Ageing: 1. Fear of the future

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it,you've got to start young.

Fred Astaire

Thinking old age, few people think positively. That future is looked upon as a nemesis cloaked in darkness, causing fear, anger and despair.

My mother invariably wished the bureaucrats she came in contact with, a very long life. Not because she valued their contribution to the world, but because she didn’t take to their patronizing attitudes towards the elderly. She felt they richly deserved to suffer at length the retiree travails they seldom empathized with while in service. Obviously, for her too, old age was a condition difficult to come to terms with.

Old age takes its own sweet time to arrive. The individual rates of physical decline are not identical. Partly determined by heredity, partly by the environment and partly by life experiences, it may even vary considerably. The physical change, is perhaps the most shocking and unacceptable for those used to being admired for beauty.

The

older-looking

individuals are envious of peers who appear to have retain the precious

physical attributes

of youth. Remember the book “The young Diana”? The novel, written by Marie Corelli in 1918, portrays “an experiment of the future” whereby scientific experimentation transforms an intelligent but disfavoured elderly woman into a young and beautiful girl.

Marion Davis played the lead role in the film version. Diana never had a beau in her early years. Subsequent to the age-reversing experiment however, all the men she meets are bedazzled and compete to possess her

ethereal beauty -

including the scientist who ‘created’ her

. The women hate her appearance, and fearing comparisons, even her once-pretty best friend, shuns her company.

The book is of course a work of fantasy.

There is for everybody, a slow and steady biological decline from young adulthood onwards. Secretion of hormones largely responsible for building a physically strong body is on the wane – like, the growth hormone, androgens, and estrogens.

In the almost hundred years since Corelli’s fictional story was published, the preoccupation with youth has changed little. The craze for cosmetic surgery, botox, and replacement hormone therapy shows the desperate attempts, with scientific and technological advancements, to find a cure for the malady of old age, or at least to stave off the helplessness and hopelessness perceived inevitable.

In common knowledge, maturity (or wisdom) comes with age. It is presumed that the direction of movement on the immaturity-maturity continuum is indeed relative to age. It proceeds in a set pattern from childhood to adulthood. “Wisdom teeth” therefore do not appear along with the milk teeth, but are markers of mature development.

In more recent times, it is routine to extract these orthodontic “signs” of wisdom in sacrifice to glamour. They are now perceived redundant in the acquisition of maturity and in digestion. Many, especially youth, argue that the direction of human development is not necessarily unidirectional, i.e., only towards increasing age. There is equal probability consequent to growing older, of people proceeding towards the immaturity end.

Maturity actually relates more with the mind than with the physical appearance. The important factor is neural plasticity. This underlies a variety of processes, including development, learning and memory, and recovery from injury.

It persists throughout the lifespan, although evidence suggests that this plasticity may be reduced in ageing. For instance, the behavioral effects of moderate head injuries are more pronounced in aged patients. Similarly, ageing prolongs the behavioral consequences of trauma.

What causes the change in neural plasticity? Not age, but interestingly, stress has been identified as causing considerable damage to neural tissues mainly through the effects of associated hormones. The neurotransmitter systems and brain structures that are altered by stress have been implicated in a variety of disorders.

Even worrying about the future can lead to stress. Stress feeds on itself, releasing hormonal cascades that simultaneously influence body and mind. The individual is physically debilitated with an increasingly depressed immune system. Fears of the environment and of change are common psychological responses. The effects of stress are cumulative, assuming disease-like conditions in the long term generally associated with ageing.

Next…maturity