Get Older, Not Frailer

Why do some people age well and others get frail?

Two reasons:
1. undetected heart disease
2. having positive images of growing older

Old but Not Frail: A Matter of Heart and Head

You’re only as old as you think you are. Rigorous studies are now showing that seeing, or hearing, gloomy nostrums about what it is like to be old can make people walk more slowly, hear and remember less well, and even affect their cardiovascular systems. Positive images of aging have the opposite effects. The constant message that old people are expected to be slow and weak and forgetful is not a reason for the full-blown frailty syndrome.
---

More and more scientists say they have been won over by an accumulating body of evidence.

“I am changing my initially skeptical view,” says Richard Suzman, who is director of the office of behavioral and social research programs at the National Institute on Aging. “There is growing evidence that these subjective experiences might be more important than we thought.”
--
Dr. Levy wondered, were there long-term effects of believing the stereotypes of aging? She found a study that could provide answers, the Ohio Longitudinal Study of Aging and Retirement. The two-decade-long study included 1,157 people, nearly every resident of Oxford, Ohio, who was 50 or older and was not suffering from dementia. And it had questions about beliefs about aging.

It turned out that people who had more positive views about aging were healthier over time. They lived an average of 7.6 years longer than those of a similar age who did not hold such views, and even had less hearing loss when their hearing was tested three years after the study began

Our fears of aging become self-fulfilling prophecies