Longevity in the land of ageism

0:00Well, I don't like to talk about aging in the first place, right? You know, in a society that's inherently ageist, we don't value getting older. We almost think of it as a punishment and a period of decline that just inevitably leads to death. And I think that's why we have such a fascination with this whole anti-aging movement, this longevity movement, but in one that has gone to extremes. And I think we need to really start reframing how we think about these things. How do we make sure that people not only add more years to life, but more life to those remaining years. And I think there's a way we can do both.

0:38Hello, my name is Moira Welsh, and I lead the Toronto Starves Third Act Project in partnership with the National Institute on Aging. I write stories in the Star on ways in which we can improve how we grow older, and am now taking these ideas to this podcast. Here's the truth. Many of us will be older for longer, a new phenomenon that will reshape the way we live. For a quick perspective, if you were born in 1900, your average life expectancy would have been 50. Today, the average woman will live to 84, and the average man, well, he makes his exit at around 79. Those numbers fluctuate a bit from one year to the next, but overall, modern science has gifted us with a lifespan that is unprecedented.

1:28With these extra years come a lot of questions, big existential questions, and our guests will help us break down the changes we need to consider and the ways we must adapt individually and collectively. How will we stay mobile enough in many unique ways to march with as much agility as possible into our final decades? I talk to a CFL star turned mobility guru and his yogi wife for their take, and here's a teaser. Start early. Or, how do we avoid running out of money? We explore the future of work and why you need to expect the unexpected. We talk to a millennial woman about her quest to show the world that older women are powerful, calling herself a crone in training as she moves through the passages of life, the maiden, mother, and crone.

2:25Housing is another big question, and perhaps the most existential query of them all examines a good death, including an exploration of one man's journey from a skateboard impresario to a networker in the growing microcosm of the dying. We're all aging all the time. And if you're lucky, you get old. And chances are better than ever that you might live to 100. But now the question is, how are we going to live?

3:04From the Toronto Star, this is How to Live to 100 or Die Trying. And I'm your host, Moira Welsh.

3:22So, you know, I call myself a crone in training, and that's a word that has a lot of negative connotations. But when you actually dig into the ancient stories, crones are really powerful and something to aspire to be. I wasn't happy with the choice of I either get to be a doddering grandmothery figure or like a evil witch in the woods like those are my choices as a woman as I get older no like I want more and we definitely as children are super excited about the adults will become and so I'm trying as an adult to be really excited about the elder that I will become and to to cultivate skills that'll be helpful for me in the elderhood.

4:06It's also my own little reminder that that's where I'm headed. I grew up during a time when calling a woman a crone was basically a four-letter word. A witch with warts and a bad back living in a forest, isolated and undesirable. Stay away from her. So I was a bit shocked to hear a woman in her early 30s use the word crone as an aspirational identity for her future self. That woman's name is Kyrie Carpenter. She reminded me that words and reclaiming them can be powerful. And it made me think of another word, ageism. That's prejudice or discrimination based on a person's age. And it's something that goes both ways, of course.

4:57Younger people looked over for juicier projects at the office or expected to work long hours for low wages. Or I think of my mom and sitting with her in the hospital as they directed their questions about her to me, as if her white hair meant she could not advocate for herself anymore, that she wouldn't understand when the opposite was true. Ageism, for older people anyway, can cause depression and early death, mostly because they realize that once they stop working or producing, society basically signals that they don't see them as valuable anymore. We saw some of the worst of ageism during the pandemic when governments allowed COVID to run rampant in long-term care, home to some of our oldest and most vulnerable.

5:47One study showed that older people really do internalize ageist views that surround them, ultimately becoming the stereotype, weak, unhealthy, and unwilling to try anything new. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, older people, of course, are not a monolithic group, so ageism will hit many intersections, like those connecting gender, financial status, sexism, racism, and ableism for those living with disabilities. Older racialized immigrants, for example, are at greater risk of suffering from social isolation, anxiety, and depression, even in comparison to non-racialized older immigrants.

6:33But back to the impact of words. Words have the power we give them. What's in a name, right? There's actually a new debate on the quick phrases we use to describe older people. The World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, Associated Press, and Canadian Press all recommend against the use of the terms elderly or seniors, which they say are stigmatizing. And honestly, how many 65-year-olds today seem elderly the way they did, say, 50 years ago? Dr. Samir Sunah is a leading Canadian geriatrician and Director of Health Policy Research at the National Institute on Aging at Toronto Metropolitan University.

7:16We've had a lot of discussions over the years, and I've found that Dr. Sinan never shies away from a hot take. So I asked him, when it comes to words, do we throw out the old, so to speak, and embrace the new? Or is this another version of political correctness, Boomer Edition?

7:39I say older adults or older persons, for example, and it was interesting. I remember being at a community town hall and it was something that we were doing a dialogue on aging. And there's an eloquent older person who got up and they basically said, we've been reduced as this monolithic group in society that people are dismissing. And they just use this one word, seniors, a word that people see negatively. So he said, you know, if anything, call me a senior citizen so that we can remind people that I am actually a person. I'm actually a human being. That was always very impactful on me. This is over a decade ago when I heard this impassioned speech.

8:17And so I never like to just use one word now. I always like to say older adult or older person. I moderated a panel on ageism for the Toronto Public Library. Dr. Sina was a panelist. So was an American author and PhD named Tracy Gendron, who wrote a fascinating book called Ageism Unmasked. She spoke about society's view of older people as a homogenous group, which by the way is obviously inaccurate, but which colors the way we speak about them. Here's an excerpt.

9:01citizens, and old people have been imbued with negative connotations. Old, in and of itself, can be an insulting pejorative. End quote. Which brings us to Mary Hines, who was also part of that panel discussion. Mary is 81. She is on the Toronto Seniors Forum and a member of the Older Women's Network. Her husband died years ago, making her one of the many Canadian women living alone after the age of 75. She decided to stay intellectually active by enrolling herself in university courses. She has a distinct style with short cropped hair colored in teal or tangerine and got tattoos later in life.

9:47On her right arm is the word perseverance. The tattoo on her left arm says resilience and above it is the word strega which she says is Italian for witch. She was also just about to fly to Spain a couple days after this interview to hike the Camino de Santiago, by herself no less. So obviously, Mary's not slowing down soon. Here's what she has to say about words and ageism. Old usually means you're starting to fall apart. You're getting decrepit. You're going to have all kinds of life conditions. You're going to have illnesses and you're closer to death. So we're afraid. We're worried, we're scared, and we think of old as being something you don't want to be.

10:34All our society tells us is that being old is bad. The commercials tell you you must do something so you don't look old. You must do something so you won't be old. Take this pill, use this cosmetic so you're not old. So we don't value aging. A worthy observation. But with her life perspective, does Mary even care what words are used to describe older people? I know in terms of research, it's older adults. I know in terms of people around me, it's usually seniors, usually government people say seniors. I know the city of Toronto asked in terms of choices what people wanted to be called, and the overwhelming choice was seniors.

11:13But I don't think it makes much difference. I'm an old lady. That's just the way it is. When we age, two things happen in effect. On one side, we have deficits. We have decline when we age, but there is also the growth of wisdom. And we need to embrace that side of it. Too often, all we embrace is the decline. And we say, look, older person, declining. You're aging, you're declining. Not you're aging and you're getting calmer. You're getting more reliable. I mean, even when people were dying at 40, the people who were 40 were looked upon as having wisdom. And then now that people get to live longer when they turn to 50, when it was 50s, then it was 50 was wisdom.

11:54Now it's 90 that's wisdom or 80s. So if you take a look at the indigenous North Americans. There's an embrace of the older person as having wisdom. Why are so many of us not doing that? We should revere the older people for what they can give us as opposed to saying, oh, old, goodbye. We'll be right back.

12:26Globally, the impact of ageism is really profound. At the top of this episode, I said it can be associated with an earlier death. And the World Health Organization puts that at potentially seven and a half years earlier. I guess it shouldn't be surprising when they lay it out. Ageism, they say, is linked to declining physical and mental health and a slower recovery from injury. Ageism also increases risky health behaviors such as eating unhealthy food, smoking, or drinking excessive amounts of alcohol. Essentially, it reduces our quality of life. As a geriatrician, Dr. Sinaw has seen its impact within our own health care system.

13:10I see ageism creep up in a number of different ways. well, they're 85, what do you expect, for example? Like, well, we don't want to give them that benefit or that surgery, for example, or why should we try? They're frankly just kind of, you know, living in God's waiting room type thing. So you see all these signals and signs that really collectively can tell a person you're useless, you're not wanted, your health and wellbeing don't matter as much as say a younger person's. And you see it constantly rearing its ugly head in so many ways, you know, when people then not only experience ageism from other people, but you also see this idea of internalized ageism where people start telling themselves, well, I'm useless.

13:56Like nobody wants me. I have lots of observations who are really frustrated with the healthcare they're receiving because they said, every single thing I bring up with my doctor now as a 90 year old, they just say, oh, it's because you're old. And they're like, maybe it is because I'm old, Dr. Sinha, but I want to hear it from you. Is it because I'm old or is there something here that we can deal with? And more often than not, it's actually something that we can deal with. It's not just a matter of just being old. There's actual correctable issues. So it's that constant dismissiveness that actually can lead people to kind of almost resign from living or wanting to be engaged.

14:33And I think when we reframe how we look at older people, not as kind of dependents, but people who are actually contributors, then I think we start to reap the rewards of having older people with lots more experience and wisdom who've lived lives and have so much to contribute. And I think more of us need to see that because the irony of all this is we're just perpetuating this idea over and over. And one day we are going to be the victims of this thinking that frankly is just, it's not fair and it doesn't make sense and it's harmful to others and it will be harmful to us. I first met Kyrie Carpenter, the Cronin Training, when I was in Montclair, New Jersey in 2018.

15:21I was there to do research for my first book, Happily Ever Older, Revolutionary Approaches to Long-Term Care. And I'd come to Montclair to interview the rather famous geriatrician Dr. Bill Thomas, where he and his troop of academic colleagues were performing a theatre show called Changing Aging, where they perform monologues about thriving while growing older. So I started chatting with some of the PhDs who were part of the theatre group, and I met Kyrie. She briefly let me know that she considered herself a crone in training before she ran off to help backstage. and that short conversation stayed with me.

16:01I knew we had to speak again. Why a crone? We met up a few months later at the University of Indiana and that's when I asked Kyrie the same question. She told me she was preparing for her later years by taking control of that word the way that feminists took back, you know, the other C word and it was mind-shifting to me, this millennial's embrace of old age. A rebellion is starting, she told me, a pushback against the old playbook that women were supposed to follow. Once they hit a certain age, they should just disappear. A growing number of women, all beautiful by movie star or music video standards, are either embracing gray hair and smile lines like Andy McDowell, or talking about menopause like Halle Berry, Salma Hayek, and Shania Twain.

16:55This lessens the power of ageism, however slowly. This is how Kyrie sees the change in attitude playing out in the rest of society.

17:07I'm hopeful and isn't hard at the exact same time, and I'll explain why. I think very recently, there's been such a good opening up of the standard definition of beauty. There's been so much more acceptance for different skin pigments, hair colors, body shapes and sizes, ethnicities. Slowly, the beauty world is opening. We're seeing more representation in advertisements and modelings that are branching outside the standard. There are these ideas that old isn't ugly anymore. You know, that that's not just the given. And the millennial cohort has been really strong in the body positivity movement.

17:44And I'm really hopeful that that will extend to us as we start to show visible signs of becoming older. But many, many, many of my peers are starting the Botox regime, hair coloring, those sort of things. And I want to just do a giant disclaimer of zero judgment. We still live in an incredibly ageist, incredibly sexist world. And a lot of anti-aging products and services are very economically necessary, particularly for women to maintain employment. So, and also just self-expressions, but I do hope that both will be acceptable, both choosing to, you want to dye your hair because gray hair isn't how you want to express yourself, that that's okay.

18:26But if you want to have gray hair, that that's also okay too. I just want more options. We'll be right back.

18:41Growing older, we can stay mobile, lift weights, eat healthy food, but our bodies will biologically change on our inevitable march toward death. You cannot outrun or outlift the eventual end. Not a cheery thought on the surface, but it is the truth. On our way there, if we're caught up equating the decline of our bodies with ourselves, says Kyrie, what else can we see but deficiency? You know, I am not my body, but my body is my own. That kind of a thing too. And so when we think that our body is us, to age becomes to fail. Because if our body is naturally breaking down, which is a natural biological process, we're up against nature and we're just setting ourselves up for so much shame and feelings of failure because there's no way we don't have a fountain of youth to live forever and when we equate our bodies ourselves yeah anything that goes wrong with it is somehow a failure also when we equate ourselves with our body then what the world values as far as aesthetics you know is very we have no control over how the world reacts to what we look like and yet if we think we are our body then our value is just at the whim of cultural norms which is again really really damaging when we think to self-esteem to sense of self to spirit since we've been talking about the importance and power of words i asked kyrie about her thoughts on the language we currently use when it comes to growing older.

20:22Words matter a lot and how we relate to each other about the words that we use matters a lot, especially in the moment in history we're in right now where we have so much political divisiveness. Words can really, really hurt. They can change how we see ourselves. They can change how we see others if they have a negative connotation. I mean, so, you know, I call myself a cronin training and that's a word we're reclaiming that has a lot of negative connotations. And I use older people versus older adults because for me, it's a reminder that, oh, right, adulthood's a phase and elderhood comes next.

20:55And that's just my own little reminder. And we definitely, as children, are super excited about the adults will become. And so I'm trying as an adult to be really excited about the elder that I will become and to cultivate the skills that will be helpful for me in the elderhood. I asked Mary Hines about the benefits of, frankly, still being alive. And I asked her, what would you say to younger people about all the good stuff that comes from growing old? I'm not sure how you can say anything right now because everywhere around them, they see old. I mean, if you're ever going to be economically secure, it's going to happen as you get older.

21:33It's not going to happen when you're 20, unless your father left you a million dollars or something. So you're more likely to be somewhat secure. And if you're not financially secure, you've made your peace with where you are. in terms of financial security. You've either had kids or not, but you've actually been around enough people that you know how people function. You know what's going on in the world. And you've got the time to do things. I mean, it gives you the time to be you. You do not have to, the rat race. I know when I was working, I never had any free time, really. I mean, even in the summer, I was getting ready for the next year of school teaching.

22:10So you never really felt like time was all your own. You had kids, you had a husband, you had things you had to do. You were lucky if you got enough sleep. And if you didn't get enough sleep, you couldn't say, oh, it's because I'm doing something for myself. It's because you were so busy doing work of some sort. So there's so much more you can do once you're older. And I think like the glory years is probably 50 to 70 or something like that. And if you take care of yourself while you're young and do the best you can while you're young, you do the best you can with what you have and prepare yourself for the fact that old age is pretty darn good.

22:44And it's not like when I was 20 and we said we're all going to be dead by 30 because we didn't die. I mean, Mick Jagger is still around. So, you know, we're aging and we should do it with style.

23:00I want to thank my guests in this episode, Dr. Samir Sina, Mary Hines, and Kyrie Carpenter. This episode was written by me, your host, Moira Welsh, and Julia De Laurentiis-Johnston. It was produced by Julia and Sean Pattenden. Our mixer is Matt Hearn, and our executive producer is JP Fozzo. Thank you for listening.