To despair of growing old aggravates the ageing process, writes Rahul Gupta
Saatth saal ke boodhe ya saatth saal ke jawaanIJ” This telling ad jingle from the 80s ad for Zandu Chyawanprash resonates in my mind when I think of the concept of ageing. How can some old people have the energy and enthusiasm of youngsters while their contemporaries reflect decline in old ageIJ From a commonsensical view, ageing simply denotes the count of how many revolutions of the earth around the sun one has lived through. With old age, some of the natural body functions one associates with health show signs of decline — BP levels rise, hearing and eyesight begin to taper off, bones become brittle, stamina and endurance decline, etc. These changes start at age 30 and comprise a very small percentage of the total changes happening in the body every year. If these are the facts, then why do these changes reflect on different people differentlyIJ
A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE
Ageing, like any other phenomenon can manifest itself very differently in different individuals. Just like two people can have absolutely different responses to pain. To take an example of heart patients with blocked arteries, some patients with barely-there blockages are almost disabled by pain, while others with more than 80 per cent blockages are reported to have run marathons. The interpretation of pain matters.
Cancer patients receiving the same treatment for similar levels of spread of cancer have been known to recover completely differently. Closer home, Gurgaon-based Dr Irfan Sheikh, a retired medical doctor, who was diagnosed with cancer after he retired, chose to go for swimming sessions and long walks in nature after his chemotherapy sessions. He was focussed on not letting the disease “take over his life”. He was declared cancer-free soon after.
Or, take the example of Minoti Barthakur, a Guwahati-based Philosophy professor who defeated cancer not once but twice through the sheer power of her mind and taking several small but brave steps.
As we can see, our perception of the situation affects the outcome of the situation. During the sea battles of World War I, many German sailors were often stranded in lifeboats for weeks on end. It was seen that the first ones to perish were the youngest sailors. On deeper analysis, it was found that the older sailors, with prior experience of having been saved from similar bleak situations, knew that the crisis could be dealt with and didn’t expect to die. The younger ones, on the other hand, bereft of any experience, became hopeless and ‘gave in’ to death too soon.
Ageing is a similar phenomenon. It isn’t just what ‘happens’ to us from the outside world. It is that, combined with our perception of its effect, that manifests in the way we age. To despair of growing old aggravates the ageing process, while accepting it with grace slows down the same signs.
HOW OlD ARE YOUIJ
This is not an easy question to answer. Ageing is too unique an experience to be relegated to the count of years one has lived through. Two 25-year-old individuals can look very similar to a pathologist. But two 75-year-olds’ bodies can’t be more different. They are, after all, a sum total of their life experiences and their responses to the experiences, each of which is unique to the individual. To quote Deepak Chopra, there are three ways of measuring how old one is:
DEFYING AGEING
There are example of tribes around the world that depict this phenomenon of ageing, or rather, reversing the ageing process through lifestyles. Some of them, as cited by anthropologist S Boyd Eaton are:
BREAKING STEREOTYPES
Much of our societies’ experience with ageing has been a cycle of self-fulfillment. We expect to grow old and die. Not many decades ago, old age was seen as a time of inevitable decline and feebleness. Today’s society is waking up to a whole awareness of ageing. With increasing connectedness with the outside world, more independence and advancing healthcare, people in their 60s and 70s are today expecting to live vigorously and healthily, as much as in their 40s and 50s.
In any society, people feed off each other’s thoughts and beliefs, and what they see and hear around them. When we cover inspiring stories of Indian seniors such as 62-year-old bikers, 75-year-old PhD students, and 90-year-old yoga teachers on our blog, a lot of beliefs that people had held true about the ageing process get shattered and new seeds of thought are sown. That’s when there is a shift in the art of the possible.
So, what is it really that one can do to grow old while staying youngIJ Here are some tips we’ve gathered from all the inspiring seniors we’ve met:
IT’S NEVER TOO lATE
If there is one thing that you can take away from this article then it should be that it is never too late to make a change. What’s important is a change in perception and expectation. Once you’re convinced that something will work, the physical body usually just obeys the mind. Gerontologists at the Tufts University proved this when they visited a nursing home for the aged, chose the frailest residents and put them on a weight-training regimen. Instead of getting ‘burnt out’, these people thrived over an eight-week programme, by the end of which wasted muscles had come back, coordination and muscle improved and a sense of active life returned. The youngest participant in this program was 87 and the oldest was 96. To quote George Eliot, “You are never too old to be what you might have been.”
With inputs from Deepak Chopra’s book Ageless Body, Timeless Mind
(The writer is Co-Founder and CEO, seniorworld.com)