Читать книгу The Power of Positive Aging - David Lereah - Страница 7

Introduction

Growing Old Is a New Phenomenon

It may come as a surprise to many, but growing old is a relatively new phenomenon. We are living almost thirty years longer than the longevity numbers of just 100 years ago. People who lived only to age 49 or 50 died before their bodies experienced many of the marks of aging most of us face today, like hearing impairment, loss of mobility, and dementia.

For 99.9 percent of the time humans have inhabited the Earth, average life expectancy topped out at thirty to forty years. In 1900, the average life span in the United States was forty-seven years. Just over a century later, the average life span has skyrocketed to almost seventy-nine years. For older age groups, life spans are even longer. If you are 65, your life expectancy is eighty-four years.

A silver tsunami is sweeping America. More than 10,000 people per day in the United States are turning 65. The senior population—those 65 and older—is projected to reach 88.5 million by 2050. That is more than double the population of 39.6 million seniors in 2010. By 2050, at least 400,000 seniors will be 100 or older.¹

Aging Occurs Throughout Our Lifetimes

Aging doesn’t just happen when we reach 65; it begins in our 20s. According to Robert Kail and John Cavanaugh, sensory abilities peak in your early 20s. Hearing begins to decline by your late 20s, while vision typically begins to deteriorate in middle age. The muscle strength in men and women peaks between 20 and 30, and resting metabolism, which accounts for a major part of daily energy consumption, peaks in early adulthood. According to Valerie Gladwell, your endurance peaks at age 22, while memory peaks at 28.²

Suffice it to say that we are physically and mentally deteriorating for the majority of our lifetimes. But for most of us, aging doesn’t begin to have a significant impact on the quality of our lives until after we pass 50.

Learning How to Age

Most of us begin life believing we are immortal and assuming that nothing bad will happen to us. As we grow old and encounter the physical and mental hallmarks of aging, the reality of our mortality and the concept of finality creeps into our thoughts. Time marches on; there is no slowing life.

Although all of us are aging, few of us are prepared to deal with its realities. No one teaches us how to deal with wrinkles, loss of mobility, or fading eyesight, and certainly no one prepares us to deal with life-threatening diseases. Moreover, trying to age gracefully and with dignity, feels like swimming against the tide of today’s forever-young society, where the young are perceived as beautiful and energetic while the old are seen as stale and useless.

In this society, wrinkles are ugly, and wheelchairs represent helplessness. No wonder many seniors are ashamed or embarrassed to display marks of aging, and no wonder more than 6.5 million seniors in America are diagnosed with some form of depression.³ Like golf-ball-sized hail coming at us with a reckless abandon, every mark of aging can chip away at our self-worth.

But we don’t have to measure our self-worth by our youthful skin tone or our ability to run marathons. Aging—and its accompanying physical and mental challenges—may be inevitable, but our later years do not have to be miserable. How we effectively cope with serious physical and mental decline is the raison d’être for this book and is the subject this book’s comprehensive program addresses. As a cancer survivor, I have discovered the extraordinary power of practicing positive aging, and I want to share this recipe for experiencing a more joyful life in your senior years.

It is important to emphasize that practicing positive aging can begin at any age and is especially beneficial for people over 50 years old when serious age-related decline becomes a reality.