A short time ago I
had a birthday, a big one, which turned my thoughts to the Longevity
Revolution. At the outset, I want to mention that I'm not a health
professional. I'm a little old lady with an appropriate interest
in aging, who has made it through the shoals of a number of health
problems and has decided that she wants to keep on making it.
That birthday was before
the terrorist attacks caused our every thought and plan to be
filtered through our country's crisis. The airports search our
luggage; the postal authorities search our mail and we search
our souls.
In case you think that
the older generation, you, I and this subject have little importance
as measured against our present terrors, we are the warp and the
woof, the voices of experience, the unflappable realists; so let
us look with our wise eyes on the raw material that providence
gave us.
We've been advised
to seek appropriate distractions. Let's do some work on the ultimate
distraction — ourselves.
I'm interested, maybe
even excited about the prospects of longevity. That was not always
the case. A decade or more ago, if you had suggested that I might
live to be a hundred, I would probably have said, "Oh, no!
I don't think I want to be a hundred years old." The mental
picture would have been that one of disease and disability. We
would added to the fiction that growing old is usually an unattractive
process. Age was associated with loneliness, incontinence and,
often, poverty.
Now we know that aging
is not a disease. It is a normal stage of life in which disease
can sometimes occur. We know that the sixty-five plus generation
is growing much faster than the national as a whole. We know that
the next generation of elders will be more mobile, healthier,
more politically astute and better educated than today's elders.
We can recognize symptoms of diseases our grandmother didn't live
long enough to get. We can often avoid what used to be unavoidable
— cervical cancer, osteoporosis, strokes. We can make informed
choices about tests and treatments.
Dr. Ken Dychtwald of
Age Wave says, "Tomorrow's elderly will have traveled
to more places; will have read more books and magazines; will
have met more people and will be part of a more powerful elderculture
than any previous cohort in the history of the world."
The Boomers need to
become interested and involved in health promotion and disease
prevention now when they can affect the future of these
fields, instead of looking at aging as something to avoid. If
you don't like the vision of the person you expect to become,
be a part of an effort change that image.
Eight years ago there
were one hundred and twenty-four medicines being tested as anti-cancer
agents. Today there are four hundred and two. My parents only
saw a doctor when they were very ill. We have learned to see a
doctor before we become ill.
Since 1900, life expectancy
has nearly doubled. At some point, we arrived at a figure of age
seventy-four for men and eighty years for women at some point.
That is no longer valid and new figures will be appearing soon.
I find that I couldn't accept those projections any way; that
would mean I was past my 'sell date.'
The Census Bureau predicts
that there will be nearly a million people over a hundred years
old by the year 2050. If you have a sibling that has reached a
hundred, you are eight times as likely to reach that age yourself.
We know that a comfortable life does not guarantee a long life.
There were African Americans who lived as slaves and yet lived
a very long time; some Holocaust survivors have lived a long life.
William James wrote,
"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is wroth living
and your belief will help create the fact." Dr. Thomas Caesario,
Dean of Medicine at the University of California at Irvine, says,
"Forget about a hundred. The future is moving on to one hundred
and twenty."
In Part II, we'll discuss
"The Bonus Years: How to Get Them and What To Do With Them.
Sites:
Dr. Ken Dychtwald on
PBS:: A
New Breed of Man and Woman Over 65 is Breaking the Mold
US Census Bureau: Age
Data
University
of California, Irvine, School of Medicine
Jean Pond has retired
from Adult Careers, a nonprofit company she founded in 1983 which,
over its 10 year history, found 6,000 jobs for displaced older
workers. She now applies the skills she acquired since her
80th birthday when she acquired her first computer to mentor and
inspire others at the Lakeview Senior Center's computer lab in
Orange County, California. She has been a Citizen Ambassador for
People to People's International conferences in Russia, Ukraine,
Lithuania and the People's Republic of China as part of a professional
delegation exploring aging issues as well as representing US seniors.
Her trip to South Africa in the same capacity was for the Initiative
for Education, Science and Technology. In 1996, she was a US delegate
to International Geriatric Congress in Cuba. Jean's posts, chairmanships
and awards are too numerous to list.
