•  Active Aging

Successful Aging
John W. Rowe, M.D., and Robert L. Kahn, Ph.D.
Dell
265 pp $12.95 (paperback)

After more than 30 years of observing and interviewing the greats and near-greats of the sports world -- Hall of Fame baseball players, Olympic marathon runners, PGA golf players, Forest Hills tennis stars -- I've been thinking lately that perhaps the most authentic athletes I know are some anonymous men and women who exercise at the track on a college campus near my home.

Over the years, while putting in hundreds and hundreds of miles of my own running and walking at the track, my admiration has gone out to a select group of seniors. They are exercise regulars. Some are early-morning, 10-minute-a-mile turtles. Others take to the fast lanes for a snappy three miles under 25 minutes. The slowness or quickness of the pace is irrelevant. What matters, or at least what impresses me, is the fidelity to exercise.

The images of these athletes -- it isn't a stretch to use that word -- came to mind when I read these lines in Successful Aging: "Physical fitness [is] perhaps the single most important thing an older person can do to remain healthy. Physical activity is at the crux of successful aging, regardless of other factors. ... The key is to exercise regularly, and the amount you do, plus the intensity and duration of the activity, are what make all the difference. Success is determined by good old-fashioned hard work."

Of the 12 chapters in "Successful Aging," the authors -- John W. Rowe, the president of Mount Sinai Hospital and School of Medicine, and Robert L. Kahn, professor of psychology and public health at the University of Michigan -- devote the greatest number of pages to the benefits of exercise.

That might seem like one more belaboring of the obvious, except that the authors are drawing on information gathered by one of the broadest and deepest studies on aging ever conducted in the United States. The comprehensive effort, which was funded for more than $10 million by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, involved long-term detailed studies of some 1,000 people 70 years and older. A network of 17 researchers -- neurologists, gerontologists, geriatric psychiatrists, sociologists, epidemiologists -- from such medical schools at Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Duke met every two or three months over an eight-year period to share and analyze information in interdisciplinary cooperation.

The goal of the MacArthur study, the authors write, "was to move beyond the limited view of chronological age and to clarify the genetic, biomedical, behavioral, and social factors responsible for retaining -- and even enhancing -- people's ability to function later in life. In sum, we were trying to pinpoint the many factors that conspire to put one octogenarian on cross-country skis and another in a wheelchair."

The most readable chapter in "Successful Aging, or at least the sprightliest, is "Breaking Down the Myths of Aging." Scalpels in hand, the authors surgically remove six of the major myths that have long been parasitically attached to the body of knowledge about elderly people. It's false, Rowe and Kahn argue, that "to be old is to be sick." Nearly 90 percent of citizens between 65 and 74 have no major disabilities. After age 85, 40 percent are still fully functional.

Another debunking involves the myth that the AARP set is intellectually beyond learning and growing: that only young hotshots, not old geezers, can survive in the world of computers and Web sites. "Research," the authors write, "has demonstrated the remarkable and enduring capacity of the aged brain to make new connections, absorb new data, and then acquire new skills."

Some of those skills help to shatter another myth, that the elderly are unproductive, either because they are well-pensioned freeloaders or incompetent bumblers. The facts suggest otherwise: one-third of the elderly are full-time workers, while others are volunteering in churches, hospitals, schools, and other sites where age discrimination holds no sway.

Other chapters in "Successful Aging" include the latest research on enhancing mental function in old age, the benefits of social relationships, staying productive regardless of age, and keeping alive the drive for self-reliance.

How is this done? In the early pages of "Successful Living," Rowe and Kahn lay out their theme of personal responsibility by repeating the same idea in different language: "Far more than is usually assumed, successful aging is in our own hands." "We are, in large part, responsible for our own old age." "We can, and should, take some responsibility for the way in which we grow older."

As self-evident as that sounds, medical facilities -- from suburban waiting rooms to inner-city emergency rooms -- have long been packed with patients whose choices in diet and lifestyles largely brought on the kind of ailments that doctors and nurses are now asked to cure. And all too often, American medicine has responded uncritically by saying to the ill or injured: "You've abused your body with calorie-dense fat, empty-calorie sugar, lung-rotting nicotine, liver-killing alcohol, and inactivity? No problem! We'll fix it up." These practitioners are like auto mechanics in Hank's Body & Fender shop, ever available to work on the banged-up heaps brought in by reckless drivers.

More than once, I've wondered how physicians keep themselves from becoming dispirited, being asked to care for the bodies of people who, either through laziness, indifference, or willful ignorance, don't appear to care about the minimal upkeep of their own bodies. Of course, not all disease can be prevented through good diet and exercise -- and some illnesses make exercise hard if not impossible. But the authors make an excellent case that decrepitude is not an inevitable part of aging.

Rowe and Kahn are positioned in the enlightened wing of the health care industry, which now accounts for about 16 percent of the U.S. economy. The emphasis on personal responsibility for maximizing the condition of one's body and mind as the years pass represents a shift from curing illnesses to preventing them, or, as the authors state, moving beyond "the science of repair."

This is a branch of medicine already inhabited by such visionary physicians as Neal Bernard of the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine and others who have steadily worked to educate the public, as well as the conventional medical community, that diet and exercise are the gateways to healthy living, disease prevention, and relatively happy final years.

Despite the overall merits of Rowe and Kahn's writing, a few weaknesses are apparent. The authors ignore the quickly expanding field of alternative medicine, including medical treatments that come from plants rather than a pharmaceutical factory. The National Institutes of Health's Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, for example, currently sponsors an $8 million study of illnesses that can be treated with alternative medication. Not including at least a chapter on this topic -- which goes back 5,000 years to the ancient medical practices of India -- is a major oversight.

Also missing is an in-depth examination of the links between heart disease -- the nation's leading killer -- and meat eating. If the authors can denounce smoking, why not a diet biased toward red meat?

Those weaknesses aside, Successful Aging can be read as a virtual prescription toward better health for seniors who make taking care of their bodies a priority -- something that bodes well for those elders faithfully jogging around the track near my house. "Successful Aging" promises to age well, especially as the senior population increases and as the medical community strains to accommodate it.

-- Colman McCarthy is a former Washington Post columnist and book reviewer who directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington D.C. He is the winner of a 2001 Excellence in Journalism award for an opinion series from the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

First published October 20, 2000
Last updated October 27, 2008
Copyright © 2000 Consumer Health Interactive

Back to top of page