I'm close to 60, now around 50 I noticed things were going south and I wasn't to happy about it. So I did some research and made lifestyle changes - nothing startling, ate well and started an exercise program. Now I feel like I'm 40 again.
I have some friends who I've known since high school, now some have health issues and its how they respond seems to make a difference. Some just take the pills the doctor gives them and accept the ageing process and complain about things. Others, like myself, fight tooth and nail to do whatever they can. Of course you can only fight so much - the genetic hand you're dealt, but, I believe your attitude to ageing is really a factor - if you accept it, or fight it. Which sort of aligns with the personality traits they observed. You're only as old as you feel as the saying goes.
I know one lady for example who has had two cancers and was forced to use a walker for a while but is going again, whereas her husband was showing me all the pills he takes - due to being overweight and eating poorly. He has accepted his fate, she has fought against it.
If you’re interested, you should check out ‘Ortho Bionomy - A path to self care’ by Luann Overmyer. She touches a lot on what you were just saying.
Often, people expect to do whatever they want and then go to doctors to ‘fix’ them. It’s good for doctors, but not so great for you.
I just started getting into some of the self-care routines she lists in her book after breaking my foot and having multiple doctors recommend surgery to ‘fix’ things. Instead of going down that route, I asked an Ortho-bionomist I know personally to help me. In a single session, most of the swelling and limp in my foot ‘disappeared’. After sticking to the very simple routines he suggested and that I read in the book(none involving pills or icing it), my foot healed more in a week than it did in the 2 months I sat around taking Tylenol and just ‘waiting’ for someone to fix me.
My grandfather was a nuclear scientist who worked on the Manhattan project. He ate right and exercised daily. He even maintained the community parks as a volunteer fixing things like tennis courts and fences.
He got Alzheimer’s. It dragged out for over a decade killing him slowly and hurting everyone who knew him.
My father decided he’d rather have a shorter but more quality driven life after that experience. He’s overweight, has a great outlook on his life, and is a joy to be around.
I find it weird to say that not taking care of yorself is accepting the ageing process. I like to think that doing everything you can is the 'normal' behavior.
Isn't it surprising that just eating real food (clean diet), not smoking or drinking and walking a little everyday can cut all cause mortality like in half, leaving you younger, healthier and more mentally engaged. Those changes in lifestyle for some is hard work, not everyone is cut out for it. Shame they don't think it's worth saving themselves and prefer the taste of pills to healthy food. I sort of figure it's Natural Selection at play, all these folks who choose to poison themselves and embrace chronic illness as something that is inevitable will eventually fall out of the Gene pool, unfortunately the destruction they cause during and on the way out costs all of us an enormous amount of resources.
Resisting brain shrinkage: reminds me of a somewhat different but related report I heard in the past of a group of nuns who seemed to age very well such that their cognitive functions remained seemingly strong into old age. They donated their brains to research, and upon study significant shrinkage was found similar to some degree of Alzheimer's. I think the conclusion was that because they kept themselves so active and busy, whatever synaptic connections were necessary for their daily functioning were kept strong, alongside important life memories. Another strong case for how "retirement" is harmful.
Generally, the rate at which memory synapses weakens is similar across the general population (stability of a memory synapse), so for super-agers it is probably genetic.
I may not have a super-ager brain, but as a lifelong learner and brain-health lover I've placed all my significant memories into a spaced-repetition program I use for everything, and thus am able to recall at will all sorts of important memories in life. I'm keeping my important synapses strong.
There's another category besides super-agers: people with hyperthymesia: "a condition that leads people to be able to remember an abnormally large number of their life experiences in vivid detail. It is extraordinarily rare, with only about 60 people in the world having been diagnosed with the condition as of 2021." There's a documentary about these people. You ask them: what important event happened in your life on January 7th, 1980, and they can answer it accurately.
London taxi driver has enlarged hippocampus so it isn't impossible to make changes that's big enough to have noticeable impact on your brain structure.
I haven't seen anything that indicates that is also true for episodic memory though.
Spaced repetition program - I think I have had one by accident, organizing and tagging all the photos I've taken since 1997. If I took a picture of it, I can likely tell you all about the events surrounding it.
My wife tells me things we did, and there aren't photos of those occasions, so I know I'm not remembering everything.
The photo albums our parents and grandparents had were spaced repetition.
No, you can't use the phrase "leads to this". It misinforms the reader because that's not exactly what the researchers wrote. We need to be super pedantic about this because they found correlations of personality traits but did not make the leap to say optimism, etc were the causes. For your linked article:
>"The findings suggest that superagers have unique personality profiles," Rogalski said, noting that they stood out for their optimism, resilience, and perseverance – as well as active and engaged lifestyles, marked by pursuits like travel, reading, and positive social relationships.
E.g. the same researcher also wrote about rare Von Economo neurons (VENs)[1] that exist in higher quantities in the elderly that don't have early dementia and Alzheimers. They don't know if those rare VENs are present at birth. This means it could be an candidate confounding variable that causes both the optimism/resilience and protection from dementia.
These kinds of studies should always come with a trigger warning: "Be aware if you are emotionally distressed when your belief in the Just-World-Fallacy is threatened."
Joking aside, having grown up relatively poor and feeling compelled to put work success above everything else to ensure economic stability for my kids these things really do negatively shape my expectations for the second half my life. Not sure what to do about that.
The sister of my grandmother is like this. Travelled the world, stuck in San Francisco at some time, now 97 years old. She is connected via tablet, computer, smartphone, and we discuss world politics every week. She frequently changes her point of view based on new information, which is incredible to me. She is able to reflect, question herself and others and it is entirely beyond me how her brain can work like this with her age.
It's certainly possible for elderly people to maintain a high level of fitness through intense training. But some of them are heavily geared. I see guys at the gym or at endurance races where physique and performance are obviously not natural. And I'm not judging them, maybe the tradeoffs are worthwhile?
My grandfather apparently is such a person. Currently 94 and as lucid as he was 25 years ago and with an amazing memory at that, which he shows off by reciting poetry he learned in the course of the last 85 years or so.
Even if I inherited this trait and lived that long, I doubt I would be able to repeat this - he's been very active throughout his whole life and neither drinks nor smokes.
The article linked to another one with more detail:
> Superagers are more likely to be extroverts and less likely to be neurotic than others, and it looks like their active lifestyles aren't necessarily healthy in other ways. In at least one study, 71 percent of superagers smoked, while 83 percent drank alcohol regularly.
How were the individuals' baselines assessed? Some people have exceptionally good memories. It would not be suprising if these traits often persisted into old age in some of such individuals. For example a person with a savant pmemory at 25 might have the memory of an average 25 year when at 85. That would not suprise me. That said memory is not all that it is cracked up to be. When I was young I had an exceptional memory for facts. It hasn't helped me too much in adult life due to other psychosocial deficits and bad luck and evironment. There are different forms of memory. My emotional and autobiographic memory is sometimes so bad it is weird. Like many life events don't leave too strong an impression.
I don't think there can be a baseline. They would have had to scan a couple of hundred people 60 years ago to establish it.
Plus, the results are on a very small group. It's difficult for me to imagine that fMRI can reliably show differences. And it's also noticeable that they couch the effect in very vague terms: "similar pattern", "more youthful". That's a lot of freedom to interpret a few so much data.
That they've found a bio-marker sounds implausible to me: all they've found is a correlation with a memory task that can't be measured without applying that task.
Yes, I know a person who is an adept computer scientist and well regarded author, yet they are quite frustrated that they have such a hard time remembering people by their voice and face that only people they are constantly close with are familiar.
I've had some short term memory issues (I'm 51) that seem to, more than not, be attributed to working from home during COVID. As we're coming out of it, I see it gradually diminishing with the hopes of doing new things, getting out of the house, and doing 'a little more now rather than waiting for an eventuality that might never happen.'
I think it's a combination of a lack of stimuli, anxiety with work (I'm far from alone in our local employment where folks are underutilized and 'waiting to proceed', and a rut between the bed, the couch and the home office. I was (and am) getting exercise, but there needs to be more than that to continue to be mentally happy.
I think some of it was a psychological over-attribution to normal forgetfulness...people forget things...older people can proportionally forget more things...it's not [necessarily] early onset dementia, not during a pandemic.
I need to work on my memory and brain health overall because it acts sporadically. I can remember my first memory...I was maybe 2 or 3 and I was playing with blocks on the floor of our living room and I thought to myself "have I ever talked before?" and then I thought "I should ask mom, but it would be weird to talk while also asking if I've ever done it before.."..it's a very confusing memory...
But half the time my short term memory is nearly useless so I have to write everything down. So much static from my internal monologs, constantly talking over each other. It's exhausting sometimes. So I just write down everything..what I'm about to do, what I was just doing, what I just thought to do next week...all goes in the notebook.
My 98 year old grandmother is still as sharp as a tack. She can remember specific dates that things happened nearly a century ago. I can barely remember what I did yesterday.
I don't have one of those. My memory is awful. Fortunately though, realising this is what pushed me to get better at writing documentation. I write it for my own benefit, and everyone else on my team also benefits.
The best time to test your documentation is when onboarding new people. Unfortunately, this means that a concerted effort to update and expand documentation should be made before new people start. Else, they will waste their and the team's time on things that don't require an external perspective to fix.
At risk of a slight tangent, I look at the vast majority of the documentation I wrote over the first 25-30 years of my career and all of it is defunct, and largely unread.
like 25-year olds? Give me my memory which I had when I was 3-8 years old, I can still 'taste' the sunshine through green sunscreens we had in elementary school. The faces of teachers and fellow scholars so vivid.
Anybody else have that experience that once you're 20+, your brain is full and only x-amount of stuff is retained per day. I sometimes don't remember what I had for dinner the day before, but I remember some esoteric option to a one-time used application on the commandline from 2 weeks ago. Scary, because it makes me look ultra-dumb for everyday stuff which I have to do in a normal house-hold.
What you experienced in your younger days is totally possible at anytime of your life. You just need to quite down the thinking mind.
Mind has a habit of either ruminating about the past or imagining the future. Once you quiet it down the NOW appears with all its shininess and vivid colors. Meditation helps a lot. I had a realization 10 years back and after it I can switch my brain to NOW anytime.
Meditation is a good way to achieve it. I got this ability after reading “Power of Now” by Echary Tolle.
I kind of think that is your subconscious not needing to put a bunch of effort into ‘storing’ recent meals versus prioritizing ‘memorizing’ tools you have used and how to use them.
I have vivid memories from preschool, but, ask me what happened last week, and I will need to check my bash history. j/k
This happens to me, too. At some level, I think it's a function of my mind deciding to only retain what's novel and filter out the day-to-day noise. Perhaps my dinner from two days ago was simply not remarkable enough to remember. But the 8 year old me probably found every day to be a new and wondrous experience.
Mindcrowd is one organization exploring memory "to advance Alzheimer's research". Older participants with high scores on its online memory test are sent a blood sample kit for DNA profiling. https://mindcrowd.org
One thing that helps keep the brain fresh: Meeting and talking to younger people. And intelligent people. Former‘ll keep you mentally fresh, latter will challenge your thinking.
I recently watched a video about Martha Argerich [1], one of the most virtuosic pianists when she was young, still performing entire concertos from memory in her 80s. She had cancer twice, recovered, and remains a top performer in classical music. It's amazing how some people could retain so much of their brain's function as they age, while others start to degenerate in their early 30s.
I have anecdata to suggest that brains are like muscles. If you work them, they'll stay in good shape for longer.
Relative #1 started having "senior moments" a while back but then he got an engineering contract job. Once he was engaged with his life's work again, the "senior moments" went away and he was sharp as ever.
Relative #2 retired from work and just started puttering around the house, then went into a deep depression and is now in the early stages of dementia. Without a "life's work" or even a hobby she's passionate about to keep her mind engaged, her memory is in gradual but noticeable decline.
[+] [-] chadcmulligan|4 years ago|reply
I have some friends who I've known since high school, now some have health issues and its how they respond seems to make a difference. Some just take the pills the doctor gives them and accept the ageing process and complain about things. Others, like myself, fight tooth and nail to do whatever they can. Of course you can only fight so much - the genetic hand you're dealt, but, I believe your attitude to ageing is really a factor - if you accept it, or fight it. Which sort of aligns with the personality traits they observed. You're only as old as you feel as the saying goes.
I know one lady for example who has had two cancers and was forced to use a walker for a while but is going again, whereas her husband was showing me all the pills he takes - due to being overweight and eating poorly. He has accepted his fate, she has fought against it.
[+] [-] scrose|4 years ago|reply
Often, people expect to do whatever they want and then go to doctors to ‘fix’ them. It’s good for doctors, but not so great for you.
I just started getting into some of the self-care routines she lists in her book after breaking my foot and having multiple doctors recommend surgery to ‘fix’ things. Instead of going down that route, I asked an Ortho-bionomist I know personally to help me. In a single session, most of the swelling and limp in my foot ‘disappeared’. After sticking to the very simple routines he suggested and that I read in the book(none involving pills or icing it), my foot healed more in a week than it did in the 2 months I sat around taking Tylenol and just ‘waiting’ for someone to fix me.
[+] [-] Waterluvian|4 years ago|reply
What does that feel like? How could you tell?
[+] [-] gogopuppygogo|4 years ago|reply
He got Alzheimer’s. It dragged out for over a decade killing him slowly and hurting everyone who knew him.
My father decided he’d rather have a shorter but more quality driven life after that experience. He’s overweight, has a great outlook on his life, and is a joy to be around.
Not everyone wants longevity.
[+] [-] mordnis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hourislate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hereme888|4 years ago|reply
Generally, the rate at which memory synapses weakens is similar across the general population (stability of a memory synapse), so for super-agers it is probably genetic.
I may not have a super-ager brain, but as a lifelong learner and brain-health lover I've placed all my significant memories into a spaced-repetition program I use for everything, and thus am able to recall at will all sorts of important memories in life. I'm keeping my important synapses strong.
There's another category besides super-agers: people with hyperthymesia: "a condition that leads people to be able to remember an abnormally large number of their life experiences in vivid detail. It is extraordinarily rare, with only about 60 people in the world having been diagnosed with the condition as of 2021." There's a documentary about these people. You ask them: what important event happened in your life on January 7th, 1980, and they can answer it accurately.
[+] [-] kiba|4 years ago|reply
I haven't seen anything that indicates that is also true for episodic memory though.
[+] [-] fouc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikewarot|4 years ago|reply
My wife tells me things we did, and there aren't photos of those occasions, so I know I'm not remembering everything.
The photo albums our parents and grandparents had were spaced repetition.
[+] [-] jchanimal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nobrains|4 years ago|reply
- optimism
- resilience
- perseverance
- active lifestyles
- engaged lifestyles
- having pursuits (like travel, reading, positive social relationships)
[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/less-than-5-superagers-what-the...
[+] [-] jasode|4 years ago|reply
No, you can't use the phrase "leads to this". It misinforms the reader because that's not exactly what the researchers wrote. We need to be super pedantic about this because they found correlations of personality traits but did not make the leap to say optimism, etc were the causes. For your linked article:
>"The findings suggest that superagers have unique personality profiles," Rogalski said, noting that they stood out for their optimism, resilience, and perseverance – as well as active and engaged lifestyles, marked by pursuits like travel, reading, and positive social relationships.
There may be another hidden confounding variable that leads to both the optimism and the superager memory performance. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding)
E.g. the same researcher also wrote about rare Von Economo neurons (VENs)[1] that exist in higher quantities in the elderly that don't have early dementia and Alzheimers. They don't know if those rare VENs are present at birth. This means it could be an candidate confounding variable that causes both the optimism/resilience and protection from dementia.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5801202/
[+] [-] Roritharr|4 years ago|reply
Joking aside, having grown up relatively poor and feeling compelled to put work success above everything else to ensure economic stability for my kids these things really do negatively shape my expectations for the second half my life. Not sure what to do about that.
[+] [-] puchatek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rednerrus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Helmut10001|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carlsborg|4 years ago|reply
Maybe it’s the same with the brain.
[+] [-] nradov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kofejnik|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tade0|4 years ago|reply
Even if I inherited this trait and lived that long, I doubt I would be able to repeat this - he's been very active throughout his whole life and neither drinks nor smokes.
[+] [-] andai|4 years ago|reply
> Superagers are more likely to be extroverts and less likely to be neurotic than others, and it looks like their active lifestyles aren't necessarily healthy in other ways. In at least one study, 71 percent of superagers smoked, while 83 percent drank alcohol regularly.
https://www.sciencealert.com/less-than-5-superagers-what-the...
[+] [-] morpheos137|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tgv|4 years ago|reply
Plus, the results are on a very small group. It's difficult for me to imagine that fMRI can reliably show differences. And it's also noticeable that they couch the effect in very vague terms: "similar pattern", "more youthful". That's a lot of freedom to interpret a few so much data.
That they've found a bio-marker sounds implausible to me: all they've found is a correlation with a memory task that can't be measured without applying that task.
[+] [-] barcoder|4 years ago|reply
Music seems to be another form of memory that resists memory loss even amongst Alzheimer patients.*
* https://www.dementiauk.org/music-therapy/
[+] [-] easygenes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cleanpool|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Damogran6|4 years ago|reply
I think it's a combination of a lack of stimuli, anxiety with work (I'm far from alone in our local employment where folks are underutilized and 'waiting to proceed', and a rut between the bed, the couch and the home office. I was (and am) getting exercise, but there needs to be more than that to continue to be mentally happy.
I think some of it was a psychological over-attribution to normal forgetfulness...people forget things...older people can proportionally forget more things...it's not [necessarily] early onset dementia, not during a pandemic.
[+] [-] theshadowknows|4 years ago|reply
But half the time my short term memory is nearly useless so I have to write everything down. So much static from my internal monologs, constantly talking over each other. It's exhausting sometimes. So I just write down everything..what I'm about to do, what I was just doing, what I just thought to do next week...all goes in the notebook.
[+] [-] irrational|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onion2k|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dspillett|4 years ago|reply
At 42 I have the memory of me at 25. My memory was terrible back then too.
[+] [-] whatshisface|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Damogran6|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hbogert|4 years ago|reply
Anybody else have that experience that once you're 20+, your brain is full and only x-amount of stuff is retained per day. I sometimes don't remember what I had for dinner the day before, but I remember some esoteric option to a one-time used application on the commandline from 2 weeks ago. Scary, because it makes me look ultra-dumb for everyday stuff which I have to do in a normal house-hold.
[+] [-] mlboss|4 years ago|reply
Mind has a habit of either ruminating about the past or imagining the future. Once you quiet it down the NOW appears with all its shininess and vivid colors. Meditation helps a lot. I had a realization 10 years back and after it I can switch my brain to NOW anytime.
Meditation is a good way to achieve it. I got this ability after reading “Power of Now” by Echary Tolle.
[+] [-] daniellarusso|4 years ago|reply
I have vivid memories from preschool, but, ask me what happened last week, and I will need to check my bash history. j/k
[+] [-] ragesh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beautifulfreak|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] submeta|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ipiz0618|4 years ago|reply
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYkQleTcck8
[+] [-] masterbit|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antisocial|4 years ago|reply
You may find actionable protocols that greatly improve your quality of life and prepare you for aging.
[+] [-] bitwize|4 years ago|reply
Relative #1 started having "senior moments" a while back but then he got an engineering contract job. Once he was engaged with his life's work again, the "senior moments" went away and he was sharp as ever.
Relative #2 retired from work and just started puttering around the house, then went into a deep depression and is now in the early stages of dementia. Without a "life's work" or even a hobby she's passionate about to keep her mind engaged, her memory is in gradual but noticeable decline.
[+] [-] agumonkey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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