The Young Ones

I was trying to remember a show i'd seen where some women in a dance troupe had curtailed the ageing process so that they were still vital and able to perform far beyond what some might expect of people of advancing age, I think now that it was featured in one of the three episode series called The Young Ones, where six 'celebrities' were taken back in time, by being placed in a retreat where everything around them was from an earlier period in their lives, to see if feeling younger again would have any physiological effect on them,,, IT DID,  In fact their beliefs about themselves and what they could and couldn't do were transformed by this process.

So in light of my failed attempt to find a link to this show online, or a video of the women proving that your beliefs effect your reality, i'm going to quote from a book i'm reading at the moment called The Gamma Mindset which focussing on this:-

Another study on ageing was conducted by Professor of preventative medicine Alexander Leaf, then of Harvard Medical School.  He travelled the globe researching cultures that had many healthy centenarians - people who have reached their hundredth birthday.  He even found many who were between 110 and 115 years old and still in good health.  He gathered massive amounts of data about them and their internal and external environments, including the weather, their diet and their genetic dispositions.  His conclusions were that none of these factors made a difference to how healthy they remained at such an advanced age.  There was only one common denominator - their cultural beliefs about ageing.  In all of these cultures, elders are greatly respected, so that growing old is an honour.  The older you are, the wiser and more useful you are to your community.  These elders were surrounded by family members, peers and a culture at large that valued them and their life experience.  The collective perception of ageing had a dramatic effect on the individual's biological expression of ageing, keeping them vigorous, alert and active, sometimes well into their second century.

Important Bit - We've all been told what to expect as we age - that it's an inevitable process of our bodies and minds slowing down and even deteriorating.  These studies and others show the lie to that belief.