This made me so happy!

I’m often frustrated by the pervasive messaging in our culture to expect decline with age (even beginning as early as mid-30s!), even to the point of writing off symptoms as “aging” without bothering to look for an actual root cause. While aging means we’ve been on the planet longer, and thus accumulated more toxic exposures, more opportunity for damage and deficiencies, and entropy means that everything (including our bodies) will go from order to disorder over time, far too often (as Langer points out), this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our minds are far more powerful than we realize, and if we expect to go downhill by a particular calendar date, we’ve greatly increased the likelihood that it will, in fact, occur. Not only that, but if we expect it, we won’t fight it. We won’t look for ways to optimize our health, or search for obstacles to cure to eliminate, or nutritional deficiencies to bolster. We’ll just complacently decide, “Oh, well, what can you expect? I’m getting older.” If you don’t look for a solution, it’s guaranteed you’ll never find it.

I love that Langer is a voice (perhaps almost a lone voice) proclaiming the opposite.

My rating: *****