Life/Work - Issue 29

Leave it to baby boomers to turn gerontology into a growth profession. The forever-young generation may be getting older, but we're not about to take it lying down.

The irony is that we're the ones who, back in the '60s, built a counterculture out of rebelling against anything that our parents said was good for us. Well, the times they are a changin'. Want to get a rise out of the average boomer in his forties or fifties -- the one with a potbelly, a receding hairline, slightly high blood pressure, and a bum knee? Just tell him how to improve his health or slow his aging. Mortality, after all, is the ultimate bummer.

As psychologist James Hillman writes in his new book, "The Force of Character and the Lasting Life" (Random House, 1999), "Aging has become the major fear of a generation." Call up the subject on Amazon.com, and you'll find an astonishing 4,058 books. Scientists, physicians, philosophers, nutritionists, stress-reduction specialists, and New Age gurus are all weighing in with advice for a price. Most of it is prosaic -- the kind of stuff that our parents were telling us all those years back. But now we're willing to pay for it.

We live in an era that celebrates youth as never before -- not only in popular culture but also in the business world. Twentysomething Web millionaires are outshining vastly more experienced executives. In a marketplace that prizes adaptability, celebrates speed, and rewards those with enough energy to work around the clock, youth (or at least, youthfulness) is at a premium.

At the same time, because of negligence and laziness, many of us have been growing older faster than we should. Despite everything that we now know about good health, far too many of us smoke, drink too much, sleep too little, overeat or eat badly, avoid exercise, and carry on blithely as if we're destined to live forever. By behaving in this way, we're not just hastening our demise -- we're also putting ourselves at a competitive disadvantage.

So what exactly do these behaviors cost us, and to what degree would changing them make a difference? Is there a middle ground between an obsession with aging and an intelligent commitment to a healthier lifestyle? How much time, money, energy, and angst should we devote to the fight against senescence? What, to be blunt, is the value of any given investment that we make in living longer?

The most provocative and accessible contributor to this debate turns out to be neither a gerontologist nor a philosopher, but an anesthesiologist and internist at the University of Chicago who has a passion for statistics and a hunger to "change the health of the nation." He is Dr. Michael F. Roizen, the author of "RealAge: Are You as Young as You Can Be?" (HarperCollins, 1999).

"How old are you?" I ask Roizen the first time we talk. "I'm 53," he says. "But my 'real age' is 39." And how does he come up with this Jack Benny-ish age? Roizen has set out to quantify what, until now, have been confusing, contradictory, and anecdotal suggestions from experts about what's healthy and what's not. The resulting "real age" equations are replete with covariants and regression analyses that are designed to factor and weigh variables. But, in simple terms, Roizen is out to show just how much any given behavior affects a person's rate of aging -- for better or for worse.

The "real age" analysis takes into account not just how much longer you might expect to live but also the quality of life that you're likely to have along the way. People who control their blood pressure, for example, not only live longer than those who don't but also have lower rates of disability in the later stages of their lives. "RealAge is a calculation of the net present value of your health behaviors," Roizen explains, in familiar business-school language.

In 1995, Roizen and four other scientists began spending their Saturday mornings poring over more than 800 scientific papers -- mostly large-scale epidemiological studies -- in order to settle on 44 key behaviors that they agreed make the biggest difference in aging. They found, for example, that excessive alcohol consumption hastens aging, while moderate drinking -- up to one drink a day for women, no more than two drinks a day for men -- tends to reduce a person's "real age."

Sex is a good age reducer too, as long as it's practiced safely. The average sexually active American has sex about once a week. But, according to Roizen, "The more orgasms you have a year, the younger you are." Double your average annual orgasm count, and you'll knock about a year and a half off your "real age." (I know your next question. Sorry, but it's not yet clear whether masturbating produces the same benefits.)