'Seventy can be the new fifty' if attitudes change towards growing old

He gave the example of men who retire early in Italy or Austria “playing boules, sitting happily with their coffees in the piazza.” 

Seventy can be the new 50 if older people lose “highly inaccurate and out of date” ideas about what growing older feels like, a leading neuro-science expert has urged.

Many people become less active as they age because of these old-fashioned ideas, Professor Ian Robertson a Fellow Emeritus Psychology at the Trinity College Dublin Trinity Institute of Neurosciences said.

He said some “highly inaccurate and out of date mental models that we have of our ageing” can have a real impact on how our minds age.

He highlighted an Irish study which compared people over 50 years old who believed negative ideas about ageing against people with positive ideas.

“They found that people with negative expectations of ageing over the next two years walked significantly slower two years later, showed significant reduction in cognitive flexibility and had a slight decrease in their social activity,” he said.

These TILDA (The Irish longitudinal study on ageing) findings should be food for thought, he urged doctors at the Irish College of GPs annual conference on Saturday in Dublin. 

Older people might think forgetting someone’s name is an early sign of dementia compared to people in their 30s who brush this off, he suggested.

“Then you start worrying about your memory and thinking about your memory,” he said. “That’s the equivalent of thinking about your feet as you walk down the stairs and that produces anxiety.” 

He added: “Anxiety interferes biologically with your memory and also psychologically it uses up memory space.” 

Prof Robertson, a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist, advised people to examine their pre-conceptions about lifestyle also.

He pointed at research looking at brain function in people across 41 countries, published by the International Monetary Fund last year.

This found: “the cognitive performance of a 70 year old in 2020 was the same as the cognitive performance of a 53-year old in 2000,” he said.

“The sub-heading on the chapter was 70 is the new 50.” 

He encouraged people to keep working for as long as possible, saying an OECD study raised questions about diminishing brain function for people who retire in their 50s.

He gave the example of men who retire early in Italy or Austria “playing boules, sitting happily with their coffees in the piazza.” 

However, he said: “their memory function is significantly lower than the 65s year olds in Florida, or in Ireland or the UK. You’re losing cognitive function by retiring.” 

He acknowledged too that the ability to work for longer depends on the type of job people do.

Retired people should keep trying new activities to simulate the brain, he advised, including joining charity committee or doing other voluntary work.

Referring to how the brain functions, he said: “This engagement with the world and the demands that the world makes on these networks in your brain actually reinforces these superhighways in the brain.”