Healthy Aging Requires Healthy Attitudes

Sept. 14, 2004 -- Does being happy keep you healthy? Conventional medical wisdom has taught us that patients with positive outlooks tend to cope better and heal faster than those with negative attitudes. Now, two new studies are providing further evidence that attitude is everything, especially when it comes to healthy aging.

In the first study, Glenn V. Ostir, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, questioned whether good psychological health could influence the onset of frailty in older adults.

The researchers followed 1,600 initially nonfrail Mexican-Americans aged 65 and older for a period of seven years. They assessed the positive attitudes of the elderly participants routinely as they answered questions regarding how they felt in the previous week.

They answered questions regarding whether or not they were hopeful about the future, if they were happy, if they enjoyed life, and how they compared themselves with others (for example, "I felt that I was just as good as other people.").

At the start of the study and at two, five, and seven years follow-up, the researchers measured how frail the elderly became. Based on a 4-point scoring scale they looked at the seniors'  walking speed, hand grip, weight loss, and exhaustion level.

Although the incidence of frailty increased among the whole group, the team discovered that the patients who exhibited more positive emotions were significantly less likely to become frail. For example, every point increase in a senior's positive effect score at the start of the study was associated with a 3% decreased risk of frailty.

Positive Attitude Effects All Age Groups

The exact reason for the outcome is unknown, but researchers theorize that positive emotions may impact the chemical and nerve responses governing the body's healthy balance. More research is needed.

A second study, conducted by North Carolina State University researcher Thomas Hess, PhD, and colleagues showed that negative stereotypes about aging have a profound impact on memory.

Their research involved 193 people. Experiments included both a younger (17-35 years old) and older (57-82 years old) group of players. For one experiment, participants received a deck of cards that contained either negative words associated with aging (cranky, feeble, senile, etc.) or positive stereotypes (accomplished, dignified, and knowledgeable, etc.). The deck also used words without aging implications such as dolphin, prices, and high. The two groups were told to construct sentences. Afterwards, they completed a memory test, recalling a list of words clustered in group categories.

The researchers found that when older adults were exposed to the negative-stereotypes deck of cards they had a harder time remembering the words. Memory performance was better when the seniors were first primed with the positive-stereotypes words.

Moreover, the researchers found that positive stereotypes seems to combat age-related differences in memory; both younger and older adults presented with the more appealing words performed almost identically.

The authors conclude that blatant age-related stereotypes can negatively affect memory performance in older adults and emphasize that treating older people as competent and productive adults actually helps them perform that way.

Both studies are published in the September issue of Psychology and Aging.