopping,” etc.). Gifts for a man’s sixtieth birthday include a “lifetime supply” of condoms (one), Over-the-Hill bubble bath (canned beans), and “Old Fart” party hats.

We may chuckle at such humor, but negative stereotypes about aging are insidious. They attach a social stigma to aging that can affect your will to live and even shorten your life. In a study published by the American Psychological Association, Yale School of Public Health professor Becca Levy, Ph.D., concluded that even if you are not aware of them, negative thoughts about aging that you pick up from society can undermine your health and have destructive consequences.

In the study, a large number of middle-aged people were interviewed six times over the course of twenty years and asked whether they agreed with such statements as “As you get older, you are less useful.” Remarkably, the perceptions held by people about aging proved to have more impact on how long they would live than did their blood pressure, their cholesterol level, whether they smoked, or whether they exercised. Those people who had positive perceptions of aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer than those with negative images of growing older.

Negative images not only lead to compromised health and shortened lives—they also are distressing in the present. Dr. Levy’s study found that people with negative perceptions of aging were more likely to consider their lives worthless, empty, and hopeless, while those with more positive perceptions of aging were more likely to view their lives as fulfilling?lling and hopeful.

When we are disrespectful to older people and make them invisible, we attempt to ignore the aging process we are experiencing. We hide its signs and look away from the longer-term consequences of our lifestyles. As a result, we make lifestyle choices that may make sense in the short term but take a heavy toll in the end.

I asked a friend recently how he thought he might age. “I’ll probably end up in a nursing home somewhere,” he replied with some bitterness, “with a feeding tube in my nose, staring at the acoustic squares in the ceiling, incontinent, impotent, and impoverished.” Sadly, such views are not unusual. I’ve seen bumper stickers that say “Avenge Yourself: Live Long Enough to Become a Burden to Your Children.” When you distrust the aging process, it’s hard to imagine yourself enjoying your older years, doing things like dancing, jogging, or hiking. It can be difficult even to consider the possibility that you might, during every phase of your lifetime, have the capacity for growth, change, and creativity.

In the last hundred years we’ve added nearly thirty years to the average life expectancy in the industrialized world, but for many older adults the later years are not a time of happiness and well-being. A century ago, the average adult in Western nations spent only 1 percent of his or her life in a morbid or ill state, but today’s average modern adult spends more than 10 percent of his or her life sick. People are living longer today, but all too often they are dying longer, too—of chronic diseases that cause debility and cognitive impairment.

By 2025, the annual cost of managing chronic conditions in the United States will exceed a trillion dollars. Already, half of those age sixty-five and over have two or more chronic diseases, and a quarter have problems so severe as to limit their ability to perform one or more activities of daily living. Meanwhile, the average age of the chronically ill is continually getting younger. Throughout the industrialized world, people are living longer, but they are getting sick sooner, so the number of years they spend chronically ill is actually increasing in both directions.

Sometimes I think we have not so much prolonged our lives as prolonged our dying. While we have extended the human life span, we have not extended the human health span.

John Robbins will be speaking on March 10^th at 1pm at Dare to be Fit, the Fifty-Plus Extending Vitality Weekend at Stanford. For additional information, give us a call or email us at dare@50plus.org.