Editor’s note –
July 2026

Good news for anyone who’s getting older – and has a brain

A three-year study of nearly 4,000 adults ranging from age 19 to 94 found that brain health can improve at ANY age -into the 90s and beyond, at least.

“This study challenges the prevailing narrative of inevitable cognitive decline, suggesting instead that brain health can be proactively cultivated at any age”, says Dr Lori Cook, director of clinical research at the University of Texas at Dallas Centre for BrainHealth (CBH).

A few minutes a day on brain-training activities is all it takes to maintain – actually improve – mental sharpness.

So there dies another “inevitable” consequence of ageing. And it gets even better, as a long-term Yale University study has also rejected the idea that ageing means constant – and inevitable – decline.

In this study, nearly half of adults over 65 improved physically, mentally – or both – over time.

“What we found is that improvement in later life is not rare, it’s common, and it should be included in our understanding of the ageing process”, said Prof Becca Levy, professor of social and behavioural sciences.

Prof Levy’s 2022 book Breaking the Age Code established her as one of the world’s leading experts on “successful ageing”. Consistent in her findings is that living long and healthily has much more to do with our beliefs about ageing than what the “longevity medicine” industry is trying to sell us.

Of her research she says: “I found that older people with more positive perceptions of ageing performed better physically and cognitively than those with more negative perceptions. They were more likely to recover from severe disability. They remembered better, they walked faster and they even lived longer”.

A huge problem is “The Evil Octopus”: ageism embedded in our culture, reinforced on a daily basis on the street, in healthcare, in advertising, general media and the entertainment industry. Old people are routinely portrayed as clueless, feeble in body and mind – “in valid”.

“I was also able to show that many of the cognitive and physiological challenges we think of as linked to growing old – things like hearing loss and cardiovascular disease – are also the products of age beliefs absorbed from our social surroundings”. But she says that people who resist can adopt positive age beliefs  that “can even act as a buffer against developing dementia in people who carry the dreaded Alzheimer’s gene AOEE4”.

For more, see our research reports starting on page 50…