When we die, although all our organs fail, it is our brain that stops functioning. As people age, most of them are afraid of dying and not ready to do so. They want to fulfill their life’s obligations before they say goodbye to this world. This may mean something as mundane as building a house, “settling” the children or seeing their grandchildren.

There are two ways to age: you can either age healthily, maintaining all your mental and physical faculties or you can age with illnesses, lifestyle diseases, cancers and deterioration of the brain, forgetfulness, a wobbly gait, falls and fractures. Once this happens, you become a burden to everyone.

People often say, “Age is just a number.” But that is not strictly true. There is functional age and physical age. Physical age depends on your birthday and is a fact. Functional age depends on your body’s performance. The two need not correlate. Functional age may be lower or higher than calendar age.

Some people are called “super agers” who live close to 100 or beyond but as they do, they manage to maintain all their mental and physical faculties. This is undoubtedly the best way to grow older.

The brain controls all our activities, physical movements, thinking, reasoning and personality. Most people remain healthy until the age of 40. After that, we lose 5 per cent of our brain volume every 10 years. As the brain shrinks, communication between the various also centres declines. Its work becomes inefficient and slow.

Therefore, preserving a brain’s function must become a priority so that our brains at the age of 80 are still like those of 40-year-olds.

Young people get discouraged when the look around and see mentally and physically unhealthy, inactive and burdensome elders. They feel getting older is a downward spiral. They look for magic pills.

Our life expectancy is 25 per cent genetic and 75 per cent environment and lifestyle. Studies on super-agers suggest physical and mental decline is not inevitable. Studies have shown that discipline, moderation and a healthy lifestyle, with no smoking or drinking, are the keys to maintaining high levels of physical and cognitive function for much longer in life.

The writer has a family practice at Vellore and is the author of Staying Healthy in Modern India. If you have any question on health issues please write to yourhealthgm@yahoo.co.in