Young people partying
“Youth is wasted on the young.” So goes the famous quote usually attributed to poet George Bernard Shaw.
Older adults might possess the knowledge on how to enjoy life, but often their bodies no longer have the boundless health of youth to fully take advantage of this know-how.
There seems to be a growing fascination with longevity and how to achieve it – not simply wanting to live a long and healthy life, but trying to optimise ourselves so we can squeeze every possible year out of our bodies. How much effort should we put into living longer and will this effort pay off?
A recent RNZ article looked at some of the things New Zealanders are doing in the hope of living longer. Some of it makes perfect sense: getting enough sleep, eating well and taking care of our health. But there is a fine line between looking after ourselves and becoming so obsessed with optimisation that it starts to create stress of its own. https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/wellbeing/what-new-zealanders-are-doing-to-try-and-live-forever-or-at-least-longer
That has even spawned the rather amusing term “maxxing” – taking something we want to improve and trying to maximise it. Sleep-maxxing, for example, can turn the perfectly sensible advice to get enough sleep into an elaborate project involving tracking, monitoring and worrying about whether we’re sleeping well enough. Read more about the stress of ‘maxxing’: https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/wellbeing/our-obsession-with-maxxing-could-actually-be-stressing-us-out
And there is an obvious irony here: if you’re lying awake worrying about achieving the perfect night’s sleep, you may not be helping yourself much!
Lack of sleep (and anxiety about ‘maxxing’ sleep) can lead to poor health
The Fountain of Youth
The mythical Fountain of Youth
The search for ways to beat ageing is certainly not new.
Quests for eternal life or to discover the “Fountain of Youth” date back over 4,000 years – from ancient India, Persia, Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia (King Gilgamesh), and China (Emperor Qin Shi Huang), and on through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The so-called “Elixir of Life” was often toxic, and many died early instead of living longer. Read more…
In more recent times, wealthy Americans have been prepared to spend extraordinary amounts of money on treatments and interventions promising to slow or reverse ageing. Plasma transfusions, supplements, elaborate testing and a bewildering array of “anti-ageing” strategies can sound very impressive.
But impressive isn’t the same as proven. For example: Young-donor plasma is a particularly good example of the hype. The US FDA says it is not aware of evidence demonstrating clinical benefit from young-donor plasma for ageing or age-related conditions, and warns that plasma transfusions carry risks. Read more about this.
That doesn’t mean we should abandon sensible health checks or medical care. Screening such as bowel screening and mammograms are important, as are cardiovascular assessments, particularly when there are recognised risk factors or family history.
If you love your health, get regular health check ups. Prevention beats treatment.
In addition, sleep, good nutrition, social activities, reducing stress, and keeping your brain active are all important.
The question is whether more, more expensive and more complicated necessarily means healthier. Check out this article of a wealthy American spending more than $2 million on a quest to stay young.
Perhaps he and others are asking the wrong question? Maybe the goal shouldn’t simply be “How can I live longer?”
Perhaps a better question is: “How can I stay strong, mobile and independent for as long as possible?”
The World Health Organization (WHO) takes a similar approach to healthy ageing. Rather than defining healthy ageing simply as being free of disease or living to a particular age, WHO focuses on maintaining functional ability – being able to move around, meet our own needs, maintain relationships, learn and make decisions, and participate in life. Read more …
In other words, it’s not just about lifespan – how many years we live – but healthspan: how many of those years we can live with good function and independence.
This is where ordinary physical activity starts to look rather impressive.
The benefits of moving and the downsides of falling
As we get older, maintaining strength, balance and mobility becomes increasingly important.
A serious fall can have consequences far beyond the immediate injury: a fracture or other trauma may mean hospitalisation and surgery, followed by weeks or months of reduced activity. Strength can be lost, confidence can take a knock, and fear of falling can lead people to become less active – which can create another downward spiral.
Anything that helps us maintain balance and physical function is potentially doing much more than simply helping us perform better on an exercise test.
And this is where tai chi enters the picture.
With my active tai chi group at Acacia Retirement Village
A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis brought together 24 randomised controlled trials investigating tai chi and falls in older adults. The researchers found that tai chi reduced the risk of falls and improved several measures of balance and mobility. Read more…
That doesn’t prove that tai chi makes us live longer. But it does provide evidence for something arguably more useful: helping us retain some of the physical abilities that make later life safer, more independent and more enjoyable.
And it isn’t just about preventing falls. Tai chi involves controlled movement, weight shifting, leg strength, coordination, posture, balance and concentration. Practiced regularly, it is a way of continually asking the body and brain to work together.
Maybe we don’t need to “maxx” everything? There is something rather appealing about not ‘maxxing.’
While some are searching for the ultimate longevity intervention, perhaps the most useful things we can do are remarkably ordinary: move regularly, maintain strength and balance, eat reasonably well, sleep as well as we can, stay connected with other people, manage stress and keep doing things that we enjoy.
That is one of the advantages of tai chi. It isn’t a magic potion for longevity. It doesn’t promise to turn back the clock. But it can help us practice living well in the body we have now – and keep doing so as we get older.
The goal isn’t to defeat ageing. Instead, it is to live stronger for longer.
That sounds like a much more enjoyable prospect to me.
