Monday, Nov. 08, 1976
The Joy of Aging
The book has the same size, feel and illustrated mini-encyclopedia format as the author's last two manuals, The Joy of Sex and More Joy of Sex. But this time British Author Alex Comfort, 56, is trying for a pop bestseller on old age, not sexual hydraulics. A Good Age (Crown; $9.95) is Comfort's attack on "agism"--prejudice against the elderly, which he considers society's most stupid bias. After all, the elderly are the only outcast group that everyone eventually expects to join. "I wonder," says Comfort, "what Archie Bunker would say about Puerto Ricans if he knew he was going to become one on his next birthday."
To Comfort, a gerontologist and author of two previous books on aging, the chief disability of old age is agism itself. "Most of the handicaps of oldness in our society are social, conventional and imaginary. The physical changes are trifling by comparison." Because of "redneck bigotry" and "the steady drip of misinformation," the elderly are patronized, overmedicated and arbitrarily excluded from any significant social roles.
No Decline. In fact, he says, the elderly are "simply people who have been here longer" and are no less creative or mentally intact than anyone else. Though the elderly are more prone to chronic diseases, they get fewer acute illnesses than the general population; a person over 65 has an average of 1.3 acute illnesses a year, compared with 2.1 a year for all ages. Comfort cites a Duke University study showing that about half of a group of people over 65 who returned for periodic checkups had no detectable physical decline over periods ranging from three to 13 years. Nor are new emotional and mental disorders very likely in old age: true senility is uncommon, and only 1% of the elderly can expect to become demented. Says Comfort: "The human brain does not shrink, wilt, perish or deteriorate with age.* It normally continues to function well through as many as nine decades."
Most mental and attitudinal changes seen in old people are not biological effects of aging. "They are the results of role playing... They [the aging] are supposed to be physically and intellectually infirm." Example: many old people are uncertain, meandering drivers because they are expected to be, just as many women come to adopt the male notion of the dithering woman driver. "Older, fit drivers are the least dangerous on the road," writes Comfort. "By 70-plus you have experience, and the accident-prone fraction of the population is dead or disqualified."
Clearly intent on consciousness raising among the elderly, Comfort urges those over 65 to take no guff about their age. One of his encyclopedia entries is titled "Dignity. Stand on this. (See Pulling Rank.)" He advises "bloody-mind-edness"("Be ruthless to rudeness." "Show you expect respect"). Any use of titles such as Pop or Granny must be punished. "Point out acidly that you have a name and if they don't know it they can damn well ask, and that you were earning a living when they were still eating baby food."
Comfort suggests ornery behavior with doctors too, particularly if they imply that old people are supposed to be sick. "Remember the man of 104 who, when he complained of a stiff knee, was told, 'After all you can't expect to be agile,' and replied, 'My left knee's 104, too, and that doesn't hurt.' "
Because 20% of the American population will be over 65 by the year 2000, Comfort sees oldsters developing into a formidable pressure group demanding more sympathetic treatment from society. The group's eventual goal: the commitment of Government research money to retard the effects of aging. Scientists have already found ways to slow the rate of aging in rats and other mammals. Comfort believes the same can be done for humans, so that a person of 70 or 75 would have a body like that of a 60-year-old today. Says Comfort: "Aging is a biological process involving a rate or rates, and where there is a rate it can generally be altered."
Eating Cornflakes. Tests on mice show that a simple dietary change --feeding them only two days out of every three--can postpone all of the usual senile changes, from coat graying to tumors and loss of reproductive power. The key to aging rates in humans is far more complicated, but Comfort thinks a battery of tests can be devised to identify people who are aging unusually fast or slowly and to find out why. "If eating cornflakes or using toothpaste makes us age fast," he says, "we would now have no way of knowing this." What would it cost to develop techniques to slow aging in humans? On a reasonable guess, "one-fifth the cost of the Soyuz space circus plus some time. It might fail (so might the moon landing have done) but it probably will not. What we need to decide is whether we want it."
In the meantime, Comfort suggests that those over 65 stay active and reject leisure ("Leisure is a con") and retirement ("Two weeks is about the ideal length of time to retire"). At times, Comfort outrambles Polonius: "Be a little cautious of reliance on hobbies." "Late in life it's a good idea to aim at a trouble-free hair style." The telephone "is the most important single technological resource of later life."
Yet many of his points challenge the conventional wisdom. Comfort believes that loneliness among the elderly is vastly exaggerated: "Most old people who say they are lonely are in fact ill--some psychologically, others physically. Illness saps mobility and loosens the grip on life and may make us drop contacts and friendships. And this is a vicious circle." Only 20% of Americans over 65 live alone, and Comfort doubts that the elderly are any more lonely than the middleaged. All the elderly really need, says Comfort, is a better shake from society--and more bloody-mindedness.
* Every human being loses about 100,000 brain cells a day. Though many researchers consider this a form of deterioration, Comfort calls it "some programmed clear-out process" of the brain.
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