How Your Beliefs About Aging Impact Your Health
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Changing the way we think and talk about aging has always been one of the core missions of Pure Joy Wellness. I’d go as far as to say it’s our founding principle. So when I came across Dr. Becca Levy, and her book Breaking The Age Code, I was instantly drawn to her work and her research—and needless to say, I devoured this book quickly.
Dr. Levy is a Professor of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and Professor of Psychology at Yale University, and she is a leading researcher in the fields of social gerontology and psychology of aging. Her book Breaking The Age Code revolves around “age beliefs”—which are what they sound like, beliefs about aging. Specifically she looks at how our views about aging impact our lives, including how long and how well we live them. Her work is a clear demonstration of the mind-body connection at work. How we think about aging, and ourselves in relation to aging, can actually affect our bodies in tangible, and not always positive, ways.
After reading her book, I knew I wanted to bring Dr. Levy into the fold and feature her on the blog, so I could share her findings and modes of thinking with all of you. Read on to learn more about age beliefs and how you can change yours to improve your life!
Dr. Levy, thank you for chatting with me today and being our featured expert! I have a lot of questions, probably too many for the time we have, but my first is around ageism. What is ageism? How do you define it?
The definition of ageism I tend to use comes from Robert Butler, who was a physician, gerontologist, psychiatrist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning activist. He was also the first director of the National Institute on Aging. He actually coined the term “ageism.”
Butler defines ageism as “a process of systematic stereotyping and discrimination against people because they are old.” He came up with that definition when he observed ageism in a housing complex near where he lived in D.C. He noticed there was a systematic exclusion of older people—they were not being given the opportunity to live in the housing complex, because the residents there decided they didn’t want older people moving in. He wanted to come up with a term that paralleled racism and sexism because he felt that the exclusion based on race had parallels to the exclusion of opportunities based on sex or gender or race.
And what about age beliefs? Your book centers around this term, so I would love to have you explain it to us from your perspective.
Age beliefs are beliefs about older people in general. They can include both negative beliefs about aging and positive beliefs. Unfortunately, in our culture, negative age beliefs are often more prevalent, but the good news is that most people are aware of the positive age beliefs as well.
What are some examples of age beliefs? Positive and negative ones?
One of the most common negative beliefs is that all older people inevitably lose cognition. Or, you know, that people lose cognition later in life. But many of the negative beliefs we know are false. So when I was writing my book, one of the things I enjoyed doing was I came up with 14 of the most common negative age beliefs, and then I looked into the research of whether or not they are true. For every one of the 14 beliefs, there is evidence that they’re false. Some of that evidence is based on my research, and something that was enlightening for me, as I looked into these beliefs, was that oftentimes not only were they false, but there is some kind of strength with aging that is associated with what the belief is.
For example, let’s take the idea that all people lose cognition later in life, and that people sort of inevitably show cognitive decline. In my research, we have been able to show that when we activate positive age beliefs, we can improve memory in later life, so we know that memory can be improved. We also know that there are types of memory skills that actually get better in later life.
That’s so fascinating to me—so I want to backtrack for a second. How did you come upon this work, why aging specifically? How did you get to this place where you were doing this research and writing this book?
Yes actually, so when I was in graduate school I got a fellowship from the National Science Fund to go to Japan and study aging. My goal was to try to understand why people in Japan have the longest lifespan in the world, and when I went, the first thing I noticed was how differently older people seem to be treated in Japan, compared to what I had observed in the U.S. In Japan, there tends to be a sort of celebration of getting older. They have television shows that feature centenarians (people over 100) and supercentenarians (people over 110). They’re almost treated like rock stars in popular culture. And families honor older members in a number of different ways, and that really impressed me. I started to wonder whether it’s possible that the reason they have the longest lifespan is because of how they celebrate aging and because of the positive age beliefs in their culture—so that sort of prompted a question that led to the research that ultimately inspired my book.
What are some other common negative age beliefs that you’ve encountered? Is there any evidence behind them?
Besides cognitive decline, there’s a belief that older people don’t contribute to society. But again if you look at the research, there can be an increase in generativity as people get older. There are a lot of statistics that show that older adults tend to be more likely to recycle, contribute to nonprofits, and more.
Where do you think negative age beliefs come from?
There are a lot of sources of it—a lot of these beliefs come from media, social media, and advertisements. Children are often exposed to a lot of negative images and marketing around aging, even in the school system. I had a few people write to me recently about their kids “100 Day” celebration at school, where they mark kids being in school for 100 days. The kids are encouraged to dress up like older people and kind of make fun of older people. In my book, I have a blueprint for overcoming structural ageism. It suggests that if we come up with preventative measures or promote positive aging, starting at a young age, that could have some long-term benefits for those individuals and for society.
What do you think the impact of age beliefs are on aging health? For instance, is there a direct correlation between what I think about aging and my health?
Yes. Absolutely. A lot of my research looks into that question. It’s very possible for the age beliefs that we take in from culture to have an impact on our health. I’ve conducted experimental studies, and randomly assigned people to be exposed to different types of age beliefs so I could look at before and after and see whether there are changes in different kinds of outcomes. I’ve also done cross-cultural studies where I compare cultures that hold different types of age beliefs, and look to see whether the cultures that have more age positive beliefs, whether they show advantages on different kinds of health outcomes. I’ve also done longitudinal studies that follow people over time so we can see their health outcomes over decades and look at them in relation to their age beliefs. So with all of those methodologies, there's this consistent finding that those who take in more positive beliefs tend to show health advantages, and those who take in more negative age beliefs tend to experience harmful impacts on their health. And we've looked at different types of impacts—some outcomes are cognitive, some are more physical, and some are more behavioral and mental health.
Wow, so are you seeing people who develop chronic disease or pain, and that seems to be correlated to their aging beliefs?
Yes. We actually have a paper coming out soon that looks at chronic pain as an outcome. We’ve look at cardiovascular events, Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers, mental health outcomes like depression and anxiety, and longevity in general.
One of the first studies that I did after I got back from Japan was just try to see if the hypothesis I had held up. I conducted a study looking at a group of people in the town of Oxford, Ohio. Some researchers, a couple of decades ago, had asked participants about their age beliefs when they started in the study 15 years prior. I was able to get involved in the study a couple of decades later and was able to match those original age beliefs to survival information. There’s something called the National Death Index, which keeps track of when people die, and I was able to match those original age beliefs to people’s longevity. What I found was that those who had reported more positive age beliefs when the study began have on average a seven and a half year survival advantage over those who had taken in negative age beliefs.
Seven and a half years?! We can live seven and a half years longer because of our mindset?
Yea! I didn’t anticipate that it would have that much of an impact. But it does.
Okay, so what can we do to change our aging beliefs, if we have negative ones?
In my book, I talk about something called the ABC method for strengthening positive age beliefs and overcoming negative ones. It’s an evidence-based set of tools that anyone can carry out. The A stands for “awareness”—specifically increasing our awareness, because we know that age beliefs can often operate without our awareness. That’s one of the reasons why they are so powerful, because they can operate implicitly, without our awareness. So for example, if you’re watching TV or an advertisement, you may be exposed to negative beliefs and not even realize it or question them. So the first step is increasing awareness of our own age beliefs and those in society. This includes becoming more aware of the positive age beliefs. The B is for “blame”—which means not necessarily placing blame on an individual for health problems later in life. We need to think about whether an external, modifiable source contributed to the problem, like ageism. So the second step is to think about the cause of different challenges related to age. And the third letter C is for “challenge”—challenging the negative age beliefs once you’re aware of them.
What’s an example of challenging these beliefs? How do we do that?
Well, there’s the individual level, where you challenge yourself, but also an external level that involves challenging others. In my book, I take 14 common negative age beliefs and provide what I consider the ammunition to overcome them gracefully. There is science that shows why each of those negative beliefs is false, and then I often identify a strength that’s associated with that area.
So that’s one way someone could challenge a negative age belief. If you’re in a conversation and someone says something that kind of dismisses someone because of their age, you can cite research that shows why that belief is false. There is a ton of evidence to show the strengths and value of older people and that can be brought to the table through discussion. It doesn’t have to be an immediate reaction—I don’t always have a great response when I hear something that bothers me. You can always go back to a conversation and think about why it bothered you, and go back to that person and say hey, the comment you made about this, it sounded like a dismissal of older people, and you may not know about this research that shows that older people actually have XYZ strengths, etc. So that’s on an individual level, but in my book I also talk about how we can think about age as a liberation movement, to overcome ageism in the same way that we’ve seen other marginalized groups rise up and try to challenge some of the discrimination they face.
And it sounds like there’s an even deeper internal level of questioning, if we ourselves have negative age beliefs.
Do you think we should use the same evidence to challenge why we harbor negative age beliefs about ourselves?
Yea, I like that, it can really work in both ways, and I think they’re both necessary. The ideal would be that we eliminate negative age beliefs and discrimination towards people because of their age, so there wouldn’t be a need for the individual to question their own beliefs and overcome them, but I think it may take a while before we get to that point. Until then, both levels are important, as you said, the internal and external processes of trying to become aware of our beliefs and then overcoming them.
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I want to send a HUGE shoutout and thank you to Dr. Becca Levy for taking the time to talk to me about her research and all of the strategies she has for improving our age beliefs. As she said, our age beliefs have a serious impact on our overall health, so it’s absolutely crucial that if we have negative ones, that we become aware of them and challenge them. (Plus, Dr. Levy said that the positive impact of changing your age beliefs is immediate!)
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Xo,
Renata