Aging healthy and happy during your greater years
Lucy Rose Fischer spent much of her life studying aging, but not even decades of academic research fully prepared the retired gerontologist for getting older herself. “Theoretically, I knew that people were living longer,” she says. “But what’s really amazing to me is that there is a whole (new) life that starts.”

Gina Harkins

USA TODAY Best Years magazine

Lucy Rose Fischer spent much of her life studying aging, but not even decades of academic research fully prepared the retired gerontologist for getting older herself.

“Theoretically, I knew that people were living longer,” she says. “But what’s really amazing to me is that there is a whole (new) life that starts.”

Many women are expected to live into their 80s, which means a chance at starting new hobbies or watching their grandchildren — and even great-grandchildren — grow up. That kind of longevity is still a relatively new concept, and the health care and social systems haven’t quite caught up.

“We’re having more years of good health, but also having more years of various chronic conditions,” says Andrew Scharlach, a professor of aging in the University of California-Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare.

“We are changing individually much more quickly than our physical and social environments are.”

Even though Fischer, 72, of St. Louis Park, Minn., says she doesn’t love everything about aging, she’s still finding life after retirement to be creatively rewarding. She’s able to focus on her love of creating painted-glass art, and she wrote and illustrated a book about aging called I’m New at Being Old.

“In a way, it feels like starting over,” she says. “But the difference between being 15 and 60 when you’re starting a new stage in life is that you have all this experience behind you that you’re able to use.”

A changing society

An aging population doesn’t come without challenges. U.S. Census Bureau data shows that by the year 2050, nearly 84 million people will be 65 and older. Many in that population will face the risk of chronic diseases, especially as people live long enough to develop them. One in 10 people over age 65 have Alzheimer’s, for example, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, and while overall cancer rates have declined, cancer rates still rise with age, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Scharlach says this could weigh on the American health care system, which is not equipped to deal with long-term conditions on a large scale. The Baby Boomer population is aging, he said, but many physicians don’t have experience treating older adults. Access to medical professionals is also on the decline, Scharlach adds, since some communities don’t have enough doctors and nurses, or people can’t afford the high cost of treatment.

That’s what people like Grisel Rodríguez-Morales, a health promotion and disease prevention manager at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center, are trying to change. Her team helps give people the tools they need to “age successfully,” she says, by holding seminars about how to manage their health conditions.

“As providers, this is new to many of us,” she says. “As the aging population continues to grow, we want to make sure that we … are thinking not only about health, but health within the context of aging.”

That requires not only informing doctors, nurses and other health care providers about the needs of aging adults, but family members and friends, too. That way, they understand that something like depression, for example, is not a normal part of aging, she says.

“If you saw an 18- or 20-year-old who didn’t want to do anything, you wouldn’t think twice about immediately taking them to the doctor,” Rodríguez-Morales says. “So if you see an older adult, why not do the same thing instead of just saying, ‘Well, they’re old.’”

As the older population continues to grow, Scharlach says it’s vital that people see beyond age. Americans are slowly starting to value older generations, he says, but there’s still a long way to go.

“Having popular images that reflect aging as it really is and provide a sense that we can age well and age fully will go a long way,” he adds. “It’s about seeing that 80-year-old not simply about what they can’t do, but who they are.”

One of the things Fischer did when she retired was to quit dyeing her hair. Once she accepted her silver hair, she grew to like the look — along with the tiny crinkles around her eyes.

“There is a kind of focus on always trying to look younger,” she says, “but you can be vital at 72 and be beautiful.”

When she was studying aging, Fischer and her colleagues at HealthPartners, a Minnesota-based nonprofit health care organization, developed the ALIVE model.

The acronym stands for five healthy aspects of aging: activity, learning, intimacy, vitality and engagement. Now she tries to apply the model to her own life.

Fischer stays active by hiking with her husband and walking her dog. She considers continuing education an important way to exercise her brain. She maintains close, intimate relationships with friends of all ages. Her artwork and positive attitude give her life vitality, and she remains engaged in her wider community and society.

Healthy and happy aging requires a real investment, Scharlach says. Many people plan carefully for their financial futures, he says, but fail to devote time and effort to other aspects of their lives, like Fischer does with her ALIVE method.

“We have to take care of our body, our mind, our relationships,” Scharlach says. “There’s that old saying, ‘If I had known I was going to live this long, I would’ve taken better care of myself.’ There’s enormous truth to those words.”