The New Old Age: Exercise, Fall in Love, and Change the World - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

Forget baby boomers and millennials. In the next 20 years the number of people over 65 in the US will nearly double from about 12 percent of the population to about 24 percent, the biggest leap in longevity in human history. Antibiotics, miracle drugs, organ transplants, and an effective anti-smoking campaign have meant that cancer, cardiac disease and other life threatening illnesses have become chronic conditions, easily treated. Seniors are not only routinely living into their late-eighties, they can look forward to a healthy and active old age, with more medical miracles to come.And these seniors are not just smelling the roses. They exercise, they fall in love, they paint and sing and build homes for others; they find new careers at 75 and teach yoga at 85. A third of all eligible voters in the US are already over 65. They are a new demographic, active, healthy, and full of beans, a new movement coast-to-coast, not adding years to their life, adding life to their years. And their new values are going to change the world.The challenges of old age are tough, but the new upside is enormous. In the years that follow retirement, the body may change but the mind remains surprisingly creative. The shift to a studio economy creates new opportunities for a fulfilling second career. Love enchants us, even in the later years, and a documented rise in late life altruism promises to change the values of the world. How shall we live these years? In the US, 40 million adults between the ages of 55 and 75 are struggling to learn the secrets of aging well, and according to Pew Research, 65 percent of those people are looking for the answers in books. Five of the top selling health care books in the US are about old age—The Blue Zones, Successful Aging, Healthy Aging, Ageless Soul, The Gift of Years—but they tend to miss the recent lessons of gerontology that lie largely hidden in academic books and journals. The New Old Age: Exercise, Fall in Love, and Change the World brings those lessons to the reader with real facts, humor, perspective, and personal accounts. From interviews, memoirs and essays, we hear Ben Bradlee, Penelope Lively, Henry Miller, Willie Nelson, Maurice Sendak and a dozen others talk about what life is like in their eighties. From the latest science journals we learn how different parts of the body and the brain change and even rejuvenate themselves. From polls and surveys we can see how our circle of friends may shrink, even though staying socially active may be more important to longevity than not smoking. The book is intended to provide guidance and inspiration to anyone planning to grow old, or has a friend who is.

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