industry & reform
Age was a measurement of how healthy you were , in a funny way . So age is simply the number of years we ’ ve been exposed on this earth to whatever risk factors are around . And for people who had high risk factors , they could be quite young and yet quite at risk of dying when they got the infection . I think it ’ s really changed that dialogue around ageing so that people understand ; frankly , we ’ re ageing from the moment we ’ re born . Our cells are ageing and getting older , but age is not just a number . People might have heard about ‘ bio age ’, where we talk about age having a value that can change depending on how healthy you are .
Not all 80 year olds have the same health . And in using that kind of concept , you can see why some people are healthy and others aren ’ t . So for example , dementia , which is a common disease of ageing . Actually your risk of dementia doubles every five years after the age of 65 . However , even though this is true up till 90 , when they look at 90 and a 100 year olds , their risk of
dementia isn ’ t that high . And it ’ s because to get to 90 and 100 , you ’ re actually very much healthier than the rest of the population that died at younger ages .
So you can see that these things aren ’ t inevitable . It really is about how healthy we are during our lives . I think that concept of the ageing , that we ’ re all ageing , that this is a spectrum , and we don ’ t just grab a number like 70 , 65 or 80 and say , well , that ’ s the time when you ’ re old . It ’ s more about all of us maintaining our activity and our health throughout our lives .
This all sounds like quite a big ask . It ’ s true that ageism is incredibly prevalent . However , it ’ s not the same everywhere . Media culture , we ’ re well aware , tends to focus on the young , but all the cultures that have lasted a millennia , they recognise the value of experience and of time on the planet . And I think if we turn to those older cultures and change our culture to be more cognisant of what people can contribute , then ageism will be removed
You and your colleagues mentioned indigenous Australians as an example of that . There ’ s many , many old cultures across the globe , and that absolutely includes our first nations people . And that enormous body of knowledge , particularly in first nations people where there ’ s a lot of oral history , is just incredibly important . I think there ’ s many lessons we can learn .
It ’ s important to look at Western culture . People were dying at an average age of 30 a few hundred years ago , and now we ’ re living to 70 or 80 . So in some ways we ’ re kind of new to having a large proportion of older people in our community . And the largest growing portion of our community is people over the age of 60 . So I think we ’ re new to this , but there ’ s many cultures around that have held respect for older people for a long time , and there ’ s much we can learn , and it will benefit all of society . ■
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