Healthy ageing is NOT anti-ageing: Healthy ageing – a goal to inspire

When you hear ‘healthy ageing’, you may picture buff-appearing older people like the 74-year-old bodybuilder Tsutomu Otsuka, who won the 2009 Japan Master Bodybuilding Championship (News-BF1, 2013). We all want to look fit and younger than our age and dream of finding the mythical fountain of youth. There is a very lucrative market for people seeking to erase the effects of age on the skin and body. Anti-ageing proponents suffer no lack of eager followers determined to try what they have to offer. In a world which celebrates youth and vigour, ageing appears to be a worthy enemy to be resisted by everyone.

And yet, we know instinctively that merely looking young and healthy is not enough. Some use certain hormones and therapies which improve physical appearance but they do so without fully grasping the implications of introducing these therapies into the ageing system and risk adverse effects from unintended consequences of disrupting normal physiology. Others seek cosmetic surgery. Unfortunately, procedures like liposuction, while enhancing the cosmetic appearance, do nothing to mitigate the effects of obesity on diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Adiposity of the visceral organs, a reflection of the diseased states of vital organs, is untouched by cosmetic surgery. Beauty is, as they say, only skin deep.

Is ageing something evil to be vanquished? Ageing is an inevitable process, a chronological progression for all living flesh. As living creatures, we all go through physiological changes when our living, adapting systems face challenges from what we experience externally and what we consume internally. Like it or not, our physiology responds well to certain ways we treat ourselves and responds poorly to other ways – the former include good diet and exercise, and choosing healthy ways in dealing with daily emotional, physical and mental stress – we call this making good lifestyle choices for our health. On the other hand, we can harm ourselves through making bad choices in the way we treat our bodies such as living a sedentary lifestyle, overindulging in food or promiscuous sex. Choices we have learned to call vices or unhealthy habits. We see this constant law, if you will, present across different population groups because while we have genetic variation distributed throughout the races, our underlying physiology as a human race is basically fixed as a species. Just as we obey simple physical laws like the law of gravity, our bodies obey physiological laws.

The dichotomy between conventional medicine and traditional/complementary medicine, therefore, may not be about belief in different systems but differing approaches taken to try to grasp a singular universal truth about the human condition. The occidental approach which is based on Enlightenment principles tends to be reductionistic in a logic-based attempt to make sense of how the body works physiologically. Its flaw, perhaps, is in trying to reduce the human condition to that which can be experimentally reproduced. Looking at problems solely from a materialistic or physical dimension works for many medical problems but it does not explain or attempt to understand problems that emanate from spiritual or emotional disorders. Eastern medicine seeks to heal the body holistically, involving mind, body and spirit and has the benefit of empirical experience through the millennia. Unfortunately, this approach has not, until recently, had to demonstrate the efficacy of its remedies through rigorous scientific testing and often relies solely on anecdotal evidence that does not take into account the very real placebo effects of personal belief.

Both approaches do not have to be exclusive of each other. Instead, they may represent different perspectives of the same truth about human health. Both schools of thought have individual strengths which, together, can synergistically expand our knowledge of ourselves and show us the most effective way to maintain healthy lives until the very moment of death. Perhaps, what we need most now is a paradigm shift in how we approach the challenges of healthy ageing.

Conceptually, healthy ageing consists of practicing healthy habits and proactively managing chronic ailments effectively so as to minimise their effects on our well-being and promote long lives which are filled with good health. We believe healthy ageing should be a process of living healthily from ‘womb to tomb–cradle to grave’. Health and beauty should be from within, not merely external. It should be holistic, combining conventional and complementary medicine and involving individuals as well as families and communities, encompassing physical, emotional as well as spiritual aspects of health.

With all due respect to Mr Otsuka, we feel that ageing healthily does not just mean looking good when a person is aged but also being in good condition – physically, mentally and spiritually. It is timely for occupational therapists to promote healthy ageing and work with their clients towards a better quality of life and independent living. Ageing begins with the young, and as the motto of the MHAS notes, ‘Live long, live well’.

Note: The Malaysian Healthy Ageing Society (MHAS) was established in 2002. It is a non-profit organisation that dedicates itself to educating health care professionals and the public on various healthy ageing issues. The MHAS believe that optimal quality of life can be achieved by addressing the issues related to ageing healthily. The Society‘s primary objective is to create public awareness for enhancement of the quality of life. MHAS organises programmes to inform physicians, scientists and members of the public on advancement in medical sciences and biomedical technology to detect, prevent and treat age-related disease. Since its establishment, the MHAS has held seven conferences on healthy ageing with various themes. The 8th will be held in 2016. In 2012, the MHAS organised the 1st World Congress on Healthy Ageing at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre. The 2nd World Congress on Healthy Ageing will be held July 2015, in South Africa with Professor Nathan Vytialingam (advisor to MHAS) in the advisory panel of the Congress. For more information, please visit http://www.wcha2015.com/. Prof Nathan Vytialingam was also recently appointed as one of the advisory panel in the Global Coalition on Aging, which is based in New York.