Some people really do get better with age. Here’s why

Is the key to aging better in our minds?

By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanna Bryner

It’s not just cheese and wine that improve with age: Many older adults also show significant improvements in their physical and cognitive health over time, according to a new study. The reason seems to lie in how they perceive aging.

People who viewed aging positively were more likely to show improvements in their cognitive abilities and walking speed. In contrast, people in the study who had more negative views about aging tended to see a decline in these skills. This suggests that people’s beliefs can have a dramatic effect on their biology, the researchers say.

“Our results suggest that there is often a reserve of capacity for improvement later in life,” Becca Levy, study co-author and professor of social and behavioral sciences at Yale University, said in a statement. “And because age-related beliefs are changeable, this opens the door to interventions at the individual and societal level.”

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Levy’s previous research has shown that a person’s views on aging can predict their risk of developing memory and sleep problems, cardiovascular disease, and even biomarkers linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

The new study included more than 11,000 adults aged 65 and older and was published Thursday in Geriatrics. Over a 12-year period, 45 percent of participants saw a positive change in either their cognitive test scores or their walking speed, a key measure of their fitness. Many others saw no change in their cognitive skills during the study period.

Notably, when the researchers averaged participants’ scores, they found an expected decline in abilities as people aged. But on an individual level, this image did not catch everyone’s attention.

“Many people equate aging with an inevitable and ongoing loss of physical and cognitive abilities,” Levy said. “What we found is that improvement later in life is not rare, it is common and should be included in our understanding of the aging process.”

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