Mindset and Getting Old

The science of aging is going several directions. It appears that there isn't one secret of aging, although the study of telomeres, the know at the ends of our chromosomes, may be a key factor in aging at the cellular level. But it's not the only factor. Psychologist Ellen Langer has been studying the effects of aging, particularly how one's mindset affects their biological health. In 1979, she set up an experiment in which elderly men were given a retreat back into the 1950s for a week.

Every day Langer and her students met with the men to discuss “current” events. They talked about the first United States satellite launch, Fidel Castro entering Havana after his march across Cuba, and the Baltimore Colts winning the NFL championship game. They discussed “current” books: Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger and Leon Uris’ Exodus. They watched Ed Sullivan and Jack Benny and Jackie Gleason on a black-and-white TV, listened to Nat King Cole on the radio, and saw Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. Everything was transporting the men back to 1959.
When Langer studied the men after a week of such sensory and mindful immersion in the past, she found that their memory, vision, hearing, and even physical strength had improved. She compared the traits to those of a control group of men, who had also spent a week in a retreat. The control group, however, had been told the experiment was about reminiscing. They were not told to live as if it were 1959. The first group, in a very objective sense, seemed younger. The team took photographs of the men before and after the experiment, and people who knew nothing about the study said the men looked younger in the after-pictures, says Langer, who today is a professor of psychology at Harvard University.

So there may be something to the habit of lying about one's age -to oneself. Read about research on aging and the mind's effect on it at Nautilus.