Aging has almost always been a source of concern when it comes to turning years and years.As time goes by we see how the wonderful machine of our body deteriorates, and many negative stereotypes take over our mind , without noticing how good life can continue to be when reaching old age.
Recently Science Daily Online published a post about how current medicine wants to face old age : as a disease, and as such to treat your symptoms.This, without a doubt, could benefit many millions of people who are already reaching old age, offering them an opportunity to age healthy and lucid.
However, the way in which everyone thinks su old age negatively or positively impacts their own aging, and apparently those who have an unfavorable expectation have a higher risk of suffering of Alzheimer's .
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Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health found interesting findings related to the particular response to aging and the changes in the brain from Alzheimer's disease .
Two studies were carried out.In the first, they analyzed data from 158 healthy people, finishing their 40, without dementia.To determine what their way of seeing old age was and if they had stereotypes linked to age, they used a scale with statements such as “Older people have trouble learning new things,” or “older people are distracted.”
About 25 years later, when these same people were about 68 years old, I started a magnetic resonance scan to scan the brain of all of them and determine the volume of your hippocampus , since the loss of volume in this brain region is associated with Alzheimer's.
They realized that those who had negative expectations about aging they had a greater loss in the volume of their hippocampus by having more years.In other words, people who had negative stereotypes over old age, had in three years the same fall as the group with positive stereotypes in nine.
In the second study, researchers examined two more Alzheimer's markers: the accumulation in the brain of amyloid plaques-protein clusters they accumulate between brain cells-and neurofibrillary tangles, braided filaments of proteins accumulated also in brain cells, using brain autopsies of people who had measured their attitudes towards aging.
The results were consistent: those who had had more negative stereotypes about age had more plaques and neurofibrillar clews than people with more positive thoughts towards old age.
Scientists do not see a mechanism by which Negative stereotypes may influence the brain, but they suspect that stress is the driver.Animal research showed that exposure to chronic stress can generate the same bi examined markers, that is, more plaques and neurofibrillar clews.
What human research shows is that when people prepare with negative stereotypes about age and are exposed to stressors, there is a greater Cardiovascular response, linked to heart events.
And in a 2012 investigation, conducted by Becca Levy, associate professor of epidemiology and psychology at the Yale School of Public Health, it was shown that the people who had had more negative stereotypes about age before reaching old age had a worse memory performance later in life.
It is disturbing, to say the least, to think that negative cultural stereotypes about age can have such a profound effect on how our brain ages.As Professor Levy says:
"We know from other studies that, even at the age of four, children already assume cultural stereotypes."
Which means that it is time to start changing our cultural perspective on what it means to grow old, and begin to give a positive sense to the fact of turning years.
An interesting way it would be that legislators began to make laws more consistent and less discriminatory by re-including in the workforce a sector of the population that grows every day: the retired.
It's logical to think that there are things that we can no longer do, but, for example, with regard to intellectual work, a person of 60 or 70 years can continue to offer their accumulated knowledge in a lifetime without s understand that it is a burden or that it is no longer useful in a society where youth prevails.Without a doubt, it is something to reflect on.
If you have been interested in the article, surely you would like to know 4 experiences that you should live before you get old.
Images: Neil Moralee , Moyan Brenn , malavoda , Vincent_AF , Nicolas Alejandro
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