Stereotypes of Aging: The Impact on Your Heart Health

Want to reduce your risk of a heart attack? Without going to the doctor, change your mindset about getting older. This little article in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday piqued my interest and got me looking further into the mindset about ageism. Quoted in the article is Dr. Becca Levy, an epidemiologist at Yale who's been publishing on ageism since 2006 with 95 publications. And I focused on a 2009 study about changing your attitude about getting older when you're younger. And it turns out you live about seven and a half years longer. Deborah Whitman, the author of the article, talks about a quick self-test. Write down the first five words that come to mind to you when you think about an older person. I am an older person, so my list is much more positive than it probably was when I was in my 30s and 40s. If your list has negative words like decrepit, declined, dementia, confused, then you've bought into a narrative about ageism. And researchers looking at ageism attitudes plant those subliminal words in your mind to see the reaction that you have to them. However, if your list contains words such as learned or sage or wise, you might just be an older person like me. But I heard a physician who was 80 years old give a talk at Integrus Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City about 10 years ago. And the title of his talk was Sageism, Not Ageism. Dr. Levy went to Japan to study the attitudes about aging in that country. And in Japan, people look forward to getting older. It's like a respectful thing. And of course, the Japanese have the longest lifespan on earth. Here's Dr. Levy's study about age stereotypes earlier in life and how that affects you later in life. And a couple of graphs from her research. In this cohort study, Dr. Levy looked at data from almost 400 adults for inclusion criteria and followed them for 38 years regarding their age stereotype beliefs and their cardiovascular health. Here are the key points from that study. The people in that study who had negative age stereotypes had a 25% chance of a cardiovascular event over 30 years. And the ones with positive stereotypes had a cardiovascular event risk of 13% over 30 years. The impact is striking. For every one point increase in negative stereotypes, the risk of a cardiovascular event jumped 11%. And if a person became more positive by two standard deviations, their cardiovascular event risk dropped 80%. They even looked at people under the age of 40 who later in life after the age of 60 had cardiovascular events and their negative stereotypes came back to haunt them 20 to 30 years later. On average, having a positive mindset for getting older will keep you alive seven and a half years longer. In another research paper, Dr. Levy found that subjects who had a positive outlook about aging lived 7.5 years longer. So cultivating a positive attitude for getting older doesn't just improve your mood, it probably improves your heart health. So the next time you think I'm too old to be doing this, think twice. Your longevity and your heart may thank you for it. Have a great day and I'll talk to you later. Bye.