S E25: Ep 25 – Ageing Well—How to Grow Old (Dis)Gracefully

We bring you the podcast weekly, giving you hints, tips, understanding of technical terms, all the things that we can do to help aid and improve your well being. That's my side of things. And over to my co host, the lovely Clare Elsby.

Thank you, Bob. I'm Claire Elsby. I've trained in positive psychology and I am a neurodiverse inclusive therapy coach.

And what I bring to the party really is an angle on mental wellbeing, whereas Bob's very much about the physical. So the two of us together, I know Bob doesn't like this word holistic, but that's exactly what we're doing.

It's not that I don't like the word holistic, I just think it's overused. I think when we use it as a definition, it's absolutely perfect to describe what we do. It's just everybody else. But anyways, back to the podcast.

So what we're going to talk to you about today is getting older happens to us all. But what you may not have looked at or may not have picked up on is the fact that there are definitions of what old is.

And my ambition, and I'm sure Claire's is as well, is to grow old as disgracefully as we can whilst maintaining our health along the way. So that's kind of going to be where we're going with this one.

It's a bit about, about getting older and a bit about how you can influence how well you age. So that'd be my side of things. And then Clare's going to talk more about how, how you can maintain your positive well being whilst doing that.

So without further ado, let us talk about old age. What is it or what happens as we get older? There are two aspects to age. There is the biological age and there is a chronological age.

Now we'll get the chronological age out of the way first because chronological age refers to the day that you were born and in my case it was 65 years ago. I cannot change my chronological age unless I get a time machine and go back in time. It's not going to happen.

A chronological age is fixed biological age. Now that is something that we can do something about. Your biological age can be different from your chronological age.

You can be younger than your chronological age or you can be older than your chronological age, depending on how you live your life and different aspects of your health and well being.

So factors that, that can affect your biological age include things like your diet, whether you exercise, whether you, whether you sleep well, whether you are stressed, whether you're a smoker. All of these things can affect your biological age.

Now the things that affect biological age, there's two kind of measures and they're both DNA genetic related. So the first one is that there are these things called telomeres that sit on the end of your chromosomes.

I'm not going to go into loads of stuff about how that works, but telomeres are an up and coming and growing science and they sit on the end of your chromosomes. And the shorter the telomere, the more prone you are to health related issues. It can include things like Parkinson's.

You're at higher risk of developing Parkinson's, higher risk of developing things like multiple sclerosis, neurodegenerative disease. The shorter the length of the telomeres, the more likely you are to on depend develop certain problems.

The good news about telomeres is that you can slow down the rate at which they are broken down by adapting those healthy things that I was talking about before, that's part of the DNA process. The other part is what they call DNA methylation. Now the study of DNA methylation is called epigenetics.

I'm throwing all the big words in now and then, and then we can leave them behind because thank you, not a problem. So if you really want to go and google them, feel free to do so.

So telomeres you know about shorter the telomere, the more of an impact it can have on your lifestyle and longevity. DNA methylation is a similar thing. So what happens is that we are born with a massive number of genes.

Now not all of those genes are expressed at the same time. And those genes can affect things like your immune system. They can affect different aspects of your health and well being.

Now as with telomeres, DNA methylation, the switching on and off of these, these genes is impacted, dictated by, by your lifestyle.

Now I know we harp on about this quite a lot and I know that you know that there are certain aspects of things that you can do that will help to maintain and improve your health. So those are things that you can do to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Don't smoke.

That can have a significant effect on DNA methylation and on the breakdown of telomeres. Get enough sleep, get enough exercise, look after your nutrition, look after your body powers of positive thinking.

All of these factors together can help you to live a long and healthy life, longer and healthier. I think that's kind of it in terms of getting older from a physical, muscle and joint aspect.

And I'll hand you over to Claire to talk a bit more about the mental health side of things.

Yeah, okay. So it's interesting that you said a longer and more healthy life.

So one of the things about positive psychology, what it's all about, is the concept of flourishing. And that's actually at any age. And there is a Japanese word or Japanese concept called ikigai.

And that word really means it's the reason why we get up in the morning. It's our raison d' etre in. In French. And it's our reason why. It's our way of being.

And the reason why, particularly in Japan, this is important, is because Okinawa in Japan was one of the first identified blue zones in the world. Now there are five blue zones. Why is this important? Because it's in these blue zones that people live to quite eld, you know, quite elderly ages.

So, you know, 80s, 90s, even centenarians, they have less chronic health diseases than in other places. They actually have a lot more vitality and mobility in other cultures.

And a great one for women is there's much more moderate menopause symptoms in these areas. It's been noticed. And the rate of dementia is well below the global average.

So what is so special about these particular blue zones and what can we learn from them? So Okinawa in Japan was the first one that was discovered. And then we have Sardinia in Italy, and specifically those two areas.

And so it's not the whole of Sardinia, it's a couple of areas, the provinces of Nuro and Ugliesta. Then there's Lo Melida in California, there's the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, and Icaria in Greece.

So all very different, very different cultures. Three of them are islands, so that might have something to do with it, but they're all very, very different.

And they are surrounded by what you would call normal health outcomes. But they're very different because the people who live there live a lot longer and a lot healthier. So what is common in those areas?

What can we learn from the blue zones? So one of the main things is there's a real sense of community. And particularly in Japan, in that Okinawa area, there is no real word for retirement.

So people don't sort of stop one day and leave their jobs. All they do is they change what they do. And it's all about the community. So the community in each of these areas was really strong.

So that was family, wider community and friends. And they're all incredibly supportive of each other.

And that's something that's been identified in each of these areas that makes a massive difference to how we feel. Diet. Bob mentioned, you know, healthy eating.

So their diets very common in that they ate a lot of vegetables, there was a lot of fiber in their diets. It was quite a low meat diet, wasn't no meat at all, but it was quite low meat. So quite a vegetarian diet.

But the key, especially in Okinawa and Japan, is they would only eat till they're 80% full.

So when you know what you like, when you've had a Sunday dinner or Christmas dinner or a big meal, you've gone out for a big meal afterwards, you feel very sort of lethargic and tired and whatever.

And that's really, in my head, that's because Bob will probably correct me, but that's because all my digestive organs are really busy and I just can't cope with anything else. So if you only eat 80% to 80% full, you still got more energy for the rest of your day. They actually have smaller plates as well.

It's deliberately smaller plates. Exercise isn't running a marathon, it isn't going to the gym every day, it isn't doing what we would class exercise in the West.

It's as Bob is a huge proponent of, it's all about movement.

Yep.

Gardening is huge. We talked about community. So when I say community, they actually have community gardens.

So I don't necessarily have their own garden, but they would have a shared community garden and then they are quite self sufficient in their area for what they grow. So everyone's involved in it.

Yeah. And talking of community, I mean, I guess our UK equivalent of that is allotments.

Yes.

Because my dad used to run, used to have an allotment and the community and the fact that everybody helps everybody else out, absolutely fantastic. And I know that he's, he really missed that when he just got a bit too old to maintain it and had to let it go.

But yeah, it just kind of feeds into that. Community is really, really important.

Yes. And the fact that you're, you know, you're providing healthy food and it's that, you know, you're there for the other people in your community.

You're serving your community alcohol. It's actually moderate alcohol, so maybe one to two glasses of wine a day, particularly in Italy.

But it was with meals and it was sociable, it wasn't at home on your own watching Netflix.

I don't know why you're looking at me when you say that.

I will just leave that there. I will just throw that one out there. But the overall one is having a purpose in life. It's that icky guy.

It's that having fulfillment, having something that you want to get out of bed for in the morning. And those things all combine.

So in positive psychology, it's very much about working out what's important to you, and then how can you find ways to work towards that, have more of that in your life. And also looking at the habits that you have that aren't necessarily helpful and then looking to correct or change those habits.

But it's all about small steps. So, yeah, that's my contribution. But there is a BBC program on this by Dan Buttine.

I don't think I can pronounce his name properly, but he's a National Geographic reporter and he brought all this to the public consciousness. And I think there's about five episodes. And then, interestingly, they tried to manufacture another one in America.

They've actually got this area bought in to do this. And they want to see when, you know, in five years time, are they.

Or 10 years time, are they gonna see noticeable health differences in that population compared to the population behind them?

Potentially, yeah. I mean, just to reinforce what you were saying, Claire, you know, in the uk, well, first thing is retirement is an artificial concept.

And I think it was Germany just after the Second World War or something like that, where they wanted to. They wanted people to go out of the job market so the younger people could come into the job market. So they invented this thing called retirement.

One of the things that I noticed in the UK was that people that used to have jobs for 40 years and then that was their ikigai. That was their purpose.

So when they stopped doing those jobs and they suddenly had all of this free time, their life expectancy plummeted like a stone because they had no purpose. There was nothing they could do. They got up every day, they watched tv. They didn't do a lot else.

Things are more enlightened now, and people are understanding the fact that a purpose, whether it's an allotment or whether it's a hobby or whether it's volunteering, having a purpose can make a massive difference to life expectancy. So, I mean, that's pretty much what this podcast is all about. When they say you're as old as you feel, that's actually right. You are.

You really are as Old as you feel.

We can probably all think of examples of people where we look at them and go, yeah, they're probably 30 something and they're probably 50 something and they're actually the same age, you know.

But if you looked at the aspect, their mental health aspects, if you looked at them and how they approached life generally, we'll probably find that the ones that looked there to something how had a purpose, they had a reason for getting up out of bed in the mornings. And the ones that look slightly older may well be a little bit bored, not really enjoying what they were doing. And that can age a person.

From an epigenetic point of view, them telomeres can be shortened. But yeah, old age is complicated, but knowing how to age well is fairly simple.

And as Claire was pointing out, small steps get the basics right, get better sleep, eat better, do some exercise. Exercise does not have to be going to the gym. Exercise can be walking around the block.

Exercise can be walking to the kitchen and back, walking up and down the stairs. It doesn't have to be complicated, it just needs to be done. Positive thinking cannot be underestimated.

We've done a podcast on the nocebo effect and the placebo effect. Positive thinking works. That's it in a nutshell. As I was saying at the start of the show, grow old, but grow old disgracefully.

And we'll leave it there for today. Thanks for watching. Hope you enjoyed that. Hope you learned something from it.

Feel free to leave something in the comments letting us know what you thought, whether we missed anything out, or if you want to know some more about some of the subjects we've talked about, we'll be putting links into the show notes, but referring to the program that Claire was talking about, we'll probably put some other stuff in there as well. If you enjoyed the show, tell all your friends, tell them how fantastic we were. If you didn't enjoy this show, don't tell anyone. That's it for now.

Thanks and we'll see you at the next one.