If all this information sounds depressingly negative, it may be worth remembering ‘The Old Man and the Three Young Men’, a verse fable by La Fontaine, one of the most widely read French poets of the seventeenth century, which gives strength to the old:
But all three youths die from accidents.
And in most areas of physical activity, not least sport, there are positive and encouraging examples of physical ability with increasing age. Do those in various sports truly begin an unstoppable physical decline in their twenties, or is this more of a question of reduced motivation? ‘How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?’ asked Leroy Paige while playing major league baseball as a pitcher into his late fifties. Ageing is relative— the 60-year-old tennis player may be in better shape than the 20-year-old couch potato. I still regularly play both doubles and singles.
Not long ago it was ‘time to hang it up’ when an athlete hit 40, and one was definitely regarded as being over the hill at 50. Now it’s more like 75. This refers to those who are training and trying to improve their performance, not the average couch-lounger. Some have kept training as they got older, and others have started competing in middle age. One study showed year-to-year performance declining after 50, but at a rate that was barely noticeable until about 75, when the decline became undeniable. Male and female senior athletes’ performance declined approximately about 4 per cent per year over 35 years of competition—slowly from age 50 to 75 and dramatically after 75. The decline in the sprint was greater than in endurance for women, especially after 75. Marathon runners decline about 2 per cent a year between 30 and 40, 8 per cent between 40 and 50, then 13 per cent 50 to 60, and finally there is a 14 per cent decline between 60 and 70. But in 2003 the Canadian long-distance runner Ed Whitlock ran a marathon in under three hours at the age of 73.
There are other amazing exceptions to decline of athletic ability with age. Luciano Acquarone was a marathon world-record holder at 59 years with a time of 2:39, and a 60-year-old runner from Japan who ran it in 2:36. There is a 73-year-old lady who tries to swim, cycle and run three times a week as it makes her feel young and live longer, and she will even enter the Hawaii Ironman triathlon. A great example of strength with age is Ranulph Fiennes, who climbed Everest at the age of 65, and six years earlier ran seven marathons in seven continents on seven successive days. Ruth Frith at 100 set a new world record in her age category with her shot put of just over 4 metres—longer than the throws of competitors decades younger—at the World Masters Games in Sydney in 2009. She trains five days a week, pressing 80lb weights
‘Old soccer players never die, they just achieve their final goal.’ Roger Milla was 42 years old when he played in the 1994 World Cup for the Cameroon national team. He achieved international stardom at 38 years old, an age at which most footballers have retired, by scoring four goals at the 1990 World Cup. Many football players are in their prime in their 30s.
Snooker requires both mental and physical skills. Ray Reardon, who claimed six world snooker titles, reached the 1982 world final at the age of 49, only to lose to an inspired Alex Higgins. One of his greatest moments came in 1988 when, aged 56, he thrashed Steve Davis, winner of five world crowns. Golfers too can continue through the years. Tom Watson at 59 only just lost the 2009 British Open, and there was a great deal of positive news coverage that someone of his age could be so successful. One old golfer was still driving himself to the course at 101, and only recently moved into assisted-care living at Arizona Grand. At 100, he could still break 40 for nine holes, and he didn’t start riding in a cart until a hip problem caught up with him at 98.
Declining health and capability that accompanies age may be made worse by prolonged exposure to an unhealthy environment and lifestyle. Older people rather consistently rate their health as good, despite evidence suggesting that they are more likely to suffer from a variety of health problems. Many older people take a holistic view of what ‘health’ means, including wellbeing and social factors, and in general take a positive view. Older people who accept negative images of ageing are more likely to suffer with health problems—they are also, because of their negative attitude to ageing, more likely to attribute their problems to the ageing process, and therefore do not seek the necessary medical assistance. Some older people may also minimise their health problems as a deliberate method of denying negative age-related stereotypes. In addition, some older people are reluctant to visit medical professionals because they feel, unwisely, more comfortable trusting their own common sense.
Heart-felt perils await people who hold disapproving attitudes about the elderly, a new study suggests. Young and middle-aged adults who endorse negative stereotypes about older people display high rates of strokes, heart attacks and other serious heart problems later in life, compared with ageing peers who view the elderly in generally positive ways. Yale University psychologist Becca Levy found that those who viewed ageing as a positive experience lived an average of seven years longer. This means that a positive image had a greater impact than not smoking or maintaining a healthy weight. Levy says that patronising attitudes and ‘elderspeak’—speaking to elders as if they were children—can affect their competence and lifespan. There are claims that optimism and coping styles are more important to successful ageing than physical health. But do keep doing exercise. Also note that there is a little evidence that being bored can result in heart problems and an earlier death.
We will look later at the possible cellular basis of the changes in our bodies as we age, but now turn to mental changes and illnesses associated with ageing.
3. Forgetting
‘First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down’
Almost all of us who are ageing must admit that our minds deteriorate in some ways as we age. Memory is the most obvious example: it is all too common for simple things, particularly names, to be forgotten, and then often they come back unexpectedly a little while later. In fact speed of thought and spatial visualisation begin to decline in our twenties and our mental abilities peak at about 22 years old, before beginning to deteriorate just five years later. Memory has been shown to decline from an average age of around 40. But abilities based on accumulated knowledge, as shown in performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increase until the age of 60. George Burns pointed out: ‘By the time you’re eighty years old you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it.’ And though our mental processes do become less efficient, we can become more efficient in solving complex moral and social problems.
The Ancient Greek dramatist Sophocles was hardly positive about old age: ‘When a man is old the light of his reason goes out, action becomes useless and he has unmeaning cares.’ His sons appeared to agree: because of his absorption in literary work, Sophocles was thought to be neglecting his business affairs, and his sons hauled him
