11:21 AM PDT on Monday, October 6, 2003

By Karen Patterson / The Dallas Morning News

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," John Keats wrote almost two centuries ago. Today, he'd probably say that beauty is youth.

And – in age-obsessed America – there would still be truth in that. Scholars may scoff. The immortals of legend can shake their heads. But billions of dollars spent each year, to try to defy time itself, testify that in 21st-century America, aging is a dirty word.

"Talk about the hubris of youth," says Dr. Michael Lichtenstein, a San Antonio researcher. "You can fight it all you want, but you're still going to get older."

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Moreover, some research is suggesting that negative attitudes about aging may actually amplify the ills that can accompany aging.

"The visions we carry around of ourselves and what it means to be older certainly affect how we age," notes Thomas R. Cole, a professor of medical humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

But that vision hasn't always been an unpleasant one.

Older and wiser

Once upon a time, when people lied about their age, they would add years, not subtract them.

In the early days of the American colonies, the Puritans – indomitable as they were – simply accepted the infirmity and dependence that can accompany old age, says Dr. Cole. "They emphasized spiritual growth as a compensation for, and an ideal in the face of, physical decline."

Before the American Revolution, people wore white wigs that made them look older. (In such a traditional, aristocratic society, old age conveyed authority, power and social continuity, Dr. Cole says.) And people often misrepresented their age on the plus side.

In the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution transformed the economy. People moved from farms to cities for work. When that sort of shift happens, "there is a de-skilling that goes on, so that the value of a craftsman doesn't really matter when you're in a factory and you need to turn the same tool to make the same widget," Dr. Cole says. "You need speed, you don't need finesse." You need youth, not wisdom and experience.

In the 20th century, with the emergence of an information-driven society, the trend accelerated. News flashed first on the radio, then television, now on the Internet and cellphones.

"The more people are focused on the here and now, the less valuable the past is," says Dr. Cole, "and the less valuable experience is."

An image problem

They say it's hell getting old.

But they could also say it's swell getting old.

It just depends on your outlook, notes Mary Gergen, a psychology professor at Penn State Delaware County.

She and her husband-colleague, Kenneth, a psychologist at Swarthmore College, prefer "a social constructionist" position – that is, that society itself creates the notions of "young" and "old."

"When we define social roles and how they are to be characterized, we have a lot of flexibility in how we do that," she says.

"We decided to see that cup as half full, or mostly full, rather than half empty."

The Gergens lament the many negative portrayals of aging in scientific literature. When researchers study aging, they tend to study decline, Dr. Gergen argues. "Just look in any table of contents and it's all about the problems," she says. "It's really very depressing."

It's no wonder that so many people refuse to say they're old.

Stepping livelier

One line of research may attest to the notion that you're as young as you feel. The research focuses on age stereotypes.

"Is it possible that the age stereotypes that exist in our society have an impact on older adults?" asks researcher Becca Levy, of Yale University. She and her colleagues have explored that question across cultures, in the lab and over time.

First they compared cultures with differing views of aging. They looked at mainland Chinese, Americans who are deaf and Americans who can hear. Young adults in the three groups performed similarly on memory tasks. But the memory performance of the older members of each group corresponded with its views of aging: The elder Chinese performed best, the American hearing group worst. The deaf group, known to have fairly positive views of aging (presumably because of its tight-knit, intergenerational culture) scored in the middle.

Still, it hadn't been established that cultural attitudes – and not some other factor, such as nutrition – were affecting the memory scores. So Dr. Levy's team devised a way to expose people to negative or positive aging stereotypes and measure any effects.

In one study, the researchers first measured the gait – walking speed and "swing time" (when a foot is in the air) – of some aged subjects. Then the subjects played a computer "game," one with "flashes" that were actually words presented so quickly that they could be read only subconsciously.

Seeing words such as senile, Alzheimer's or incompetent had little impact on the subjects' stride. But terms such as wise, accomplished and insightful literally put a spring in their step.

The researchers have also used the subliminal "game" with before-and-after tests of memory, cardiovascular response to stress and even quality of handwriting. While the patterns of results varied, each study suggested in essence that talking the talk affected how older people "walked."

Looking forward

An irony of research such as Dr. Levy's is this: By clinging to images of youth and abhorring images of old age, people may help consign themselves to a feeble, if not early, end.

So-called ageism is an oddity among prejudices. Race or gender is a fact of birth; old age is a product of fortune and time. Well before people are old, they embrace the stereotypes of age.

"We know from other research that the views of aging are influenced by culture and that they're internalized at a young age, as young as 3 or 4," notes Dr. Levy.

So people learn to dread and perhaps despise what – if they're lucky – they'll eventually become.

It's almost a self-fulfilling paradox, says Dr. Cole. "We try not to become this 'awful' thing called being old, instead of being able to imagine aging in a more positive way and trying to become it."

Underlying lessons

Some researchers are trying to nip ageism in youth's bud. They call their effort Stealth Gerontology.

Dr. Lichtenstein and his colleagues have worked with schoolteachers for a decade on how to blend lessons on aging with standard school curricula. To learn the concept of density, for instance, students in a science class would be taught about bone density. Then, in health class, they would learn about maintaining sturdy bones.

The scientists began the work to "bust some stereotypes," says Dr. Lichtenstein, of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

When children envision the aged, their minds tend to draw pictures of physical qualities. Wrinkles. Balding. Stooping. Frailty.

But if asked how they themselves will age, the children don't see poor health on the horizon. "They haven't thought that far ahead," Dr. Lichtenstein says. "And they rarely associate diseases as causing the kinds of problems they observe in older people. They don't say this could be due to diabetes or this could be due to osteoporosis."

By creating their clandestine curriculum, called Positively Aging, the San Antonio researchers hope to foster sensitivity toward older people. They hope to improve science and math instruction. And they hope to teach children how to eat better, how to be active and healthy – how to give themselves a better chance.

"Just because you've reached a certain point chronologically doesn't mean you're going to have the characteristics that people stereotypically associate with getting older," Dr. Lichtenstein says.

Picture this

To test the curriculum, the scientists had students at two local middle schools draw real pictures representing old age.

The drawings were labeled according to whether they portrayed aging positively, negatively or neutrally. Then some of the teachers at one school, specially trained in the test curriculum, put the Positively Aging lessons into action. At the end of the school year, children were again asked to draw pictures of the aged.

After taking into account the students' grade level, ethnicity, household income and other relevant factors, children at the school with the stealth lessons were about 11/2 times as likely to draw positive or neutral pictures of old people as were students at the other school.

As a physician trained in epidemiology, Dr. Lichtenstein has found the work to be an eye-opener. "It's taken me into areas of research and thinking about problems that are not traditional for a medically trained person," he says, including how to get very young people to think about living long and to take actions early to help ensure that.

Meaning, not muscle

But enough about physical health, says Dr. Cole. Let's get spiritual.

Of course he supports being active and healthy as one ages. Nevertheless, he says, the notion of "successful aging" overemphasizes the physical. It implies that people who are old but not vigorous are failures. It leaves society more inclined to judge – and less likely to help – those who are aged and ailing. We may even hold our own ill health against ourselves.

Successful aging, Dr. Cole charges, also sidesteps some key issues of what it means to be human.

"It evades things that religious cultures always understood," he says. "The inner life can expand or grow ... as the body becomes more frail."

Inner growth should include a quest for connections that transcend ourselves – "that give meaning to who and what we are," Dr. Cole says. God. Love. Family. Nature.

"If we can't do that, we're trapped in a self-absorbed, narcissistic lifestyle," he says. "So we end up playing mah-jongg and golf and maybe being physically healthy, but certainly not being existentially fulfilled and living lives that continually matter."

And ultimately, he says, death is always part of the deal. "We need to prepare for death, think through how it should happen, what we want to be, what our legacy is – and not just fight it at all costs."

Life: It all adds up

Those who hate getting old should consider the alternative. Anyone who is forever young typically has that tender age chiseled on a tombstone.

Living, on the other hand, is a cumulative process, says Dr. Gergen, who with her husband produces an electronic publication called The Positive Aging Newsletter. "You don't lose anything when you get older, you just add. So you can recall yourself and be a 12-year-old or a 5-year-old, all the ways you've learned to be previously in the world."

And aging has other compensations. "Between 60 and 80 you can lose very little and in certain ways gain intellectually," Dr. Gergen says. While you may yield some speed, say, in performing calculations, you have gained in "understanding options, being open to multiple interpretations – things that you would call wisdom."

One important bit of wisdom is acceptance. "Do you ask an acorn if it wants to become an oak tree? No," says Dr. Cole. "It's in the nature of things. So why do we think we should want to stay adolescents or eternally middle-aged?

"Living with the flow of time is really a central part of being human."

Survival skills

Embracing the flow of time may have other payoffs. In some of their most recent work, Yale's Dr. Levy and her colleagues have found that having a positive image about aging could add years to one's life.

The study, published in August in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examined aging attitudes and death records over two decades for 660 Ohio townspeople. The subjects, 50 and older, had been asked to agree or disagree with statements such as, "Things keep getting worse as I get older."

Among those who viewed aging negatively, median survival rate – the point at which half the group had died – was 71/2 years shorter than it was for those with a positive outlook. Even after adjusting for subjects' age, sex, health, wealth and degree of loneliness, positive perceptions of aging remained linked to a longer life span.

The scientists further evaluated whether people's will to live (as defined by whether they saw life after retirement as more hopeless or hopeful, for example) played a role. In fact, will to live accounted for just part of the longevity differences.

Retirement can leave men especially vulnerable to estrangement from the world and alienation from themselves, Dr. Cole warns. "They're 'good for nothing' – their identities are built around work and productivity and not around the personal experience of being alive in the world and connected."

Devising programs to teach people to adapt is crucial, says Dr. Lichtenstein. "I don't think I've met a single person in his 80s or 90s who hasn't overcome some kind of problems or hardships in their lives and had to figure out some way to come to terms with it."

American independence

Living with and loving your elders – and, good heavens, cavorting with them – may be one way to defuse the ticking time bomb. If aging is the enemy, know the aged.

Half a century ago, with the postwar housing boom, America moved away from intergenerational families. Until then, historically, most people probably wanted separate households but couldn't manage the expense, Dr. Cole says.

Not that there isn't ageism in other parts of the world, he says, but its severity is uniquely American. Since the early 1800s, U.S. society has placed great importance on self-reliance. "We're terrified that we might not be self-reliant," he says. And many senior citizens prefer to segregate themselves.

"We have a kind of hyper-independence. We have the freedom but also the burdens that come along with that independence."

Late-life harvest

The 1970s brought the first organized assault on the stereotyping of, and discrimination against, the aged. Today, activism continues.

Just this summer, senior Hollywood actors and writers teamed up with the AARP and others to support a California lawmaker's effort to fight ageism. The vision: to promote "age equity" in the media, to teach geriatrics in the schools, and to improve services for the state's aging population.

This backlash, however, is not just about age stereotypes. "What we're finding is a new awareness of the importance of creativity and spiritual growth in older life, and of the idea that people can become elders, not just old people," Dr. Cole says. "Elders in the sense of people who are committed to harvesting what they've learned in life and being able to make a difference in the world with it."

This movement, he adds, "is a very deep current. And it has potential for a transformation of our society."

Article courtesy of The Dallas Morning News