‘It’s never too late’: How to improve your health at any age

When Florene Shuber was around 82 years old, she noticed that sometimes she’d trip and fall.

“One thing that old people don’t realize when they fall, is they don’t know they’re falling until they’re about this far from the ground,” she said, holding up her fingers an inch apart. “I found it pretty frightening. It happened two or three times. And I thought, I have to do something about this.”

There was a small gym near where she lived that she had walked past for years, and finally she went inside and asked to meet with a trainer. She started working out regularly.

Shuber is 91 now and said she feels younger and stronger than she did 10 years ago.

“You can improve. I see it in myself, for sure,” Shuber said. But it is hard work, she adds. “You have to be consistent with it.”

Some people see aging as a one-way decline. But new research in the journal PLOS One finds that it is possible for many adults over 60 to find their way back to strength and flourishing, even after health setbacks.

“It’s never too late,” said first author Mabel Ho, a recent doctoral graduate at the University of Toronto.

The study began with Ho’s research about successful aging in Canada. Working with her professor and co-author Esme Fuller-Thomson, she looked at data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging to see what factors contributed to thriving in older age — which they define as a self-reported sense of physical, psychological, emotional and social well-being, regardless of chronic conditions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, exercise and a healthy lifestyle were key.

The data is from a health and aging study that followed 51,338 Canadians for 20 years to assess what contributes to a long and healthy life.

What caught researchers attention was that a group of older adults — 8,332 people — reported they were in poor health in one or more areas but had turned it around three years later when data was collected again. They had focused on their health and saw results.

“We noticed that some people actually improve over time,” Ho said. “So that’s how we came to this very encouraging finding we call ‘reclaiming wellness.’”

The next step was to determine what factors are correlated with bouncing back to better health. The data showed a number of things older adults can do, some of which surprised researchers.

The biggest overall payoff? Tending to your mental health.

As researchers looked closely at who regained well-being, they noticed that people who reported having good mental health were nearly five times more likely to be back to optimal well-being three years later — meaning that sense of physical, psychological, social and emotional well-being.

“That is not what I had expected,” Fuller-Thomson said.

It turns out that if you weren’t depressed at baseline, you were much more likely to be able to find the motivation to do other things that were important for improving your health.

The finding emphasizes that older people who are struggling with physical health might want to address their psychological and emotional needs first when possible, especially if they are lonely.

“Social isolation is really problematic for every outcome,” Fuller-Thomson said. She added that having good mental health and developing strong social connections means making an effort, but it doesn’t mean you have to become a different person.

“I don’t want the message to be that you have to be a raging extrovert to age well. Social connection is how you define it. So if you have one or two dear friends that are all you need in life, but they are wonderful, that’s really important,” Fuller-Thomson said.

For Shuber, living in a retirement community has helped her stay connected, especially as she has lost friends and family as she ages.

“A lot of people don’t want to come into a retirement home, and I get that,” Shuber said. “But it gets harder when you’re living alone.”

Shuber said that, for her, planning ahead and traveling with people has been key to staying connected.

You can get stronger at any age

Most of the factors that predicted whether an older person was able to regain optimal well-being came down to basic lifestyle choices: not smoking (or quitting if you do), eating well and sleeping enough.

Exercise was also key, as Shuber found when she began working with a trainer. Exercise can change how rapidly we age, with both aerobic and strength training being important. It’s never too late to start, they said, but emphasized that exercise has enormous benefits earlier in life, too. Just make sure you’re doing appropriate exercise for your fitness level, and consult a doctor if you’re not sure.

“I do think that we have a message for people of all ages,” Ho said. “It’s never too early to engage into an active and healthy lifestyle. Eat well, exercise, sleep well, and that would be something that we can all prepare for our own aging.”

“I mean, these are all the things your mom told you,” Fuller-Thomson said.

One limitation of this study that the researchers acknowledge is because it was done in Canada, all the participants had access to free medical care.

The researchers said their primary goal is to change the narrative around aging: old age is not all about decline, it can also be a time when people get healthier and stronger, and the data shows that.

‘Just keep learning somehow’

One of the things that many older people who are thriving have in common is a desire to keep growing and learning.

There’s a program at the University of Toronto that brings seniors from a retirement community into a college class. Shuber participates and said both the younger people and the older people benefit from the others’ perspective.

“Most people think the benefit comes from the young people. But I think that we older folks have a lot to teach them. We’ve been through everything you’ve experienced to date and will experience,” Shuber said. “As my granddaughter would put it, young people get lost in the weeds sometimes.”

Marion Gommerman, 82, also attended the classes, then decided to enroll at the University of Toronto, where she is now studying alongside her grandson. Her daughter is also a professor at the university. Gommerman’s advice to seniors who don’t have the opportunity to go back to school is to find a way to keep learning.

“Just keep learning somehow,” she said, either through reading or just being connected to the community.

Shuber has always been a lifelong learner. After a career as an educator, she went back to school at 40 to become a lawyer. She had a second career practicing law, and then a third, creating a Montessori teachers college to train other educators.

“I retired at 86,” Shuber said. “I think the big surprise about growing older is that there were a lot of things I find still very exciting, areas where I feel I can still contribute and have a full life.”