What You Expect From Aging May Shape How You Actually Age

By Paul E. Bendheim, MD — Founder of BrainSavers; board-certified neurologist and Clinical Professor of Neurology, University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix; author of The Brain Training Revolution: A Proven Workout for Healthy Brain Aging. (I hold an equity position in BrainSavers.)

When I started BrainSavers, the idea that the way you think about your own aging could change how you actually age was dismissed as wishful thinking — voodoo science, a few of my colleagues called it. A new study out of Brandeis University, published in the journal Psychology and Aging, is one more piece of hard evidence that it was never wishful at all.

What the Study Asked

Researchers Morgan Taylor and Margie Lachman followed 1,881 American adults for about twenty years. At the start, they asked a deceptively simple question: do you expect your health and energy to hold up in the years ahead — or to decline? They called your answer your outlook. Then they waited two decades and measured what actually happened to people’s bodies.

What They Found

The people who began with a hopeful outlook — those who expected their health and energy to stay strong or improve — ended up with fewer physical limitations twenty years later. I mean the everyday things that quietly narrow a life: climbing a flight of stairs, carrying the groceries, walking a few blocks. The optimists simply lost less ground.

There was more. A positive outlook on one’s energy was tied to roughly a 6% lower risk of dying over the follow-up period. Let me be honest with you, as I always try to be about the science: that particular finding faded once the researchers accounted for how healthy people already were at the start. But the direction is unmistakable, and it points the same way as everything else in this study.

Why This Is Not Just Wishful Thinking

Here is the part that matters most to me, because it turns a nice idea into a call to action. The researchers didn’t only find that outlook predicted health — they found why. People with a more positive outlook were more likely to stay physically active and less likely to smoke. And it was those behaviors that carried much of the benefit forward.

In other words, your outlook is not a magic spell. It is an engine. Believe your health can hold up, and you are more likely to take the walk, keep the appointment, put down the cigarette. Believe your decline is inevitable, and you may quietly stop trying. Physical activity — the first of the six lifestyle pillars we built BrainSavers around — was one of the very behaviors doing the work in this study.

Two Findings I Want You to Hold Onto

It held across the whole lifespan. The adults here ranged from their twenties to their seventies, and the benefit of a good outlook showed up for men and women alike — not just for the old. Whatever your age today, it is the right age to start expecting more from your own aging.

It mattered most for those handed the least. A positive outlook made the biggest difference for people with less formal education, bringing their health closer to that of people with far more schooling. Optimism, it turns out, is one advantage that isn’t reserved for the privileged. It is available to everyone — and it does the most good for those who have been given the fewest other advantages.

A Word of Honesty

I want to be careful here, because I have spent a career insisting on it. This study measured the body — physical limitations and longevity — not the brain, and not Alzheimer’s. I am not going to tell you it proves anything about memory. But I will tell you that it rhymes, perfectly, with what the new science of the aging brain has taught us. Neuroplasticity and cognitive reserve say the brain responds to how you live. This study says the body does too. And both begin with the same quiet belief: that the effort is worth making.

It’s Not Rocket Science

When people ask me what to actually do with a finding like this, my answer hasn’t changed in twenty years:

“It’s not rocket science; it’s moving, it’s eating a healthier diet, managing stress, getting good sleep, socializing and actually using your brain.”

What this study adds is a starting point that costs nothing and is available to you this very minute — the decision to expect more from the years ahead, and then to live as though you meant it. A few places to begin:

• Catch the story you tell yourself. When you hear “I’m too old for that,” notice it. That sentence is a health behavior in disguise.

• Take the walk today. Movement is where a hopeful outlook turns into a healthier body. Start with a block.

• Keep one promise to yourself this week — a good night’s sleep, a vegetable at dinner, a phone call to a friend. Outlook is built one kept promise at a time.

You are not simply a passenger on the journey of your own aging. You never have been. This study is one more reason to take the wheel.

This article is for general educational purposes and is not medical advice. Talk with your own healthcare provider before making changes to your health, exercise, or medication routine.