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Hi, psychologist here. Cognitive decline is not my specialty but I’ve taken doctoral level courses in it. The problem with the “shorter higher quality life” po

Hi, psychologist here. Cognitive decline is not my specialty but I’ve taken doctoral level courses in it. The problem with the “shorter higher quality life” position is that diet, exercise and health affect EVERYTHING. Exercise and diet are majorly implicated in both physical health decline and onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s. In fact, maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle is often found to be the number one protective factor against cognitive decline. Unfortunately there’s no health strategy that reliably produces a shorter higher quality life. There’s only increasing health span through lifestyle. Note: there are medical choices that increase lifespan but not health - medication and surgery that prolong unhealth. But that’s a whole different game than healthy lifestyle.

samatman 5y ago
I suspect the causality flows (mostly) in the other direction for that correlation. The set of healthy and active elderly people consists only of those who can be healthy and active, while the set of sedentary / overweight elderly contains both those who choose not to be, and those who are kind of stuck with it due to chronic illness. Which aren't sharp categorical distinctions, mind you, but it virtually guarantees that the latter set will have shorter lifespans and worse end of life outcomes, even though plenty of nonagenarians are overweight (though very few indeed are obese). I stay in the game for what it brings me now. I can think of little so grim as going to the gym with the goal of living longer— but that's my personlity, someone else might find it motivating.
zoomablemind 5y ago
> ...The problem with the “shorter higher quality life” position is that diet, exercise and health affect EVERYTHING. I would also include sleep in this list. With advancing age the amount and quality of sleep seems to diminish. Maybe it's individual-specific and dependent on the life-style, in any case undersleeping effects eventualy catch on and affect the body and mind state.
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samatman 5y ago

I suspect the causality flows (mostly) in the other direction for that correlation. The set of healthy and active elderly people consists only of those who can be healthy and active, while the set of sedentary / overweight elderly contains both those who choose not to be, and those who are kind of stuck with it due to chronic illness. Which aren't sharp categorical distinctions, mind you, but it virtually guarantees that the latter set will have shorter lifespans and worse end of life outcomes, even though plenty of nonagenarians are overweight (though very few indeed are obese). I stay in the game for what it brings me now. I can think of little so grim as going to the gym with the goal of living longer— but that's my personlity, someone else might find it motivating.

zoomablemind 5y ago

> ...The problem with the “shorter higher quality life” position is that diet, exercise and health affect EVERYTHING. I would also include sleep in this list. With advancing age the amount and quality of sleep seems to diminish. Maybe it's individual-specific and dependent on the life-style, in any case undersleeping effects eventualy catch on and affect the body and mind state.

deleted 5y ago

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