People usually regard old and elderly people are inferior when it comes to thinking and performing any activity. Old and elderly people become frail and fragile and people think they do not have the capacity to think and do any activity in their best senses and form. Elderly people need support behind them all the time, to take the minutest and the most sensitive decisions of their life. Elders definitely need support, yes, but that doesn’t really mean that they have lost the ability to think their best and do their best. Many preconceptions about elderly people needs to be thrown out of the window as t the end, they are just preconceptions and assumptions, and there is no perfect base for it. Science shows and tells ys that elderly people are actually pretty awesome in their old ages, and that their thinking levels go way beyond that what we can assume it for. They have the capability of doing many things better than us, because they have seen more of the world than us. Their experience takes them beyond any learning lessons a class could ever teach us, which is primarily the reason why old people need to be treated with respect and care. Here is a list of the top 10 unexpected scientific reasons why old people are awesome and why they need to be loved and cared till they reach the façade of their lives.
1. Old people outperform the young
A study by the Berlin’s Max Planck Institute for Human Development found out that the cognitive performance of the old people was better, organized and more consistent than the younger ones who were given the same series of tasks to perform. Because the old people are emotionally stable with time, they were found to be more capable of handling things and deliver a steady performance as compared to the younger inmates.
2. Their Brains are too full of wisdom
The reason why we mock the old people about their brains and thinking functions being lower is because they already have a lot of information stored in their brains. The old people can still process new information in a better and quicker way than the young, but are far less likely to act on impulse due to their brains requiring less dopamine than the younger brains. The brains of the old people are a biological root to wisdom and that’s primarily the reason why they react so less because of the great world of knowledge and wisdom in their head.
3. Respecting them is in the genes
France’s University of Rennes in 2010 made an interesting study which observed communication habits amongest a group of Campbell monkeys. It was noticed that though the older monkeys communicated less with the others, the call of the elder monkeys were immediately heard and attended to because of their greater experience in life and survival and their higher level in the social hierarchy. This basically means that respecting and treating the old people with care is not something which is in our hands, but something which comes naturally to us or we are programmed to. Respect for elders in an evolutionary trait found in all primates, including humans and monkeys.
4. The Key to World Peace
Mark Haas from Harvard’s International Security Program said that an aging population will force the US government spending towards pensions and healthcare instead of directing the amount to creating missile and tanks and aircrafts. A rapidly aging population could divert this government spending into something better and make the US more vulnerable to renegade terrorist attacks. The US would become less able to intervene in terrorist and political affairs, thus bringing peace to the country and the world.
5. Improved driving skills
The US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety did a study in 2012 which showed that road accidents among the old and elderly people had decreased considerable over the last few decades. Now call it the safety and reliability of the modern cars today or the improved mental and physical health of the old people, it stands as a fact that old people are less likely to cause accidents for others and themselves.
6. Plenty of Sex
The idea that old people do not have sex is just a misconception. According to a study in the US in 2013, the elderly people apparently enjoy more sex than any one of us. From the sample population, about 50 percent elderly people agreed that they give and take oral sex, and one third of them agreed on indulging in the act of sex very often. This had given considerable rise in the amount of elderly STD’s, which has been pointed out to the lack of awareness and lack of assistance to the elderly with sex education.
7. Old people helped evolution
According to anthropologist Rachel Caspari and her colleague Sang Hee Lee, human evolution had taken a huge leap especially during the time period when it saw a fourfold increase in the number of people entering their old age. This is basically because researchers believe that the population explosion occurred when people gave the responsibility of their children to the elderly, which saw a high rise of elderly population after a certain period of time. The survival rate of the elderly increased and thus there was more exchange of ideas and experiences amongst people, which gave a healthy edge and help to evolution.
8. Nostalgia is Therapeutic
University of Southampton psychologist Constantine Sedikide says that there are a whole lot of health and psychological benefits behind nostalgia. Where most of us believe that nostalgia is a bad way of getting into the past, science says that nostalgia actually helps to battle the effect of loneliness within a person. Nostalgia is also known to increase a person’s self esteem and helps people keep in touch with themselves with the old times and the reality of life.
9. The Obese live longer
The Ohio State University pints out that older people live longer if they weighed a few extra pounds below their waistline. Older people are more susceptible to diseases and that those few extra kilos could help them stay away from the potentially life threatening diseases. An overweight old person could outlive his slimmer and thinner above 50 year old peers, as the extra weight is actually a source of energy and food when the old people are too sick to eat, keeping them fine and healthy.
10. Better stress handling
According to science, old people handle stress in a much better way, and show less symptoms of anger and anxiety when things do not go their way. Old people have more of an optimistic outlook on their life and therefore have the capability of managing stress way better than any of us. Because of their worldly and long experience of facing many unpleasant moments in life, they accept changes and situations as they are without reacting or stressing much about them.
Leave a Reply