The Ageing Process is normal, biological and not pathological, and nothing can be done about it, for the present at least. But this does not mean that you should despair. On the contrary, you need to understand what is happening to you and how the three processes that cause much more trouble than ageing, at least before the age of ninety can be countered, how their impact can be reduced and how many of their effects can be reversed – the three processes are
- loss of fitness, both physical and mental
- preventable disease
- a negative and pessimistic attitude
The Amazon Single titled An Antidote To Ageing summarises and explains the science and research that supports the proposal that instead of worrying about ageing you should take action to prevent, mitigate and reverse the three factors that cause many of the problems hitherto always ascribed to ‘ageing’.
There is increasingly strong evidence that many of the problems that have been blamed on ageing are in fact caused by either social or environmental factors, with their influence felt from the earliest age. Furthermore it is now clear that much of the research that has been done on old age has had serious flaws which have over emphasised the effects of ageing. Simply comparing people who are eighty with people who are twenty is not a fair comparison. When a different research method is used which follows people from twenty to eighty, a method called the ‘life course method’, the reduction in muscle strength that occurs is much less than when the muscle strength of today’s twenty year olds and today’s eighty year olds are compared directly, and the same applies to many other changes. If you want to know more consult the excellent book A Life Course Approach to Healthy Ageing by Diana Kuh and colleagues.
A linked site on Good Health in Your Seventies gives practical advice to people aged seventy and older on the steps they can take to feel better and prevent and postpone many of the problems that are currently assumed to be due to the ageing process.