Get healthy with exercise

By Cathy Severson, MS

What contributes to successful aging? Growing older does not have to be a time of decline. The boomers retirement will not be a descent into elderly activities. New senior research reveals that lifestyle choices greatly affect human aging.

As the nearly 77 million of the boomer generation face retirement, the idea of aging is foremost in their minds. Forever the youthful generation, how do they age successfully? What does it mean to enter the era of elderhood in a positive and productive way?

At first glance, successful aging sounds like an oxymoron. Does successful aging mean ignoring aching joints and resisting slowing down? Does successful aging mean pretending you’re still twenty?

In the late twentieth century, The MacArthur Foundation sponsored an extensive study to identify the key elements for aging successfully. It was the first study to bring together scientists from different fields to identify the positive aspects of aging. Researchers were from neuroscience, neuropsychology, epidemiology, sociology, genetics, psychology, neurology, physiology and geriatric medicine. A primary goal was a reorientation of the disease framework that had long plagued the study of aging.

The results of the study are documented in the easy to read book, Successful Aging, by John W. Rowe, M.D. and Robert L. Kahn, Ph.D. They discovered aging doesn’t have to be a time of diminish health and decline. They also determined that as we get older our health is determined more by the lifestyle choices we make than by genetics. The old adage, “It’s just in my genes,” doesn’t actually hold much credence.

The ability to avoid disease is the first component of successful aging. While that might seem obvious, the authors explain the causes of the major illnesses as well as the actions you can take to minimize their inevitability.

For example, it’s common knowledge that smoking isn’t good for your health. You might not know that from the moment you quit smoking, your body is recovering the effects, regardless of how much you smoked or for how long. The person who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day is four times more likely to have coronary heart disease. As soon as the smoker quits, their chance of heart disease starts to decline. In ten years of not smoking, they are no more likely to get heart disease than someone who never smoked. The risk of stroke is reduced within two to four years. Lung cancer and emphysema also decline as soon as a person stops smoking. It does take as long as fifteen years to eliminate the effects of years of smoking. The good news is you can start to make healthy lifestyle choices at any time which will contribute to successful aging.