Part One presents the scientific background that motivates taking an entirely new approach to aging. This approach, combining the science of individual differences and developmental neuroscience, emphasizes strengths and compensatory mechanisms rather than the loss of abilities. We’ve seen how things work, from personality and intelligence to the experience of emotions and pain. In Part Two we’ll look at a few specific behaviors that we can modify so that aging is as enjoyable as it can be—perhaps becoming the best part of your life. The modifications are not all that difficult to implement.
Ultimately, we all die. The question is, What do we want those final years to look like? In some cases, we see older adults whose minds are decaying and who live for years without being engaged in life, without an awareness of where they are, while their hearts, lungs, kidneys, and livers continue chugging along. One of my aunts, my mother’s older sister, is like that—as I write this, she is ninety-two and no one has had a meaningful conversation with her in fifteen years. She’s alive, her organ systems are functioning properly, but she has none of the joys or awareness that we associate with “having a life.” She is firmly in the disease span part of her life, not the health span.
In other cases, older adults with active minds begin to see their bodies decay, and it feels like having a rug pulled out from under them. Yet this is the scenario many would prefer. In either case, your body is going to go at some point. It will fail and the big light will go out. The question is, Will your mind be intact at that moment, or will you have been consigned to the dreary mental life of my aunt?
One factor that has received relatively little attention in the popular press is the chronobiology of health, the set of internal clocks that regulate the various cycles of attention, energy, restoration, and repair that our brains and bodies go through. That’s where we’ll begin. The normal and synchronized functioning of these clocks plays a greater critical role in health and disease, alertness and dementia, than has been previously recognized. When they are not functioning properly, neurons degenerate; cell metabolism is compromised; the body’s normal systems of cellular repair and the daily repair of DNA damage are disrupted. Faulty or misaligned internal clocks are significant contributing factors in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington’s disease, and in depression, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. With that as a foundation, we’ll visit important practical things you can do to make the most out of three basic biological processes: diet, movement, and sleep.