Successful Aging

Before I had even finished it, I’d bought 2 copies of this book: one for my parents, and the other for my partner’s. I admit, some chapters review much of what I already knew; exercise is very good for our brains and body (and you don’t need to be a gym rat - just get your heart rate up!); healthy eating isn’t prescribable, but it’ll include eating a range of unprocessed food (processed food is bad), eating in moderation, less sweets, and finding a diet that works best for you (without going to the extremes). But the many reviews of the latest neuroscience and how they apply to us as we age was fascinating. For example, a reason we “always have room for dessert” is the novel flavours (sweet after salty) pique your interest even though enough was several mouthfuls ago.

I made far too many bookmarks throughout, so I’ll jump right in. Here are a collection of my favourite quotes and moments from this book:

“The eldest child in a multi child household tends to take on some of the parenting and instruction of the younger ones; the youngest child may be relatively coddled or ignored, depending on the parents; the middle child may find herself thrust into the role of peacemaker.” -> I do have the urge to arbitrate peace…

Personality traits were very difficult to study because culture and language play a role in shaping them. To get around this, researchers realized ‘The more important an individual difference is in human transactions, the more languages will have a term for it.’ “And so, intrepid researchers… studied the languages of diverse cultures from around the globe. Consider one type of individual difference, mental illness. It seems rather important to know whether a person you’re interacting with is sane, rational, and emotionally stable, or hears voices in their head. It turns out that people as diverse as the Inuit in Alaska; Yoruba tribes of Nigeria; and the Pintupi aborigines of Australia, have words in their languages for these important personality descriptors.

“To become more conscientious, one must change underlying cognitive processes such as self-regulation, and self-monitoring. If you wish you [were better at this, checkout] David Allen’s book Getting Things Done.

Interesting anecdote of someone with hypermnesia (the opposite of amnesia, essentially having super memory) was that they couldn’t recognize friends and colleagues because “everyone has so many faces.”

" This is how memory works in the brain - as soon as you retrieve a memory, it becomes editable, just like a text document; it enters a vulnerable state and can get rewritten without your intent, consent, or knowledge. Often, a memory is rewritten by new information that gets coloured in during one recollection, and then that new information gets grafted onto and stored with the old, all seamlessly, without your conscious awareness. This process can happen over and over again until the original memory in your brain has been replaced with subsequent interpretations , impressions, and recollections.” -> Shortly after reading this, I was recounting an excursion that had been so-so, but was in a terrible headspace when asked about it, and I found my retelling of the tale was done with a negative spin! Clearly, my negative mood was colouring the memory, which was a light bulb moment for me. Perhaps that is why when I ask my grandmother how her day is going she just says “don’t ask me that dear, getting old is for the birds!” When you don’t have something nice to say, best not to say (or think) anything at all.

I’ve come to believe that Multiple-trace theory (MTT) is the correct way of looking at memory… It provides a compelling explanation for why we forget recent events when we age but still remember older ones: The older ones created more memory traces, either through repetition or through multiple recollections of them.”

Strengthen your brain games haven’t been shown to work across functions outside of the games you’re playing. But there are apps for building memory, “and those are an integral part of the program of healthy brain practices, such as Neurotrack.”

“The young infant lives in a state of psychedelic splendour in which a green light might have a taste, or their mother’s voice might elicit a warm and smooth sensation on the skin. Some babies never completely achieve sensory differentiation and then have a condition called synesthesia. There is some evidence that adults who develop certain forms of dementia can revert to this state, and it has been suggested that this may account, in part, for why some older adults develop a new interest in art quite suddenly.”

“Successfully making contact with a moving target, such as a spinning mobile over the crib, or catching a ball, is so important that it has a special name, interceptive timing. This skill is a precursor to mathematical ability: It usually has to develop before a child can represent abstract concepts such as numbers.”

“The term critical period is used to describe a time window within which a particular skill or ability needs to be cultivated with the right environmental input, or it can never be acquired (these windows are statistically distributed). You may remember some of these famous examples if you ever took a psychology class. Kittens who were deprived of normal visual input never develop normal eyesight. Kittens that wore an eye patch never develop binocular vision or depth perception, and kittens raised in the dark never learn to see, even though their eyes are fine (Many scientists today regret that the kitten experiments were considered ethical at the time, in the 1950’s)”.

“Older adults who want to maintain their sense of balance and orientation must not just observe the environment but also move around… Neuroplasticity is what keeps us young, and it is only a walk in the park away.”

“Exercise, meditation, listening to music, immersing yourself in nature, and sometimes just talking to friends and having social support can help to reduce stress significantly.”

" Withdrawal from the world after a negative experience is evolutionarily adaptive - it gives us time to heal and to reflect productively on what went wrong so that we can avoid or correct patterns of our own behaviour that can lead to trouble."

“Spend time with people who encourage you to grow, to explore new things, and who take joy in your successes. Try to find social situations that respect older adults and a role that allows you to contribute your accumulated knowledge and wisdom to a community organization whose goals you admire. And when you can, go outside. Go outside.”

“People who are in enriched environments - with lots of things to see, listen to, and do - experience less pain than those in simpler environments, and this sort of distraction diminishes pain signals in the insula and primary sensory cortex. Effective distractions while in pain includes exercise, hobbies, interesting conversation, practicing yoga, meditation, socializing, listening to soothing music, or immersing yourself in nature.”

“Melatonin levels in the blood are highest in young people (55-75 pg/ml) and start to decline after the age of forty, with the fastest decrease found from sixty years of age onward, reaching very low levels in the elderly (18-40 pg/ml). New research suggests that melatonin may have protective effects against many cancers, which may be part of the reason that as people age - and melatonin levels go down - they are more susceptible to cancers.”

“Among nondrug treatments [for improved aging], cognitive stimulation therapy (CST) has the highest record of efficacy.”

“Other treatments: studies that are only preliminary, and wouldn’t yet be called medicine because evidence is still being gathered:

• Vitamin B_12, found in meat, poultry, eggs, milk and fish, is necessary for the production of myelin in the brain and is involved in the metabolism of every cell in the body… We believe that [homocysteine] increases oxidative stress and increases damage to DNA and that its neurotoxicity leads to cell death. B_12 (along with B_6 and folate) is responsible for recycling homocysteine, thereby keeping its levels in check; insufficient amounts of B_12 are therefore believed responsible for a toxic buildup of homocysteine.
• Neuroshroom - which includes Hericium erinaceus polysaccharides (HEP), cordyceps militaris, and ganoderma lucidum, that increase acetylcholine for memory / neuroprotective / neuroregenerative qualities, boost energy levels, and boost memory function / reduce stress / have anti-inflammatory properties respectively.
• Bacopa - water hyssop, might improve higher-order cognitive processes.
• Meditation - helps with our ability to maintain attention, reducing activity within the default mode network and increases connectivity between regions of the brain that are implicated in cognitive control.

“Daniel Pink has to say this about the middle-aged dip: ‘One possibility is the disappointment of unrealized expectations. In our naive twenties and thirties, our hopes are high, our scenarios rosy. Then reality trickled in like a slow leak in the room. Only one person gets to be CEO - and it’s not going to be you. Some marriages crumble - and yours, sadly, is one of them… Yet we don’t remain in the emotional basement for long, because over time we adjust our aspirations and later realize that life is pretty good. In short, we dip in the middle because we’re lousy forecasters. In youth, our expectations are too high.”

• “Three questions: who’ll change my light bulbs? [i.e., who’ll do the mundane shit when you’re unable to]; What if I want an ice cream cone [i.e., are you setup to live the life you want as your systems begin to fail - do you have to drive to that ice cream, or can you walk]? and Who will I have lunch with?

• “Decreasing the risk of dying from one disease has increased our risk of dying from other, arguably more horrible ones. [i.e., alzheimer’s instead of a heart attack]”

• “The single most important factor in determining successful aging is the personality trait of Conscientiousness.”

• “Three additional factors that determine how well we age are more important than the rest. The first is childhood experiences, in particular of parental attachment and of head injury. The second is exercise in varied, natural environments. And the third is social interaction.”

• “Nearly every part of our brains is activated by interacting with others, live, face-to-face, in real time.”

• “One major block to social engagement is anger…. As former US senator Alan Simpson says, ‘Hatred corrodes the container in which it is carried’.”

• “Remember that the world is changing, and those changes are at odds with your accumulated experience. Force yourself to update, to keep current with changes in the world.”

• “Remember also that pain is physical and informed by our senses, yet it is also influenced by emotional and cultural factors. A negative emotional state can lead to increased pain, and an otherwise painful sensation can be interpreted as positive, such as soreness after exercise.”

• “Practice gratitude for what you have.”

Appendix: Rejuvenating your brain:

1. Don’t retire. Don’t stop being engaged with meaningful work.
2. Look forward. Don’t look back.
3. Exercise. Get your heart rate going. Preferably in nature.
4. Embrace a moderate lifestyle with healthy practices.
5. Keep your social circle exciting and new.
6. Spend time with people younger than you.
7. See your doctor regularly, but not obsessively.
8. Don’t think of yourself as old.
9. Appreciate your cognitive strengths - pattern recognition, crystallized intelligence, wisdom, accumulated knowledge.
10. Promote cognitive health through experiential learning: travelling, spending time with grandchildren, and immersing yourself in new activities and situations. DO NEW THINGS!

5/5.