Ageism May Be Mostly in Your Head

Ageism is rampant, according not only to our anecdotal experience but also to research. Moreover, according to a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the effects of ageism include serious effects on mental and physical health.

Besides lamenting the thoughtless behaviors of others, even if well intentioned – How are we doing today, miss (or young man)? – I am here to share with you that the most serious form of ageism is within your power to reduce. I will leave you in suspense for the time being.

Thanks to the development of what’s called the Everyday Ageism Scale (yes, Virginia, there is such a thing), we can express the extent and impacts of the slights that come at us all the time. The JAMA paper carries the snappy title of “Experiences of Everyday Ageism and the Health of Older U.S. Adults.”

Lead author Julie Ober Allen, an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma and developer of the scale, says via email, “The Everyday Ageism Scale asks older adults about how frequently they experience 10 commonplace examples of routine ageism in their day-to-day lives, such as jokes about aging, people assuming they have trouble with smart phones, or beliefs that loneliness is an inevitable part of growing older.”

“Many people (including older adults) consider these experiences to be meaningless, unimportant, or even amusing, but they represent age-based stereotypes and discrimination that may be harmful to health,” she adds.

In their study of more than 2,000 people between the ages of 50 and 80, authors of the JAMA article said they found that 93.4 percent had regularly experienced some form of ageism. They then looked at four measures of health, two physical and two mental: fair or poor physical health, chronic health conditions, fair or poor mental health, and depressive symptoms. The paper includes the fine print and extensive research references.

Everyday ageism worsened health across all four measures, with the impacts directly tied to the severity of a person’s exposure to ageist behaviors.

Here’s the heart of their findings:

Everyday ageism may affect health outcomes via multiple pathways. Ageism may hamper quality of older adults’ interactions with health care clinicians. Ageist cues, beliefs, and interpersonal interactions may serve as stereotype threats, primes for stereotype embodiment, and models of normative expectations for older adults, all of which have been associated with poor health outcomes. Accordingly, everyday ageism may be a chronic stressor in the lives of older adults. Researchers posit that exposure to chronic stressors repeatedly activates psychological, cognitive, behavioral, and biological stress responses, resulting in accelerated aging and increased risk for chronic disease and premature mortality. Inverse associations are also plausible. Older adults with poor health may experience more ageist messages and discrimination (and discrimination based on health and disability) and personally relevant evidence supporting negative beliefs associating age with health.

This is sobering stuff. And here’s the kicker: the most frequent and also the most damaging form of everyday ageism is the number we do on ourselves!

“Internalized ageism was the category most commonly endorsed in our study (81.2 percent of participants) and associated with the largest increases in risk for all health outcomes,” the study found.

“Associating poor health with old age may be the most deeply rooted aging stereotype, despite evidence to the contrary (for example, 82.3 percent of participants in the current study rated their physical health as good or better),” the authors said. “Several issues may contribute to the potency of this stereotype. Physiological and cognitive changes accompanying old age are often characterized negatively as ‘problems’ or ‘deterioration,’ rather than viewed neutrally as part of human development.”

In plain words, your aches and pains may be related more to how you take care of yourself than how old you are. The flip side is that you can feel better – perhaps at any age – by treating health issues as preventable and treatable and not as inescapable declines as you shuffle off life’s stage.

And here’s the authors’ understatement of the day: “Disentangling health outcomes attributable to chronological aging from preventable health outcomes attributable to the social construct of ageism is a challenge for future research.”

Well, if they think it’s a challenge for future research, just imagine how big a challenge it is for us today!

But it’s a challenge worth taking on. At some point every day, perhaps when your smart watch says it’s time for a meditation moment, acknowledge how you’re feeling and ask yourself whether you’re a victim of your own ageism.

Philip Moeller is the principal author of the Get What’s Yours series of books about Social Security, Medicare, and health care. @PhilMoeller