Yale research challenges notion that aging equals cognitive and physical decline

Research has found that aging improves cognitive and physical functions, challenging the notion that growing older leads to decline.

The researchers at Yale University, US, reveal that nearly half of the older adults over 65 improved in cognitive and physical functions over time based on data from the Health and Retirement Study.

Additionally, the 12-year follow-up revealed that 45% of these participants improved in at least one domain. Highlights include that people who had positive beliefs about aging were more likely to improve.

“Our findings suggest there is often a reserve capacity for improvement in later life. And because age beliefs are modifiable, this opens the door to interventions at both the individual and societal level,” says lead author Becca Levy, professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Yale School of Public Health.

Long-term tracking

The Geriatrics study points out that improvements were not only seen in a small group but also linked to how people think about aging itself.

“Many people equate aging with an inevitable and continuous loss of physical and cognitive abilities,” says Levy, an international expert on psychosocial determinants of aging health. “What we found is that improvement in later life is not rare, it’s common, and it should be included in our understanding of the aging process.”

The team followed 11,000 participants in a federally supported longitudinal survey of older Americans. They analyzed cognition using a global performance assessment. Walking speed was also noted, as geriatricians describe this as a “vital sign,” as it is linked to disability, hospitalization, and mortality.

Results reveal that 32% of participants experienced improved cognition, 28% improved physically, and several showed benefits beyond clinically meaningful measures.

“What’s striking is that these gains disappear when you only look at averages,” says Levy. “If you average everyone together, you see a decline. But when you look at individual trajectories, you uncover a very different story. A meaningful percentage of the older participants that we studied got better.”

The researchers hypothesize that some people improve and some do not, based on whether participants’ aging beliefs were positive or negative. Results showed that those with more positive age beliefs were more likely to show improvements in cognition and walking speed even after accounting for age, sex, education, chronic disease, depression, and length of follow-up.

They argue that since improvements were seen in those with impairments and participants with normal cognitive or physical function at baseline, it challenges the assumption that benefits later in life only impact people who recover after sickness. 

Healthy aging nutrition focus 

Healthy aging has emerged as a significant shift in the nutrition industry’s approach to aging, sparking product innovation and shifting public perception. Patrick Diel, professor at the German Sport University Cologne, previously told Nutrition Insight that physical activity and nutrition are inseparable for healthy aging.

An expert at Balchem underscored the emerging role of folate, or vitamin B9, for healthy aging, as recent studies suggest optimizing folate intake to support cellular health. “For adults over 50, about 10% of men and up to 30% of women don’t get enough folate from diet alone.”

Meanwhile, dsm-firmenich told us about its approach to healthy longevity, which is twofold — helping people ‘age better’ by maintaining holistic health and well-being, while also ‘aging slower’ by targeting fundamental aging processes at the cellular level.

Speaking on the Mediterranean diet’s benefits, Professor Gunter Eckert at the German University of Giessen told us about the benefits in supporting mitochondrial health and reducing the risk of neurodegeneration.