Unafraid of Aging?

The New York Times recently did a profile of Dr. Linda P. Fried, Dean of the Medical School at Columbia University and an expert on aging. The article, titled “Unafraid of Aging,” described how Dr. Fried’s work had opened all the wonderful possibilities of aging. I wrote the following letter to Dr. Fried:

“ Dear Dr. Fried:

I read the Times article about you today, and I wonder if you have ever considered aging for what it really is. Aging is an incurable disease. It is a terrible, horrible, wasting-away of what was once a healthy and beautiful body. I am 73 and I know. They talk about the "Golden Years," and that sounds to me like Disney nonsense. I think that aging should be looked upon by intelligent people as a tragic fact of life, one of the things that makes life miserable. While some people may be able to deal with aging through our genetic tendency to optimism, a realistic look at aging would necessarily cause deep depression.

If it were not for aging at least half, maybe more, of the medical profession would not exist. In most specialties the job is to diagnose and treat the illnesses of aging. The older you get, the more medical problems you face. You lose your ability to do many things. You lose your sexual ability. Your skin sags, your eyes, ears, and teeth go bad. Your hair turns white and falls out. You lose all energy. I'm not just talking about myself. I am talking about everybody.

The older you get, the more medications you must take. After a while you have to keep your medications in special boxes for each day. Your body gets more and more feeble. You face a multitude of problems and you keep the doctors busy. You may even lose control of your mind through one of the horrible diseases and syndromes that cause dementia. There is no cure for this. It is part of life. Eventually, you develop some problem that leads to death. By the time you die, it is almost a relief for you and your family.

I'm sorry to have to say this, but there is no good side of aging. It is a human tragedy.”

What explains our ability to go on living, even happily, while our bodies deteriorate year-after-year? Why does this disintegration of our bodies not cause every one of us terrible disgust, anger, and discouragement? The answer probably lies in our genes. In an article by Tali Sharot in the June 6, 2011, issue of Time Magazine entitled: “The Optimism Bias,” the author, a cognitive scientist, finds that we are all genetically programmed with optimism. She says that without a neural mechanism generating optimism, all humans would be mildly depressed. In other words, even though the events of life should make us depressed, we tend to look for a silver lining because of an evolutionary adaptation of our brain which makes us optimistic even in the face of horror and tragedy. This is a tremendously important finding about human nature. It is actually this genetic tendency toward optimism that keeps the human species alive. Without it we might all commit suicide.

I do not suggest that we should all become terribly depressed by our aging, but I would prefer not to hear the absurd claims that old age is the best part of life, the “Golden Years,” the last of life for which the first was made. Old age sucks.