Nearly half of seniors improve with age — and researchers think they know why

Aging is often depicted as a steady decline, but new research suggests that many older adults actually improve over time.

Using more than a decade of data from a large, representative study of older Americans, Yale University researchers found that nearly half of adults 65 and older showed improvement in cognitive function, physical function or both.

The improvements were consistent across the study population, and were linked to the participants' mindset about aging, according to a press release.

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"In contrast to a predominant belief or stereotype that age is a time of continuous and inevitable decline, we found evidence that a meaningful number of older persons actually show improvement over 12 years in cognitive and/or physical health," lead author Becca Levy, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at Yale, told Fox News Digital.

The research, which was published in the journal Geriatrics, relied on data from the Health and Retirement Study, a federally supported, long-running survey of older Americans.

Researchers tracked changes in cognition using global performance tests and measured physical function based on walking speed, which was seen as a "vital sign" because of its strong links to disability, hospitalization and mortality.

Over a 12-year period, 45% of participants improved either mentally or physically. About 32% showed cognitive gains, while 28% improved physically, according to the study.

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"If you average everyone together, you see decline," Levy said. "But when you look at individual trajectories, you uncover a very different story. A meaningful percentage of the older participants … got better."

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A participant’s beliefs about aging appeared to influence the results, as those with more positive age beliefs were significantly more likely to show improvements in both cognition and walking speed.

This remained true even after accounting for factors such as age, sex, education, chronic disease, depression and the length of follow-up. Improvements were seen even among participants who started with "normal" levels of function, not just those recovering from injuries or illness. 

"Individuals who have taken in more positive age beliefs ... tend to have a lower stress response and lower stress biomarkers," Levy said. Because age beliefs are modifiable, she noted, there could be a capacity for improvements later in life.

The study did have some limitations, the researchers acknowledged. It didn’t look at how muscles or brain cells change and adapt, which could help explain why people improved.

Future studies should examine improvement patterns for other types of cognition, such as spatial memory, they added.

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"In addition, although our participants were drawn from a nationally representative sample, it would be useful to examine patterns of improvement in additional cohorts that have a greater representation of different ethnic minority groups," the researchers noted in the study.

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The authors said they hope the findings will debunk the myth that continuous physical and cognitive decline is inevitable.

"We found evidence that there could be psychological pathways, behavioral pathways and physiological pathways [by which age beliefs impact health]," said Levy. "It’s common, and it should be included in our understanding of the aging process."