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How long will I live? Will I lose my memory? Will I have enough money? How will I die?
On the cusp of her 50th birthday, aging expert Debra Whitman had questions.
Searching her bookshelf, she couldn’t find the equivalent of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” for adults wanting to age healthily and happily.
“There was really nothing out there about this second half of life,” said Whitman, 54, who is AARP’s executive vice president and chief public policy officer and former staff director for the US Senate Special Committee on Aging.
Never mind that many Americans are living longer — the US population aged 100 and over will quadruple in the next 30 years, rising from approximately 101,000 in 2024 to around 422,000 by 2054, according to the Pew Research Center.
Whitman set out to write that book, “The Second Fifty: Answers to the 7 Big Questions of Midlife and Beyond,” herself.
Just a year out from my own midcentury mark, I talked to Whitman about what we can start doing now to chart a course for a happier and healthier second half of life.
This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
CNN: Let’s start with happiness as we age. When are adults happiest and least happy in life?
Debra Whitman: Personal happiness increases with age. A recent AARP survey found that we’re actually least happy in the middle of our lives, in our 40s and 50s. By the time we’re in our 70s, that’s when we are happiest. We found that 91% of people over age 70 are happy. Even if we look at people over age 50, 90% are optimistic about their future.
By our 70s, we appreciate what we have. We have better emotional regulation and a better outlook on where we are. Even if we do have health issues, most people still consider themselves to be healthy, even in their 80s and 90s.
The biggest fear most people have about aging is cognitive decline and dementia.
About half of Americans think they’re going to get dementia, but only about 15% of people — even those in their late 70s — have even mild cognitive impairment. This view that everyone is going to lose their memory in the future just isn’t true.
CNN: What can we do to help prevent or delay dementia?
Whitman: There are five healthy habits, and this applies to overall health, too.
The first is exercising regularly, the second is eating a healthy diet, third is maintaining a healthy weight, and fourth and fifth are no smoking and little or no alcohol.
Even if you do just one healthy habit, it extends your life expectancy by two years.
If you keep those five healthy habits, your life expectancy is increased by 14 years for women and 12 years for men. Those healthy habits also help our brain health, too. Adopting even a few healthy behaviors could help lower your risk for dementia by up to one third.
CNN: What have you learned from other cultures about the way they think about aging and death?
Whitman: Many countries have an older population, but they’re also taking demographic change more seriously (than the US) and making plans for it.
For example, Singapore has a program where they offer people of all ages lifelong learning. The country has created Silver Academies for people of older ages to stay engaged and mentally sharp, as well as job-training programs for people middle-aged and younger.
New Zealand has a significant Maori population, and I traveled there to understand how they were facing aging in different populations, the same way we have different populations here in the US.
In Rotorua (a New Zealand city famous for its Maori culture), a woman named Katie Williams told me about how she had attended a local meeting to discuss what classes to offer older adults. “I want to take a class where I learn to decorate my own coffin,” she’d said during that meeting.
The meeting hosts were stunned into silence, but afterward the people around her told Katie they, too, were very interested in this idea. So she started the Kiwi Coffin Club. It’s part social club — they have tea and board games and books, they do arts and crafts — and it’s also part-conversation about the end of life.
In addition, each person gets an opportunity to decorate a coffin in a way that’s meaningful for them. I saw one woman’s coffin decorated with images of favorite hikes throughout her life. They’ve had Elvis-themed ones, race car ones. They also donate coffins to low-income families and make special coffins for people who are losing a child.
I really do love the idea of finding ways to connect later in life over things that are meaningful to you and give back to your community.
CNN: How important is a sense of community to the aging process?
Whitman: It’s critical. We know that being socially isolated is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness and social isolation can shorten your life by 15 years.
Dr. Robert Waldinger, who leads the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest continuous studies of adult lives, said the difference with people who were healthy into their 80s — compared to people who weren’t — is that they had stronger relationships, friendships and family, and better ties to their community.
CNN: What else contributes to healthy aging?
Whitman: Your mindset really matters. If you think that aging is a positive time of life, if you look forward to it, if you think that it’s a time of wisdom and ability to give back to your family and your community, you live seven and a half years longer than if you have a negative view on aging. You have fewer strokes and heart attacks, and even your brain volume and your chance of getting dementia is lower. Mindsets really do matter as we age.
CNN: Did you realize any beliefs you had about aging were wrong?
Whitman: For the death chapter of the book, I spoke to one of the real founders of the palliative care movement, Dr. Diane Meier, and I told her I was going to advise everybody to have an advance directive outlining medical preferences.
She said, “Actually, Deb, we just did research that showed that advance directives are not followed and can be harmful for people who, when they’re young and healthy, check boxes that their older self may not want.” During Covid times, a lot of people checked the box that they didn’t want to be on a ventilator. Some people never realized that you could go on and off a ventilator once you’re healthier again.
Meier recommended having conversations with somebody you trust and who can help make decisions in the moment based on if you’re incapacitated and can’t make those decisions for yourself. It should be someone who knows what’s important to you. Those can be important conversations to have throughout your life.
What you might be willing to accept as you age can change, too. People who say they would never, ever want to be in a nursing home right now may be OK with it down the road, when it’s the care level they need.
There are a lot of holes that we can fall into across our second 50 years, whether it’s realizing we need long-term care or just the fact that we need glasses, hearing aids and dental work.
I hope I can help people realize that we can make aging easier. We, as a country, need to prepare for an aging population so that everyone can live a long and healthy life. There are certain things that all of us should be pushing for so that we can have a better future.
CNN: What have you done differently in your approach to aging?
Whitman: Since I wrote the book, my kids have gone off to college. Now I’m trying to make time and energy for friends and family members and others to stay better connected to them than I could (before they left). I think carrying a sense of gratitude through my life as well is really important.
I want to live a long and healthy life through my “second 50.” So doing those things now — to build up relationships, to build up values — really matters.
Writer Terry Ward lives in Tampa and feels happier in her late 40s than she did in her 30s.
