A degree of deterioration of the mind and body as we reach old age is part and parcel of life, but it may not be a linear trajectory from the vigour of youth to the decrepitude of antiquity, with new research indicating mental and physical declines can still be reversed in people over 65.
The secret elixir, according to researchers at the University of Yale, is “mindset” around the issue of getting older, which led the team to call for the need to “redefine ageing” to change society’s expectations of later life.
The research team analysed more than a decade of data from more than 11,000 older Americans enrolled in the long‑running Health and Retirement Study, tracking how people changed not just year to year, but over more than a decade.
They monitored two key markers of ageing: overall cognitive performance, and walking speed, the latter of which is often described by geriatricians as a kind of “sixth vital sign” because of its strong links to indicating disability, hospitalisation and even mortality.
The results challenge the familiar story of steady, unavoidable deterioration. Over as many as 12 years of follow‑up, 45 per cent of participants improved in at least one of the two areas. Cognitive gains were surprisingly common – about 32 per cent improved their scores – while 28 per cent became physically faster on their feet.
Many of these improvements weren’t just statistical blips, the team said, they exceeded thresholds considered clinically meaningful.
And when the researchers included those whose cognitive abilities simply held steady rather than declined, the picture became even clearer, with more than half of older adults defying the stereotype of inevitable cognitive slide.
Far from a universal downward slope, ageing for many people involves stability, resilience and, in a significant number of cases, genuine improvement.
“In the last stage of a long career, Joseph Turner created his most innovative and influential paintings. Diana Nyad set a world record in her 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida at the age of 64, after several attempts while younger. These disparate accomplishments demonstrate that improvement can occur in later life,” the authors said.
They also noted that according to the World Health Organisation’s own guidance, the best way to measure cognitive and physical capacities in later life is to classify patients as either showing or not showing decline. The organisation therefore “does not allow for the possibility of improvement” among older people.
“The current study demonstrated that the predominant narrative of ageing as a time of inevitable and universal decline needs to be reconsidered,” the team said.
“In addition, the current study demonstrated for the first time that participants who had assimilated more-positive age beliefs were more likely to show improvement in both cognitive and physical function.”
“Many people equate ageing with an inevitable and continuous loss of physical and cognitive abilities,” said Dr Becca Levy, lead author of the research and an international expert on psychosocial determinants of ageing health.
“What we found is that improvement in later life is not rare, it’s common, and it should be included in our understanding of the ageing process.”
She noted that if you regard the overall figures as an average, then all it shows is indeed a cognitive and mental decline among people aged 65 and older. However, when you examine the data, a large proportion of people in that age category are seeing significant gains.
“What’s striking is that these gains disappear when you only look at averages,” Dr Levy said.
“If you average everyone together, you see decline. But when you look at individual trajectories, you uncover a very different story. A meaningful percentage of the older participants that we studied got better.”
She added that “because age beliefs are modifiable, this opens the door to interventions at both the individual and societal level”.
The research is published in the journal Geriatrics.
