Aging isn‘t just about decline. Here’s how health improves as we grow older

Aging isn‘t just about decline. Here’s how health improves as we grow older

• TribecaCare
• 21st Aug 2025

Photograph:  Tribeca Care Senior Member enjoys her trip with a group to Mandarmani Beach, near Kolkata, July 2025.  Senior Travel is Tribeca’s intervention to prevent Elderly Isolation and Loneliness and help prevent Cognitive Decline.

“We spend billions of dollars each year trying to fight aging-covering up wrinkles, dyeing gray hair, and chasing the promise of youth. However, while aging is often portrayed as a slow decline, scientists say that view overlooks the bigger picture. “Everyone talks about aging as this decline,” says Michelle Feng, chief clinical officer at Executive Mental Health and a licensed psychologist who specializes in geriatric psychology and medicine. “But aging is just living. It literally means that you’re alive.”

How you choose to think about aging makes a big difference in how you experience it, she adds. Studies show that people who hold more positive beliefs about aging are more likely to have better cognitive health, fewer mental health issues, and even a longer lifespan. A positive outlook “leads to better cognition, cognitive health, lower likelihood of depression and anxiety later in life,” says Feng.

1. You get better at handling stress: Stress doesn’t disappear with age, but our response to it changes. “Older people have a lot more ability to understand stressful or difficult circumstances, and they’re actually better able to manage [stress] than they are when they’re younger,” says Aanand Naik, executive director of the UTHealth Houston Consortium on Aging.One reason why is that many older adults have developed strategies to deal with recurring challenges. “Older adults have more experience generally, but they have more experience with specific situations and have strategies on how to manage and address them,” says Naik. A 2023 studyfound that older adults aged 65-84 had lower cortisol levels and heart rate reactivity during a lab-based stress test compared to adults aged 18-30. They also reported feeling less stressed overall.
2. You become more emotionally resilient: It’s not just the stress response that changes with age—our emotions shift, too. “As you get older, you have a bit more emotional intelligence and emotional adaptability,” says Naik. Feng agrees, adding that “older adults tend to be a little bit better at avoiding negative affect and maintaining the positive affect.”

That shift may be partly neurological. Younger adults tend to suppress emotions using prefrontal brain regions—a strategy linked with more internal stress. Older adults, however, more frequently use a technique called reappraisal, reframing situations to find meaning or perspective. This shift makes many people less emotionally reactive, but may also help explain why older adults report greater overall emotional well-being.

3. Experience makes you wiser: While certain kinds of memory and processing speed decline with age, others—such as vocabulary and long-term knowledge—remain steady or even improve. Researchers call this crystallized intelligence: “It’s your knowledge base,” says Feng. Both she and Naik refer to it more broadly as wisdom. In some cultures, that wisdom isn’t just acknowledged—it defines the role of aging itself. A study from Japan’s Awaji Island found that older adults consistently outperformed younger individuals in traditional ecological knowledge, a finding researchers refer to as the “wisdom of the elders.” 

4. You stop caring what everyone else is doing

Older adults often report that they care less about what others think and spend less time comparing themselves to others. This aligns with socioemotional selectivity theory, which suggests that as people perceive their time as dwindling, they narrow their focus.  “How much time you feel like you have left in life determines how you prioritize things,” says Feng. “When your time is more limited, you may focus more on emotionally rich or meaningful things that can benefit you now, instead of in the future.“

Dr. Michelle Feng PhD.

Dr. Feng is a Licensed Psychologist in the State of California with specialty training in geriatric psychology and medicine. Dr. Feng presently serves as the Chief Clinical Officer at Executive Mental Health.