Camilla Cavendish - Extra Time

Reasons to Be Cheerful

Extra Time has given us an entirely new stage of life: the stage of the ‘Young-Old’. We need to catch up with this new reality, stop lumping everyone from 60 to 100 together, and accept that it is normal to be vibrant and capable in your seventies. Media editors should take a look at how they portray ‘pensioners’, and question whether they are falling for a narrow narrative about youth. Governments must raise retirement ages in line with life expectancy and make this explicit: as part of signalling that the average lifespan has changed. And all of us need to challenge our own attitudes. Prejudices we build up against the ‘old’ will only hurt us when we reach that stage ourselves.

One vital question is what proportion of the over-60s will be ‘Young-Old’, thriving and capable like stewardess Bette Nash, and how many will be ‘Old-Old’, needing care, like her sister. On the answer to that question rests the future of our economies and the cohesion of our societies. If there are too many ‘Old-Old’, our welfare states and healthcare systems will be overloaded and younger generations will bear the burden. But if we can help people to stay healthy and productive, if we can abolish prejudice, we could see a new era of extended middle age, with most people staying vital almost to the end.

Later in this book I describe breakthroughs in genetics and neuroscience which may transform the youthspan, elongating our ‘Young-Old’ period and limiting the ‘Old-Old’. But we don’t have to wait for those. We already hold two of the keys in our hands to improving our Extra Time: diet and exercise.

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