Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs about Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live

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It's a good message (ageism isn't just discriminatory, it negatively impacts health) with maybe a long article's or a booklet's worth of data to support it.

that literally (and I'm not exaggerating here) presents us with exactly one line of useful information in the entire book, that information being, "If you think young, you'll feel young! I’ll have Marketing work through the text … I think they’ve got Morgan Freeman on the hook for an interview. So often I read a book that spends a long time outlining a problem and then it never concludes with how to address it. Positive, practical and full of fresh insights, Breaking the Age Code will dismantle your assumptions about how we get older and leave you looking forward to what the future holds. Levy has produced a manifesto to inspire us to fight against the scourge of ageism and its negative effects on older adults, and our society.Levy is a pioneering psychologist and gerontologist her wonderful book will inspire us with its solid scientific discoveries and practical advice for longevity.

But the topic of this book is very much an issue for people of all ages, I would have liked to have been more aware of these issues decades ago. Breaking the Age Code should be required reading for everyone on the planet - but especially in the United States. We saw that as we watched science play out in real time and headlines during the first year of COVID.If you are trying to work out if you should read this book or not, this review might not help you much. At 67, I hike, belly dance, garden, lead a study group, read widely 10-12 books a month, teach Qigong, and have an active love life. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account.

Larding the text with examples of remarkable old people (yes, there are old healthy old people, and the ones mentioned are statistical outliers) makes good reading but poor science. And so I can personally attest to how right Becca Levy is about the demeaning attitude of many medical professionals.

When we do so, we will create the potential of longer lives that young people can look forward to and older people can live their fullest in. Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live Becca Levy, Vermillion, London, 2022, 294 pp.

She demonstrates that many health problems formerly considered to be entirely due to the aging process, such as memory loss, hearing decline, and cardiovascular events, are instead influenced by the negative age beliefs that dominate in the US and other ageist countries. She tackles head on how we can shift these outdated ideas at a societal level and what we can do to help ourselves. She demonstrates that many health problems formerly considered to be entirely due to the aging process, such as memory loss, hearing decline, and cardiovascular events, are instead influenced by the negative age beliefs that dominate in the US and many other countries. First revealing the surprising impact our biases around ageing have on the ageing process, Dr Levy then sets out what we can do as individuals to help ourselves age well using her simple ABC method. Changing one's mindset and entrenched thinking rarely happens overnight - especially when it's as institutionalized as ageism - but this book can help anyone and everyone who struggles with the idea of getting older and provides realistic, actionable guidance for addressing issues personally and as an advocate across multiple verticals in society.

Levy notes that positive attitudes towards age can even facilitate healing, with patients under the care of medical practitioners who have positive attitudes about age heal faster. She demonstrates that many aspects of ageing we consider to be natural, such as memory loss, hearing decline and cardiovascular events, are in fact influenced by our own negative biases, often informed by cultural ageism. Breaking the Age Code is a landmark work, presenting not only easy-to-follow techniques for improving age beliefs so they can contribute to successful aging, but also a blueprint to reduce structural ageism for lasting change and an age-just society. Many life lessons are subtly infused along with the story that made it an absolute favourite read for me. Becca Levy has done a masterful job of describing the importance of aging beliefs on health and wellbeing at both the individual and societal level.