Dementia rates are down, recovery rates are up. Many are thriving mentally and physically deep into their later years.
Excerpt – A long-running study of older people in the greater New Haven, Conn., area found that most who had lost the ability to feed or bathe themselves recovered within six months, and often sooner. The Einstein Aging Study, which has followed people 70 or older from the Bronx since 1993, discovered a declining rate of dementia in successive age cohorts born after 1929.
According to research at the Stanford Center on Longevity, older Americans report higher levels of emotional well-being and lower levels of negative emotions compared with young adults. “The reason we hadn’t seen things that tend to improve with age is we were never looking for them,” said Yochai Shavit, director of research at the Stanford Center on Longevity. [..]
Although more older Americans are living with chronic disease such as arthritis, high blood pressure or diabetes, Lachs said these statistics say little about the quality of these lives: “You can’t tell if they are living in a nursing home or CEO of a Fortune 500 company.”
Dr. Thomas Gill of Yale has drawn similar conclusions from his study in the greater New Haven area, which for more than 25 years has followed 750 people who are 70 or older. Six people from the original cohort are still alive, all of them 97 or older.
Gill has been struck by the physical resilience of those he followed as they aged. In monthly interviews, participants answer questions about their daily habits and tasks, such as bathing, dressing and walking across the room. In a study of people who had lost the ability to do such tasks, over 80% regained independence, most within six months—recovery rates that were higher than previously known.
“People who are in pretty good shape and cognitively intact are more likely to recover even after serious events,” Gill said.
In another study that Gill worked on involving more than 1,600 sedentary elderly people, the group assigned to walk 150 minutes a week had a lowered risk of disability and, especially in older men, reduced rates of serious fall injuries.
Gill thinks the message about the relationship between lifestyle changes and longevity is starting to get through: “Folks who are 75 now are in better shape on average than someone 75 a generation ago.”
Full article, AD Marcus, Wall Street Journal, 2025.5.16