Aging Outliers Offer Valuable Lessons
Emily Rogalski, a University of Chicago scientist, studies both superagers (whom she defines as people over age 80 with memory performance at least as good as an average 50- to 60-year-old), as well as individuals at the other end of the aging spectrum—those with PPA, a disease that renders people unable to speak beginning in middle age. She believes these two extreme, and extremely rare groups, offer lessons in both brain resiliency and brain vulnerability.
Pragmatism + Optimism = 102 and Still Going Strong
Meet Hilda Jaffe, 102, who defies age and is the veritable embodiment of a ‘superager.’ As the Washington Post reports, at age 88, Jaffe decided to turn the page and start a new chapter, selling her home in New Jersey and moving to Manhattan, taking up residence in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. More than a decade later, she is still actively enjoying the easy walks to grocery stores, seeing opera, and living independently in the city that never sleeps. According to Sofiya Milman, director of human longevity studies at the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, superagers typically have a very positive outlook on life, with built-in resilience. Read on to learn more about Jaffe’s approach to life and what studies of other superagers reveal.