Aging Successfully Yes You Can!

by Ruben Castaneda

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F YOU WANT to see what successful aging looks like, take a look at how Larry Gondelman and Pamela Roddy are doing. At age 70, Gondelman, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., attends dozens of concerts a year, from hip-hop to rock and every genre in between. He teaches classes on topics such as the history of rock and roll and tales of songwriters and their works through an organization that offers continuing education classes for seniors. He’s also the “supreme commissioner” of a rigorous weekly pickup full-court basketball game that’s well into its fourth decade. Gondelman competes with law school friends he’s known for more than 40 years as well as some of their sons. While still active at the law firm, Gondelman’s no longer in the daily grind. He works on bigpicture issues, helping with strategy and ethical questions. “It’s the best,” Gondelman says of this stage of his life. “Every day there’s something exciting to do.” Roddy, of Bethesda, Maryland, feels equally enthusiastic. Now 82, she stopped working at age 75, after a long career that started in academia, moved to private scientific research and ended with the federal government, where she worked as an administrator. Now, she plays tennis up to three times a week, takes online Zumba classes, lifts weights at home and is learning to play pickleball. She’s in several book clubs and takes three to four 90-minute continuing education classes a week, on literature, history and economics. Roddy also volunteers at Maryland Responds, helping manage distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and testing programs.

“I’m very happy,” Roddy says. “Retirement has enabled me to more fully enjoy my husband, Jim, my children and grandchildren and many friends. I continue to experience the mental and physical toll from taking care of sick and dying loved ones. However, this toll is partially offset by the knowledge that I am doing the best I can – and the luck of continued good health.”

Increased life expectancy. Gondelman and Roddy are examples of what gerontology experts would call successful aging. Thanks to investments over time in public health, medical care and education, life spans in the developed world have increased dramatically in the past 12 decades, says Dr. Linda Fried, dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She’s also the director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center.

In 1900, the average life expectancy for men and women in the U.S. was 47 years, she says. As of the first half of 2020, average life expectancy was nearly 78 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Life expectancy was 80.5 years for women and 75 years for men.

The idea that living longer necessarily means enduring significant declines in health has changed in the last two decades, Fried says. “In the last 20 years, public health scientists have shown it’s possible to live a long life with health,” she says. “It’s possible to increase your health span as long as your life span. Some decline in health and function is inevitable. But the image that older life is about decrepitude turns out not to be right.”

While some physical and mental slowdown is to be expected with advancing age, research suggests such degradation isn’t as severe as previously thought, says Jennifer Ailshire, an associate professor of gerontology with the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California. The expectation used to be that the course of a person’s life would resemble a graphic in which a person climbs up a set of stairs, gaining in abilities, then hits a peak somewhere before or around middle age. That would be followed by a steady downward spiral in physiological and physical abilities. That belief is outdated. “It’s a paradigm shift that’s happened maybe in the last 10 years,” she says. Many baby boomers – people born between 1946 and 1964 – are maintaining good fitness and high levels of cognitive health as they are aging, she says.

This change in expectations about what older life looks like is occurring as the population is rapidly aging. There are about 74 million baby boomers in the U.S. By 2030, all baby boomers will be 65 years or older, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That year, for the first time, seniors will outnumber children in the U.S., bureau demographers project.

Defining success. In their 1998 book “Successful Aging,” Dr. John W. Rowe and Robert L. Kahn provide a definition of what that entails, which many experts in gerontology still refer to as a benchmark. Rowe and Kahn define successful aging as: being free of disease or disability, maintaining high physical and cognitive abilities, and interacting with others in meaningful ways.

That doesn’t mean that people who are disabled, homebound, have cognitive deficits or are suffering from chronic and potentially terminal illnesses like cancer or diabetes are “failures,” says Harry “Rick” Moody, a visiting faculty member at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California. Moody has spent decades working in the field of gerontology, and wrote a textbook on the topic.

“No matter what your situation, there are op-

portunities for living a meaningful and positive life,” he says. “We should avoid putting people in categories that make it sound like their lives are a ‘failure.’” It’s important to keep in mind that aging successfully doesn’t mean you start jumping out of airplanes or bungee jumping in your later years, Moody says. “It doesn’t mean you have all the skills and abilities you had when you were younger,” he explains. “As you get older your memory and hearing will likely get worse. Declinations will happen, but you can compensate. For example, I wear hearing aids.” Moody is 77. “If you compensate, you’ll age successfully. If you don’t, you won’t age successfully.”

Here are six strategies for aging successfully: 1. Don’t feel limited by age. If you’ve enjoyed certain activities throughout your life, continue them, Ailshire says. Depending on your physical abilities, you may have to make some adaptations. For example, if you love singles tennis but have a hard time covering the court by yourself now, switch to doubles. If you’ve always had fun dancing, don’t stop the music. “My grandmother would go out dancing into her 80s,” she says.

2. Keep learning and growing.

Adopting new skills and hobbies or developing “encore careers” can help people age successfully, Ailshire says. In particular, learning a new language or how to play a musical instrument can help you maintain your cognitive abilities, research suggests.

If you need to work for financial reasons, you might look for jobs that are challenging in new ways. For example, you might train for a post in a different department at your company, she says. Or, people who have worked a desk job might look for a caregiving role or something in the service industry. Some people develop an encore career in which they hope to use their skills to help make the world better, in fields like education, the environment, social services and the nonprofit arena. 3. Eat a healthy diet. As you get older, your metabolism naturally slows down. Moody recommends consuming more fruits and vegetables and fewer processed foods to maintain your physical and cognitive health. The Mediterranean diet (see Page 99), which emphasizes fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains, is an eating regimen that fits Moody’s recommendations, and is highly touted by many registered dietitians as a healthy and sustainable eating plan.

“Modestly reducing calories can make a difference because belly fat tends to increase with age,” Moody says. Keep an eye on your consumption of sugar, which can lead to weight gain and diabetes, and of salt, which is associated with high blood pressure. 4. Get some exercise. If you’re playing tennis, pickleball or even pickup hoops into your older years, great. If not, try walking and some weight training. “Dramatic and heroic exercise is not needed,” Moody says. “Whether you reach 10,000 steps

a day or not, make sure you get plenty of walking in each week. Introduce some forms of aerobic exercise, to the point of getting a rapid heartbeat and being out of breath.” It may be helpful to consult with a personal trainer who can tailor your exercise routine to your physical requirements and limits. It’s also important to pay attention to the risks of advancing age, like the possibility of falling. 5. Cultivate social connections. “As we grow older, it’s inevitable that old ties will fray,” Moody says. “People die, move away, get remarried, go in different directions. Adapting is what we need to do.” Besides staying in contact with the people already in your orbit, that means making new friends. “In particular, cultivate ties with other generations,” he says. “It’s not always easy, but essential. Move on from grieving the loss of what cannot be restored. Feed the opportunities for connection and look for unexpected The idea opportunities.” They can present themselves through volunteering, mentoring younger colleagues or that aging playing sports. Gondelman, for example, maintains friendships with younger assoequals ciates at his law firm, some of whom he met when he ran the firm’s summer associates program. He’d sometimes talk about music with them decrepitude and introduce them to bands they hadn’t heard of. He’s also friendly with players in his weekly basketball is obsolete. game who are decades younger. 6. Adapt to losses. Remember, experiencing some cognitive deficits and physical limitations are to be expected as you age, Moody says. There are lots of practical ways to compensate. For example, if your short-term memory isn’t as sharp as it once was, carry a notebook and write everything down. If your joints aren’t up to full-court basketball anymore, try half-court games. And always, get enough sleep, so you can be at your best cognitively and physically. “Adapting to losses doesn’t mean ducking your head or hiding out,” he says. “Creative strategies help. The great pianist Arthur Rubinstein, when he got old, used to deliberately slow down before a fast segment, in order to create the impression of playing faster.” l This article was written with the support of a journalism fellowship from The Gerontological Society of America, The Journalists Network on Generations and The John A. Hartford Foundation. Castaneda was one of 17 distinguished reporters across the country selected to participate in the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program in 2021.