Good stuff about getting old
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
America's standard take on being old is that it's better to be young. But researcher Laura Carstensen of Stanford University sees it differently. She says recent studies have found things older people do well, such as regulating their feelings and working on their social relationships.
And, although researchers have spent a lot of time studying losses in things like memory and reading comprehension, Carstensen says there's another side:
"It seems that wisdom, or being able to solve practical problems of everyday living, improves. So a lot of what we think of as being smart in life involve processes that get better with age, not worse." (11 seconds)
And she says older people can use this, by continuing to learn as they age.
She spoke at a lecture at the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.