EXCERPTS FROM DR. BORTZ’S MOST RECENT BOOK:
WE LIVE TOO SHORT AND DIE TOO LONG

On longevity and the body’s ability to thrive in old age:

Our revised, longer life expectancy is] quite a leap from the time of the first Caesar, when human life expectancy was 25 years, or from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the average American lived to the age of 49. Traditionally, this increase in life span has been explained by factors such as decreased infant death mortality, eradication of communicable disease, and improvements in both nutrition and public hygiene. These most certainly are significant developments, but they only skirt the periphery of a more fundamental act. We live longer because we are designed to live longer. And when we control anomalies such as disease, trauma, behavioral maladaptation, and self-destruction, the natural order of our life prevails. […]With prudence of prevention and health maintenance, you should think of yourself as a much younger life stage — capable of living far longer, and in a far more healthy status, than did your forbears. In essence, the opportunity to experience these additional years can be thought of as a “gift of found lifetime.”

[S]ome may fear this gift because of misconceptions regarding the physical nature of the aging human body. […]I believe the fear of being old and infirm is what keeps us from being old and healthy. My hypothesis comes as a physician who for decades has watched with astonishment as his patients actively avoided all manner of preventative health cure. As our knowledge of aging rapidly advances, such a tragedy is unnecessary, wrong, and inappropriate. I am not speaking now of medical technology, for I do not believe the miracle is with us today. This is because much of what passes as age change is really not due to age at all — but to disuse. Put a broken leg in a cast and in a few short weeks it will wither and appear as a leg many decades older. Similarly, all of our bodily functions — digestive, cardiovascular, respiratory, sexual, and mental — are highly keyed to use. “Use it or lose it” is far more profound than its colloquial tone suggests. Thus, the length of life is determined much by its content. Will you—will we—be a liability or a resource? The issue becomes not just how long or how well, but how long and how well. Quality of life and length of life cohere.

On mental acuity in old age:

Dr. Bortz makes “The Case for Continuous Learning”, citing in the process numerous compelling studies, countless examples of the aged brain in action (Bernard Baruch, Buckminster Fuller, Georgia O’Keeffe, George Bernard Shaw, Frank Lloyd Wright), as well as hard data that date back hundreds of years. And though there are studies that seem to show “inevitable” declines in mental function and I.Q. in age, Dr. Bortz uses his analytical eye to go beyond the primary findings to show that : when disease is excluded, older brains do not deteriorate with regard to blood flow, oxygen use, metabolism, and so forth. It is inevitable that when looking for age effects researchers fin d that such effects are intermixed with disease problems, some of which may not yet be apparent. For example, hardening of the arteries to the brain would be expected to impair brain performance; but this is a disease and not aging. Alzheimer’s disease unquestionably impairs brain performance, but this too is a disease and not normal aging. Older persons fatigue more easily and this is also a factor in testing procedures.

The confounding effects of illness, depression, and fatigue, as well as less apparent issues such as motivation, complicate the question of intelligence change with age. Some researchers have suggested that older persons (whether living alone or in nursing homes) tend to have intellectually and socially impoverished environments. Further, older persons tend to seek immediate and idiosyncratic rewards rather than the delayed payoff which learning efforts hold for younger persons. Age differences in cognitive abilities are seen to reflect variations in the availability of concurrent environmental conditions that produce and maintain optimal levels of cognitive functioning. Decline in old age may reflect performance measurement rather than defects in competence.

On sex and aging:

Aging and sexuality are intimately linked. The pursuit of youth implies the search for renewed potency or physical attractiveness, and the mythology of aging is permeated with misconceptions and prejudices regarding sexual activity. Fortunately for us all, scientific examination of the myth brings much enlightenment. All major human-sex researchers conclude that regular sex performance over the life span is likely to confirm an active sexual pattern into old age. In glorious other words, if you were sexy when you were 20 and 30, it is most likely that you will be sexy at 70 and 80. Masters and Johnson, the leaders in the field of sexual research, stress the “consistency of lifestyle” as being highly determinative of late-life sexual capacity. The familiar refrain “use it or lose it” is heard once again.