https://www.cbass.com/thinkyoung.html Think Yourself Young The revelation that we can think ourselves young began to take shape with a study called to our attention by our longtime friend Wade Smith, MD. Researchers led by Kara N. Fitzgerald, Institute for Functional Medicine, Federal Way, Washington, USA, found diet, exercise, and relaxation techniques to be associated with a 3.23 year decrease in DNA age compared with controls. So, healthy living may literally make us younger. Not just feel younger, actually be younger. My book Challenge Yourself stresses the importance of competing with yourself. Psychologists call this mastery orientation. Focus on personal mastery and your own improvement. The fact that your age group peers are looking old and soft, doesn’t mean you have to follow in their footsteps. Healthy living—and expectations—can keep you younger and more fit. You can think and keep yourself younger. Perhaps I was onto something more than I knew. Searching for commentary brought us to a January 2, 2022, article in The Guardian by David Robson discussing research findings that a positive attitude on aging can lead to a longer, healthier life, while negative beliefs can have life shortening effects. I’m going to cherry-pick from Mr. Robson’s piece and then provide a link to the entire article for more details. (That's only the beginning.) * * * The first hints that our thoughts and expectations could either accelerate or decelerate the ageing process came from a remarkable experiment by the psychologist Ellen Langer at Harvard University. As enticing as her findings might seem, Langer’s study was based on a very small sample size. Becca Levy, at the Yale School of Public Health, has been leading the way to provide confirmation. In one of her earliest – and most eye-catching – papers, she examined data from the Ohio Longitudinal Study of Aging and Retirement that interviewed and followed more than 1,000 participants since 1975. The participants were asked to rate their agreement with the statement: “As you get older, you are less useful.” Levy found that the average person with a more positive attitude lived on for 22.6 years after the study commenced, while the average person with a negative view of ageing survived for just 15 years. “If a previously unidentified virus was found to diminish life expectancy by over seven years, considerable effort would probably be devoted to identifying the cause and implementing a remedy,” Levy and her colleagues wrote. “In the present case, one of the likely causes is known: societally sanctioned denigration of the aged.” And there’s more. The most recent findings suggest that age beliefs may play a key role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Tracking 4,765 participants over four years, researchers found that positive expectations of ageing halved the risk of developing the disease, compared to those who saw old age as an inevitable period of decline. How could this be? Behaviour is undoubtedly important. If you associate age with frailty and disability, you may be less likely to exercise as you get older and that lack of activity is certainly going to increase your predisposition to many illnesses, including heart disease and Alzheimer’s. Once again, there’s more. Our age beliefs can also have a direct effect on our physiology. If you believe that you are frail and helpless, small difficulties will start to feel more threatening. Over the long term, this heightened stress response increases levels of the hormone cortisol and bodily inflammation, which could both raise the risk of ill health. The consequences can be seen where our genetic blueprint is stored. Telomeres tend to shorten as we age and this reduces their protective abilities and can cause the cell to malfunction. In people with negative age beliefs, that process seems to be accelerated. In those with the positive attitudes, it is much slower - their cells look younger. For many scientists, the link between age beliefs and long-term health and longevity is practically beyond doubt. “It’s now very well established,” says Dr. David Weiss, who studies the psychology of ageing at Martin-Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. And it has critical implications for people of all generations. In the meantime, we can rethink our perceptions of our own ageing. Various studies show that our mindset is responsive to change. By learning to reject fatalistic beliefs and appreciate some of the positive changes that come with age, we may avoid the amplified stress responses that arise from exposure to negative stereotypes and we may be more motivated to exercise our bodies and minds and to embrace new challenges. * * * David Robson sums up in his eye-opening paper: People who see the ageing process as a potential for personal growth tend to enjoy much better health into their 70s, 80s and 90s than people who associate ageing with helplessness and decline, differences that are reflected in their cells’ biological ageing and their overall life span. For many more details, here’s the link I promised:https://www.theguardian.com/science...ng-ageing-psychology?utm_source=pocket-newtab My Take By all means,think yourself young. I am a believer. The ever-young Jack LaLanne (1914-2011) believed that the body is a slave to the brain: https://www.cbass.com/JackLaLanneDies.htm Nevertheless, thinking alone is not likely to produce the best possible results. Sedentary living is a downer; it builds on itself. As Professor Waneen Spirduso and her co-authors wrote in their textbook Physical Dimensions of Aging:“A vicious cycle develops. As people age, they become less active. The less active they are, the less physical ability and endurance they have. The less physical ability they have, the less inclined they are to be physically active. And the less active they are, the more physical capacity they lose.” * * * As Mr. Robson suggests, those who think themselves young are more likely to be physically active. Expect - and work for - the best, and that’s probably what you’ll get. Professor Joseph F. Signorile, tells how beneficial exercise can be in his ground breaking book Bending the Aging Curve (2011). He includes many tables and graphs, but the one that sums up the message best is a graph showing the neuromuscular aging curves for the untrained person, for the person who starts exercising at about 40, and finally the trajectory of men and women who have been exercising their entire life. The differences are stunning. The capacity of exercise to bend the aging curve is truly remarkable. The loss of neuromuscular function for untrained individuals begins in earnest at about 40 and drops more and more rapidly with each passing decade; the decline is exponential. The person who begins exercising at 40 shows a relatively flat curve until about 60, and then begins a slow decline. The lifelong exerciser, however, soars above the others at every decade of life. The regular exerciser will have a curve that begins at a much higher level than the other two—and stays there. The inevitable decline that does occur leaves the 75-year-old lifelong exerciser at a level equivalent to an untrained person at 20. At 90, the lifelong trainer is at a level equivalent to an untrained person 30 years younger.
I agree with his general premise but here's the question: Where does one get the drive to compete with one's self over the course of a lifetime? When I get into discussions about health & fitness with friends and family members, it's like everybody nods their heads up and down acting like they are hearing what I'm saying and agreeing as well. But then hardly anyone ever actually DOES anything. It's so strange to me. People will acknowledge they have a weight problem and ask for advice, look me in the eyes like they are actually paying attention, and then turn around and do nothing. For example, one of my friends is in her mid 40's and probably could lose about 25lbs. She makes comments all the time about how she knows she needs to lose some weight. We'll have a chat about it but of course she implements nothing to bring her weight down. The next time I see her it's the same story. And here's the crazy part. She used to be a fitness celebrity. Magazine covers and the whole nine yards. And on top of that, she's married to a wealthy man but their relationship sucks. Again, she bitches about the relationship all the time and knows she needs to get divorced but has no drive to actually do anything about it. And I keep seeing this behavior EVERYWHERE.
I think that comes down to motivation. All some people can muster is talking about it until the feeling goes away. I can imagine how easy it is to get out of the groove once you've been a way from it for a long enough while. But the thing is not to wait until you're motivated to take it up again. The idea is to do it and the motivation will follow, especially once a bit of progress is seen. It feeds on itself. Maybe you can tell your friend something along those lines?
I've covered that base with her before, but she never has what it takes to just start. I read a book called "Change" years ago and this is what it said "Most people have the knowledge to change. But knowledge is not enough. It's only when the knowledge is paired up with emotion that real change occurs." They used the cigarette industry as an example. You can put warnings on cigarette packs all you want, but change doesn't happen because of a written warning. However, when people saw the commercial on TV that showed the woman with a big hole in her neck needing to hold an electronic device beside her neck in order to talk and blaming her condition on cigarette smoking, it caused a measurable decline in cigarette sales. So the fear of that possibly happening was the catalyst required for people to actually change. So I guess along those lines, the next time my friend talks about needing to lose some weight, I should just be like, "Yeah, you definitely need to lose some pounds. For as long as I've known you, you've put on a little more weight with each passing year, and it's not helping your looks at all. I've even heard others talk about how beautiful you used to be when you were fit, and they don't understand how you could let yourself go like this."
Oh, yeah. That'll work. You might want to wear some protective gear at the time. (But, all kidding aside, it would probably be good for her to hear. Everyone needs a good wakeup call now and then, especially when they've been hitting the snooze button.)
Right. But the idea is to start doing, and the enthusiasm will follow. (It really will if it's done right.) The tricky part is convincing people to make that first move. I know this, because I also know some people who could use that advice.
I know some people too, they are my 3 sons. My middle son was a offensive and defensive lineman and had the size and weight to go with. When that ended he knew he needed to get his weight down and change his eating habits, but 6 years later he is just now making some of those changes. My wife and I tried various ways of talking to him, but would get no where except him angry about us bringing it up again. On his own he has started to finally make those changes, and is starting to get his health, at least weight wise back on track. The oldest caught me off guard one time in the car when we were having a discussion about something he was or wasn't doing that was irritating me. At some point he yells, "don't tell me that because that is exactly why I will do the opposite". It makes no sense, but makes perfect sense at the same time. In my experience it makes no difference whether it is a kid or an adult, we don't like being told about changes we probably need to make, and until we are ready to accept the idea of the change in our own head, no amount of helpful insight or nagging will get through.
I think you're right. But I also think it may make a difference whether someone is being pushed into doing something as compared to being nudged. But I will admit that I tried "nudging" a few people to no avail.