By Julie E 
Photo Credit (Gettyimages)
The old saying goes something like, “70 is the new 30.” More people in their 70s are working and doing well at their jobs, thanks to the improving health of older adults and the plummeting economy. A recent study that compares the cognitive and physical abilities of persons in their 75s and 80s now with those of the same age in the 90s sheds light on why this is happening.
The University of Jyväskylä’s Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences and Gerontology Research Center recruited 1,226 volunteers for the study. Five hundred persons born in 1910 and 1914 made up the initial cohort studied in the years 1989 and 1990. The second set of statistics, covering the years 2017 and 2018, included 726 individuals who were born in 1938, 1939, 1942, or 1943. At 75 or 80 years of age, members in both groups were evaluated at home and then re-evaluated at the study facility using the same techniques. Measurements of lung function, including maximum isometric grip and knee extension strength, maximal walking speed, forced vital capacity (FVC), and forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1), were taken.
The results demonstrated that older persons’ physical and mental health is far better now than it was 30 years ago. Men and women in their seventies and eighties have much greater motor skills, response times, reasoning, working memory, linguistic fluency, and strength than their earlier-born counterparts did at the same age. On the other hand, there were no discernible variations in lung function testing across the groups.
“The better walking speed and muscle strength among the later-born cohort was explained by higher physical activity and increased body size,” explains researcher Kaisa Koivunen, “whereas the most important underlying factor behind the cohort differences in cognitive performance was longer education.”
People in the current generation have grown up in a very different environment than those in the previous three decades. Researchers found that advancements in health care, education, workplace conditions, and nutrition, as well as in health and hygiene practices, have all had a role in the enhanced functionality.
The findings imply that when life expectancy rises, the number of years spent with strong functional capacity among those aged 70 and 80 also increases. Possible explanations for the finding include a larger lifetime maximum in physical performance, a slower rate-of-change with advancing age, or both.
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“The results suggest that our understanding of older age is old-fashioned,” the researchers wrote, adding that their study is one of only a few worldwide that evaluate performance-based maximum assessments between individuals of the same age in different historical periods. According to studies on the effects of aging, the middle years get the most additional years, while the later years do not see nearly as much growth. Having more years to enjoy life without limitations is a benefit of a longer life expectancy, but the downside is that people are living longer and need more care in their latter years. At the same time that the population is becoming older, two things are happening: first, more and more individuals are living into their golden years, and second, there are more and more elderly people who need help from others.