Can gratitude help one live longer and healthier? Research shows that gratitude is strongly associated with greater happiness, positive emotions and improved mental and physical health. Conscious aging is recognizing and accepting the aging process as a natural part of the life cycle or learning to love growing older and eliminating what prevents us from appreciating our golden years. Truth is, we are all in the process of aging at any given moment. How we handle that realization may predict how well we age. It appears that a negative view of aging may actually speed the aging process. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, fear of memory loss can actually create memory decline. Belief that physical and mental decline is inevitable accelerates whatever decline occurs.
How old is old anyway? Certainly not middle-aged or even late middle-aged as the youngest among us might imagine, if they could even picture themselves growing older. Someone once said that old is always 15 years older than your present age. One survey found that young adults in their 20’s thought that old age began at 60; middle-agers thought it was 70; and those older than 65 thought to add another 10 years before they themselves reached old age. Many people in their 50’s say they feel at least 10 years younger than their actual age, while the healthiest people in their 60’s felt 20 years younger. In other words, as we age most people move the goalposts that represent major life stages.
As long as one remains in a healthy state, perhaps it’s true that age is just a number and you are only as old as you feel. That is not to say that we needn’t live a healthy lifestyle. Not surprisingly, grateful people are more likely to take care of their health by maintaining a healthy weight, staying active and practicing preventive medicine by getting regular health screenings. When not addressed, changes that occur with normal aging, such as high blood pressure or high blood sugar, may make one more likely to develop certain disorders. Timely addressing preventable modifiable risk factors with lifestyle adjustments or medications can potentially prevent development of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other chronic conditions.
How we age
- Chronological age is a person’s age in years based solely on the passage of time.
- Biological age refers to bodily changes that occur naturally as one ages. Different from chronological age, biological age is measure of determining the state of health, which can be influenced by lifestyle factors.
- Psychological age is based on either a negative or positive attitude towards the aging process.
- Cellular aging is generally defined as a progressive decline in resistance to stress and gradual loss of cellular functions. Cells also have a life span and eventually reach their replication limit.
- Metabolic aging is based on an individual’s basal metabolic rate, or the amount of energy or calories burned while at rest to keep the body functioning. Basal functions include breathing, circulation, cell production, nutrient processing, protein synthesis and more. As we age metabolism slows, affecting body composition, muscle loss and fat accumulation, which is one reason why a healthy diet and exercise are so important to long-term health.
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