Age-old Myths and Old Age Myths
The local media today reproduced an article from The New York Times. In “Age-old Myths” the article examines the changing views that health scientists have over the past decades, beginning with the emphasis on environment, eating right, exercising, and getting good medical care. Then the view switched to genes, the idea that one’s longevity is determined by inherited genes. In other words, with the right combination of genes, you can flout all the rules of healthy eating or living and still live to be a 100. But no one can vouch for that. We see that the scientific view of what determines a person’s life span or aging process keeps swinging back and forth with the current view, supported by recent studies, that genes may not be that importance after all. With very exceptions, a strong family history of genetically linked disease does not guarantee a person will get it.
This brings me to the myths of age when we fail to separate it from dotage. Obsolescence is a word we readily tag along with people besides machines, home appliances and computers. In an age when too much premium is placed on youth, it is hard not to feel obsolete.
In Singapore, the government-run Community Clubs have an endless round of social activities to instill a sense of well being in senior citizens. While such support groups are to be applauded, I found it astounding that people from age 45 could join in such activities. Are people already qualified as senior at 45?
Being organized to go on short excursion trips, karaoke, folk or hip hop dancing and the like is not my idea of fun or fulfillment at any age, let alone old age. Nevertheless, senior citizens seem happy enough with even a few participants making the news for becoming romantically linked even though the organizers may deny any matrimonial objectives.
Our life span expectancy is greater now than at any other time and I ask myself what is the use if much of our extended time on earth includes a greater number of years in declining function before death. Living a life longer than our ancestors did but with far less quality is not an inviting trade-off. The sight in a nursing home where nonfunctional people spend their twilight years is scary for contemplation. Aging has been defined as "an increase liability to die" but it is not so much death itself that we fear but the fear of the physical and mental faculty on the wane Will euthanasia ever be legalised in Singapore?
Staying fit physically and intellectually is supremely vital and we shouldn’t be married to our careers to the extent that when we finally stop working, we have no sense of purpose in life. That high stress job may be doing more harm than thought. Researchers have shown direct evidence that that prolonged exposure to stress can step up the aging of brain cells. This in turn led to impairment of learning and memory. It was reasoned that stress made he brain cells work harder and thus left them more vulnerable to damage from other causes. Likewise, fatigue and exhaustion make you more susceptible to colds and flu.
posted by Victor Lai @ 10:38 PM
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