Illustration by Jon Krause
Perhaps it’s time for baby boomers to head back to the ramparts. Those of us 60-plus—who witnessed and fueled the smashing of racial, gender, and cultural barriers—now face yet another prejudice: ageism. After talking with experts and vetting recent research, I’ve found that the common myth of our youth-worshipping culture that older people somehow lack the mental acuity and memory to tackle intellectually challenging tasks is—in a word perhaps too polite for my generation—bunk.
I’ve learned that the active elderly measure up well and in some areas—such as memory and vocabulary—often outperform younger adults. By staying fit, being fortunate enough to stay free of brain function–inhibiting disease such as arteriosclerosis and Alzheimer’s (which can strike younger people as well), and cutting down on the cigarettes, booze, and drugs (you knew there was a catch), we can age without measurable mental decline. But we also need to overturn societal expectations of your mental enfeeblement, according to a leading researcher.
“In our culture, older adults are expected to decline in mental acuity. That expectation takes on a self-fulfilling prophecy, inasmuch that older adults also share this expectation,” says Washington University psychology professor Mark McDaniel. “As a consequence, older adults are less enthusiastic, less motivated, less apt to engage in the cognitive effort and memory strategies that are needed even for young adults to show very good memory.”
McDaniel, co-author of the 2004 book Memory Fitness: A Guide for Successful Aging, says research supports that contention. “If you look at a study of Chinese culture, their expectations and attitudes about aging are very positive: Both the young and the old have those expectations that the older adults get wiser and act as mentors and a foundation of advice. In memory tests given to younger and older Chinese and younger and older Americans, Americans show a decline, but Chinese don’t.”
Dr. David Abbott, a St. Louis physician specializing in geriatric medicine, has witnessed that mental decline in patients who give up on life. “It’s often difficult to distinguish between depression and early dementia,” says Abbott, who advocates cultivating “a zest for life” as we age to “maintain an interest in life and enjoy life at a high level.”
He also advocates exercise—“It helps circulation in the brain, and it helps the mood”—and McDaniel concurs:
“Studies that have looked at exercise patterns of older adults over 10 years find that ones who are exercising have little or no neural decline, according to MRI analysis,” says McDaniel. Conversely, “Couch potatoes show brain decline, particularly in brain volume. It’s pretty clear that exercise is going to maintain the brain for good cognitive functioning.”
McDaniel is now launching a study with some 100 St. Louis–area volunteer subjects, funded by the National Institute on Aging, to help determine the roles of exercise and cognitive training in maintaining mental acuity in older Americans.
“In animal experiments, once you get rats on a treadmill, they start to show the development of new neurons. But these new neurons aren’t functional until you give the rats cognitive stimulation. We’re evaluating, in a randomized clinic trial, the impact of aerobic exercise combined with cognitive training in older adults on the maintenance or even improvement of mental functioning,” says McDaniel.
Studies show that some types of mental functioning—such as vocabulary and memory related to historical knowledge—often do improve as we age. McDaniel suggests that as our memory “archive” grows larger, our mental associations expand, augmenting memory. Much of mental decline in the elderly seems keyed to disease—stroke-causing arteriosclerosis and, in Abbott’s words, “the dark hole of Alzheimer’s” that many of us fear.
But McDaniel says to keep cool even when we experience what some derisively—and incorrectly—describe as “senior moments.”
“Mental distortions are normal, forgetting is normal for people of all ages. Older adults should not panic when that happens. It’s a normal part of remembering,” he says. “Only severe memory decline should cause you any concern.”
If you’re concerned about your or a parent’s memory loss, a doctor can administer simple tests, says Abbott, to help determine whether a patient is experiencing abnormal mental decline. Some tests, such as the clock-drawing test (widely available online), you can do at home. As yet there is no cure or clear way to prevent Alzheimer’s, but Abbott is optimistic: “Research indicates we’re going to have much better treatment. The progress with Alzheimer’s is tremendous.”
To help you age with acuity, here are some suggestions from a variety of reputable sources:
- Exercise. A study published this summer in Neurology examined people in their seventies and eighties with good cognitive function and found that those who exercised moderately to vigorously at least once a week were 30 percent more likely to have maintained their cognitive function.
- Eat right and control your weight. Both diabetes and obesity are risk factors for cardiovascular problems that can damage the brain.
- Don’t smoke. Research indicates that nonsmokers are nearly twice as likely to keep their mental edge as they age.
- Stay mentally active and connected to the world. People who continue to use and challenge their brains are less likely to experience diminished brain function. McDaniel suggests learning a language, taking classes, or getting involved in a book-discussion group.
- Develop strategies for creative living. McDaniel advocates inserting challenges in your daily life to break out of routines and be more creative and “more cognitively engaged in all everyday actions.”
- Be educated and wealthy. A tough task retrospectively, but studies indicate that those attributes help maintain mental acuity in the elderly. It may be, however, that education merely enables people to take on more mentally challenging jobs and leisure activities, thus expanding brain capacity, and that money begets better care for cardiovascular ailments.
- Limit drug and alcohol intake. A no-brainer.
- Train your mind. A five-year study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2006 indicates that giving seniors some cognitive training could slow the loss of memory and mental skill as they age. Cognitive training can involve attention modulation, attention prioritization, and retrospective and prospective memory strategies. McDaniel’s book provides more.
While recent research shows we don’t have to suffer diminished mental acuity as we age and does a good job of quantifying what that means, it seems to neglect the quality of mental function in the elderly—admittedly difficult to calculate. How does one measure perspective, thoughtfulness, and reason? How does one gauge the ability to eschew fads, to act less impulsively, to forgo chasing dubious grails? How do you quantify wisdom? If we could do that, perhaps we could reverse the view that getting old means getting dim and ineffectual, and instead be perceived as the worldly and crafty sages we truly are.
Rick Skwiot is a writer whose 1998 novel, Sleeping With Pancho Villa, was a finalist for the Willa Cather Prize. This is his third article for SLM’s Healthy Living series, the first two being “To Hell and Back Exercises” (March 2009) and “Food for Thought” (June 2009). Skwiot divides his time between St. Louis and Key West, Fla.
