There is a study just published that you need to know about. It stopped me in my tracks, and made me smile.
Researchers at Yale, led by Becca Levy and Martin Slade, recently published findings in the journal Geriatrics that challenge one of the most deeply held assumptions in the longevity field: that aging inevitably leads to decline.
They followed more than 11,000 adults over twelve years and asked a simple but radical question. What if we measured whether people improved rather than only tracking how they declined?
Here’s what they found: 45% of adults over 65 improved in cognitive and/or physical function over the study period. Nearly half. And the single strongest predictor of who improved wasn’t genetics, exercise habits, cholesterol or marital status.
It was their beliefs about aging.
People with positive attitudes toward growing older were measurably more likely to improve cognitively and physically as they aged. This wasn’t a soft finding. It held up after controlling for every variable the researchers could account for.
I’ll be honest with you about something. I have always been decidedly counter-culture in the longevity space. While much of the longevity field, and certainly our healthcare system remains organized around avoidance: avoid the “four horsemen,” avoid the marginal decade, avoid decline at all costs, I have spent years arguing that this orientation is inherently ageist.
You cannot build a life worth living by running away from the very idea of living a long life. You cannot design a long well-lived life focusing on the things you want to avoid.
What the Yale study confirms is something I’ve been sharing without this essential piece of data to back me up. It’s fundamental to the Longevity Lifeplan™ and the Seven Lifestyle Levers™ assessment: how you think about aging is not a soft variable. It is a biological one. Having a pro-aging mindset is the difference between avoiding the so-called ‘marginal decade’ and aspiring towards your Trophy Years.
Trophy years are the same window of time imagined not as a period of decline to be prevented but as the culmination of a life deliberately designed. It’s now measurably predictive of whether you improve or diminish.
Let’s be clear: I am not dismissing the science of prevention, biomarkers, or physical health. Those matter enormously, and the Seven Lifestyle Levers address them directly.
But here is what I know to be true: if the field stops there, it is leaving the most powerful lever untouched.
Your beliefs about aging are doing something in your body right now.
Ken Stern, whose widely-read longevity newsletter recently changed its name from an anti-aging to a pro-aging frame put it well: “this study is nothing short of revolutionary.”
I’d say it’s also a long time coming.
If you believe in the possibilities of building toward your Trophy Years rather than simply defending against decline, I’d love for you to join me and MEA CEO Derek Gehl this June 7-11 or August 2-6 at MEA Santa Fe campus for Longevity by Design. This is what it looks like when your Trophy Years stop being a battle against diminishment and start becoming the design of what’s truly possible.
-Barbara
Barbara Waxman is a gerontologist, credentialed coach, and Co-Head of Gratitude & Purpose at Stanford Lifestyle Medicine, with 40 years in the longevity field. She popularized the term Middlescence and coined Trophy Years — naming the stages of adult life everyone is living but nobody has language for. Her Longevity Lifeplan™, answers the question nobody else is asking: why do you want to live that long?