PARIS (PasseportSanté.net) October 21, 2008 – What is the recipe for better aging? An attitude of seeking pleasure, responds Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber, director of the French magazine. Psychologies. Beyond the advances in medicine which make it possible to continually extend life expectancy, “a large part of the work of ‘living better’ is up to us by learning to appreciate life. Like a currency that is constantly revaluing, each day becomes more precious ”.
The famous geneticist and scientific popularizer Albert Jacquard even suggests considering age as the time left to live rather than in the years since birth. “When my great-grandfather was 50, he had two years to live. Today, at 80, there are still 8 years to live. We can still make projects, says the one who will celebrate his 83 years in December. The important thing is what hope I have left to live and what I do with this gift. »A proposal warmly received by the public who came to hear the panel of Living longer, is it aging better ?, within the framework of the conferences of the University of the Earth of UNESCO, in Paris, on October 19, 2008.
From centenary to immortal
“Half of the children born after the year 2000 have a chance of becoming a hundred years old,” suggests Étienne-Émile Baulieu, a doctor who is very active in the field of research on DHEA, nicknamed “the hormone of youth”. The ideal, according to him, is to live as long as possible, in perfect intellectual condition. “The total loss of consciousness, of memory, of recognition that can be summed up by the word dignity, that is what must be rejected. “
Can we go so far as to dream of being immortal? That’s no for 61% of French people, according to the results of a survey to be published in November in the magazine Psychologies. Among those aged 60 and over, 70% would not like it. “The closer we get to the horizon, the more we get used to it”, analyzes Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber. According to him, it is above all the loss of the social fabric that makes old age painful. “Before, old people lived with others, now they live alone or in places to die,” he recalls. We are the first civilization to have its old people parked like this. What will our young people choose for the old people that we will be? “
Have goals and passions
How to counter the wasting and loneliness that so often go hand in hand with old age? “Progress is also the psyche, the spiritual, the emotional. You can’t ask science for everything, argues DD Dominique Eraud, phytotherapist and acupuncturist. “I see a motivation problem in old age. It takes a goal, a passion. Those who have it, and in addition if it is turned towards the others and the planet, do not ask me the question “Can you help me to end my life?”. “
A patient from a retirement home offered to match one senior for each toddler to the local school during lunchtime, she said. ” It’s extraordinary. All the grandpas and grandmothers dressed well, it made them feel physically good. And the children were waiting for them. It creates communication. I believe that all these means are not exploited enough. “
A beautiful way to link childhood and old age which, according to the priest and philosopher Samuel Rouvillois, have in common the capacity to receive and to give. “Today we need to find the reasons to live together in a family and in the intergenerational”. By leaving the rural area, we have left aside certain social modes of operation, such as intergenerational solidarity, he notes: “If we do not choose to live together, it is normal that we park until abuse those deemed to be heavyweights. Are old people not part of a difficult, demanding, but essential reality? “
Mélanie Robitaille – PasseportSanté.net
