5 Health Benefits of Getting Older

While it’s true that maybe you can’t run as fast as you used to, and maybe you periodically forget where you left your keys, getting older actually has been proven to have it’s own set of health benefits—and they’re pretty darn good!

Read on to learn what researchers have found.

That’s right! It could just be that the older you get, the happier you are. A recent study from the University of Warwick in England surveyed 10,000 people in the United States and the Britain. Their findings? The people who were older expressed the highest level of happiness with their lives. Researchers evaluated quality of life based on eight different mental and physical health factors. A Pew Research Center study on Growing Old in America echoes the results with nearly half of the study respondents age 75+ saying that their life turned out better than expected.

If you suffer from debilitating headaches, relief may be in sight. Migraines could lessen with age, according to a study by the Headache Center of Atlanta. The study found that people who were over 50 got a “lesser acute migraine attack” than their younger counterparts and symptoms such as nausea and light sensitivity decreased with age.

We all know that forgetfulness is part of the territory with aging, but parts of the brain actually improve with age. The older you get the better able you are to problem solve and understand arguments, says writer Barbara Strauch in her well-researched book The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain. Strauch also found that judgment also improves with age, as does the ability to make financial decisions.

Contrary to what we’ve all heard, you might actually sleep better the older you get. Findings from research at the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania published in the journal Sleep found that people in their 70s and 80s had the fewest sleep complaints and complained the least about being tired during the day. The biggest culprits in sleep disturbances: health problems and depression.

While younger people may feel their chronological age, older people feel younger—a lot younger—than they really are. The Pew Research Center study on Growing Old in America found that 60% of the study’s participants age 65+ said they felt 10-19 years younger than their age. Guess there's something to the saying, "It's all in your mind!"