We get a lot of conflicting advice about aging these days. It seems like there’s always some new study coming out about which foods help you to stay young or some new beauty treatment that we all know will probably offer limited success. But, going back further in time people had quite different views on growing old and even at what age one became “old”. There are a lot of adages and old wives’ tales that most of us grew up hearing a lot, but we’ve always wondered if they could actually be real. So here is the truth about 5 old wives’ tales on aging.
You’re Only As Young As You Feel
It might surprise you to discover that this saying is actually mostly true. While we cannot will ourselves to be 20 years younger, the people who stay active, grateful, and joyous about life into old age tend to have better overall health and better outcomes from adverse health events.
It turns out that daily practices like mindfulness, gratitude, and self-care can have measurable impacts on blood pressure, healing from injury, and can even alter telomeres, the “ends” of DNA strands that affect aging. There is also evidence that being treated as if one is younger can also increase measures of health and cognition, despite being of advanced age. All these data points show us that how you think of your age and of growing older can create positive changes in the body.