Super Ager. Elise Marie Collins

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      The Outside-the-Box Research of Elaine Langer

      In 1981, Harvard psychology professor Elaine Langer brought a group of men in their seventies to a location that was staged to give them the illusion that it was actually 1959. Everything was made to look like as though it was that year. Mirrors were removed, so the men could not see themselves. The vintage radio played Perry Como; on TV, the men watched the Ed Sullivan Show. They were told not to reminisce, but to act is if it was 1959. A control group was also brought to the same location, but those men were given no special treatment. Langer also made sure the men were treated as though they were twenty years younger. Before being told that they were in charge of bringing their suitcases upstairs, the men were tested on grip strength, physical dexterity, and flexibility, as well as hearing, vision, memory, and cognition. After a weekend time-warp get away, the men were stronger, more flexible, and taller. Even their vision had slightly improved. And those that witnessed the men leaving the retreat reported that they somehow appeared younger. Elaine Langer never published her research because she believed her unconventional study would have been rejected by journals, especially in 1981. “You have to appreciate, people weren’t talking about mind-body medicine,” she said. Yet her work has now become legendary. She has led many fascinating and groundbreaking studies in mindset, including one that compared adults in nursing homes. One group was given a houseplant to take care of, and told they would be in charge of their own schedule. The control group was told that staff would be taking care of their plants, and that they had no say in their daily schedules. A year and a half later, twice as many people in the plant caring group were alive. In 2010. A BBC TV show called The Young Ones did a remake on Langer’s 1981 experiment with six aging British celebrities. She consulted on the project. Set in 1975, this group time-traveled to see shag carpets and kitschy art. The show aired in four episodes, and concluded with the six celebrities appearing remarkably revitalized. One even got rid of a wheelchair and swapped it for a cane. The show won a British Emmy. Jeffrey Redigar, MD, a professor at Harvard Medical School, said of Langer: “She’s one of the people at Harvard who really gets it. That health and illness are much more rooted in our minds and hearts and how we experience ourselves in the world than our model even begins to understand.”

      The Telomere Effect

      Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, and Elissa Epel, PhD, led a groundbreaking study on women, stress, and aging. Their study examined mothers who were caregivers to children with serious chronic health issues. The results painted a vivid picture of the connection between chronic stress and the length of their telomeres (a known marker of aging). The longer the moms had been caregiving, and therefore chronically stressed, the shorter their telomeres. In addition, if subjects perceived a greater level of stress, regardless of the actual stressor, the mothers’ perception was related to the length of their telomeres. This deeply humanizing research carried out by Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, and Elissa Epel, PhD, was also a part of their excellent book, The Telomere Effect. No one had ever done research on the chronically stressed, and especially on caregivers such as moms who had very ill or disabled children. The research, not surprisingly indicated a strong correlation between stress and aging. Blackburn and Epel discovered more: they found that some moms were more resilient to the chronic stress of caregiving. It seems that these parents had framed their reactions in a “challenge response,” rather than a stress response. In a stress response, one feels hopeless. In a challenge response, the existing situation or condition is seen as a temporary setback. These mothers reacted with what is known as a challenge response and showed that people have the power to impact our telomeres even when under stress.

      Another study looked at caregivers of relatives with dementia. Those caregivers that meditated for twelve minutes a day for two months, compared to a control group who did not meditate had a 43 percent boost in telomerase. “I have the power to impact my telomeres and I also have the power to impact yours,” said the Nobel Prize-winning Blackburn. The power of the mind and our interconnectedness is part of the aging process. Learning how we can skillfully harness our thoughts and perceptions on stress affects our health and how we age.

      Many studies have shown that negative age stereotypes also have an adverse effect on health. Subliminal exposure to negative age stereotypes affect memory, handwriting skills, and gait. A 2016 study showed that older adults with “negative age stereotypes had greater loss in hippocampal volume and other higher predictive biomarkers for Alzheimer’s.” Another study showed that intervening and shifting negative age-related stereotypes to more positive stereotypes initiated a cascade of positive effects including improved physical function.

      Dancing the Cha Cha

      If it was that easy to be positive everyone would be doing it. If life is a dance, it is like the Cha Cha. Sometimes we take two steps forward and one step back. You can focus on the back steps, or any missteps, or stay intent on the dance itself. Sometimes in life things get “worse”: you may miss a step, have a setback or illness, or lose someone you love. As in a dance, you could fall or accidentally trip our partners. Positivity is not about pretending that none of these things happened or not feeling the feelings around what happened. Positivity is about continuing to dance and looking for the good in each moment. It will be harder in life than in a dance, yet research and common sense suggest a resilient outlook will help you age well. I call it “seeing the world through mindful rose-colored glasses.”

      Rare Bird

      American businesswoman, designer, and fashion icon Iris Apfel, ninety-six, also worked as a textile designer who specialized in historical restoration design projects including working at the White House under nine Presidents from Truman to Clinton. Age never, ever stopped her terrific sense of style and in 2005, the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art did a show about her, titled, “Rare Bird: The Irreverent Iris Apfel.” A great success, the show made Iris a fashion icon at age eighty-four. When she turned ninety, MAC launched the Iris Apfel collection, “I am the oldest broad with a makeup line,” she quipped. She has over 828,000 followers on Instagram, and she fights to proclaim a new paradigm of aging. “When they show ads about retiring, they always show these feeble people paddling canoes, playing golf, and jumping up and down on tennis courts. It’s so ridiculous. There’s lots of other things to do. You have to keep your mind active and get with it. And stay in the company of young people because they know what’s going on, at least they think they do.”

      Science of Gratitude

      Many studies on gratitude have shown both the positive psychological and the physical benefits as well. Robert A. Emmons, from the University of California at Davis conducted a study on gratitude in which the participants were given the task of keeping a journal. They were divided into three groups: one that had to write five positive things that happened to them in the past week, another that had to write negative experiences and hassles that occurred to them, and a third which was told to journal any event that had a significant impact on them, without being told to focus on positive or negative circumstances. The group that journaled positive things that happened during the study was reportedly 25 percent happier than the other two groups, and reported fewer health problems. Another really important finding by Philip Watkins, a clinical psychologist at Eastern Washington University, found a correlation between depression and low gratitude levels. According to this study, clinically depressed patients showed 50 percent lower levels of gratitude than a control group. In his book, Aging Well, George Vaillant states that “those who have aged most successfully are those who worry less about cholesterol and waistlines, and more about gratitude and forgiveness.”

      Gratitude has been shown to balance heart rhythms and calm the nervous system. In a study with the HeartMath Institute and the US Postgraduate Naval School in California, gratitude was shown to increase levels of the anti-aging compound DHEA, a steroid produced by the adrenal glands.

      Practice Tip

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