EXCESS DISABILITIES: THE DISEASE OF DOING TOO LITTLE
Psychologists have coined the phrase "excess disabilities" to describe what happens when people make the second type of error - when they minimize their true physical capacities and end up with disabilities they do not really have. A classic case of excess disabilities occurs when Aunt Emma moves in with her daughter and within a few months can no longer cook or shop. While it seems that her health has gone into a tailspin, her physical deterioration is artificial, not real. Her loving daughter has taken over those jobs that would "strain" Mama and so has eased her entry into old age.
I have no figures on how many older people suffer from excess disabilities. But all bets are that the number is large. Though this waste of human potential can happen at age six or eighteen, conditions conspire to make older people the group most at risk. Like pregnancy, age is viewed as a delicate condition. People are told to take it easy; they are given special seats on the bus. Even someone who is running marathons at seventy is vigilant to signs of incapacity and vulnerable to excess disabilities just because of that different mind set that being older brings: ' 'Yes, I'm fine now, but what about next week? I could have a heart attack or a stroke. I could be in a nursing home."
In a 1987 study reported in the Journal of Gerontology, researchers at Harvard University demonstrated that this inflated sense of physical vulnerability does tend to hit us in later life.9 They asked 480 people aged forty-five to eighty-nine this question: "In general, how would you rate your physical health? Would you say it is excellent, good, fair, or poor?" Then they compared the answers to a variety of objective indexes - hospital stays, diagnoses, health as rated by physicians. When they divided their subjects into two groups, middle-aged people (forty-five to sixty-four) and older people (sixty-five and over), the researchers discovered that age itself produced physical pessimism. People with identical objective health ratings were more likely to label themselves in worse health if they were over sixty-five.
The lesson of this study is that when we are older we must take special care not to succumb to this self-fulfilling prophecy: "Age means incapacity." To guard against excess disabilities, never accept health advice based on your age alone: "At eighty no person should still be playing tennis"; "You're seventy, so isn't it time to give up jogging that daily mile?" Remember, everyone's body ages differently. If you are convinced you are capable of doing something and your physician agrees, have confidence. Provided you are sensitive to your body's signals, you are the best judge of what you can do.
Make the saying "one swallow doesn't make a summer" your motto. Tell yourself "my age" is the last, not the first, explanation to accept when something goes physically or mentally wrong. Saying a symptom is due to "old age" is the same thing as saying nothing can be done. Consider any physical change for the worse curable until proved otherwise.
*17/159/5*
GENERAL HEALTH
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