Research shows that age-related decline is slowed in older adults

A study from the Mailman School of Public Health’s Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center shows that the health of older adults in England has improved significantly compared to previous generations.

Instead of considering health by the presence or absence of disease, published in Nature agingapplied a new approach that examined trends in people’s functioning: their cognitive, motor, psychological and sensory capacities.

Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, the research found that older adults today experience higher levels of physical and mental functioning than previous generations did at the same age.

“These improvements were large,” said John Beard, MBBS, Ph.D., Irene Diamond Professor of Aging in Health Policy and Management at the Butler Columbia Aging Center of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and author of the study.

For example, a 68-year-old born in 1950 had comparable ability to a 62-year-old born ten years earlier, and those born in 1940 functioned better than those born in 1930 or 1920. Beard noted: “If we If we had someone born in 1950 compared to someone born in 1920, we would probably have seen even greater improvements.”

Beard and colleagues conducted similar analyzes in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). They found similar trends, although this analysis was limited by the much shorter follow-up period in the Chinese study compared to the English study.

Beard says improvements in education, nutrition and sanitation likely played a key role over the course of the twentieth century.

Medical advances – such as joint replacements and better treatments for chronic conditions – likely also played a role. However, the researchers caution that their observations relate to a specific period and in a single country. The same trends may not have been observed in the US, or in the population as a whole.

“We were surprised by how large these improvements were, especially when we compared people born after World War II with groups born earlier.” said Beard.

“But there is nothing to say that we will continue to see the same improvements in the future, and changes such as the increasing prevalence of obesity could even reverse these trends. It is also likely that more advantaged groups will have experienced greater gains than others. But overall the trends have been very strong and suggest that for many people, 70 could be the new 60.”

Aging expert Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois praised the study, saying, “This is a powerful paper. It shows that intrinsic capacity – which is really important for people as they age – is inherently adaptable. With this evidence, we see that medical science can increase intrinsic capacity and provide a hopeful message for the future.”