Life expectancy has doubled in a century in Spain. And in the last 50 years it has gone from 73.5 to 84 years in Catalonia. A revolution that is not only biological or sanitary, but also cultural, according to the biochemist and science communicator Pere Estupinyà. In his latest book, What do you want to be when you grow up, he explores how today's 70 years have nothing to do with the 70 years of previous generations, and argues that it is a stage that can perfectly be the best of life.
When are you old?
— When someone decides to be.
Oh really?
— There are external factors, obviously, but when can you feel older? When you see, for example, that you don't hear well anymore.
Also when you are blowing out candles…
— Yes, because we see that we are moving forward. But I'll put it to you differently: prospective age. Instead of thinking about chronological age, think: how many years do I have left to live? If at 50 years old they tell you that you have 45 left, perhaps you don't feel so old. And statistically, we have a much greater prospective age than some time ago.
It's the big revolution, isn't it?
— It's not that we live more years, but how we live them. People who are 60 and 70 years old today are completely different from how they were until now.
That's why you say there aren't just three ages.
— There are four. If you think of a single third age, you can find dependency, unwanted loneliness, but also people in a very good physical, psychological, economic, and social state. That is why I propose a fourth age, which begins with fragility, when something fails: a knee, a hip, mild cognitive impairment…
That is, when you become dependent.
— But it is important to say that frailty can be reversible. Do you know what studies have shown? That often the loss of socialization is the fault of deafness, because it isolates you from the world. See how the hearing aids we now have, and which did not exist 60 years ago, can change that. Things can be done to cope with frailty, and when it is inevitable, then yes, dependence begins. What I have done is get rid of the fourth age, and that has allowed me to write an optimistic book about the third.
The subtitle is 'How to make maturity the best stage of your life'. Is this possible?
— It's not that it's possible, it's that statistics tell us that the most conflictive stage goes from 40 to 55, and from 55 onwards, levels of well-being, satisfaction, free time, and lack of stress increase. Old age is already the best stage of life, and it can still be even better.
Can you be at 70 living the best stage of your life?
— And in my late 90s. One of the scientists I've met who has impacted me the most is Paul Zamecnik. I was in Washington and, without knowing it, I was trying to flirt with his granddaughter. When I told her I was a science journalist, she said: "You should meet my grandfather, he discovered something called transfer RNA." I was amazed, I became more interested in her grandfather than in her and I went to meet him. He was 93 years old, he was in his lab at Harvard, researching very motivated… And I said to him: haven't you thought about retiring? And he replied: yes, but when it was my turn we managed to put DNA from one bacterium into another organism. How was I going to stop? He had a purpose. And one day he died, and that was that. He didn't have a fourth age.
The key is to have a purpose?
— It is one of the keys. It doesn't have to be a specific topic, it's enough to wake up excited about something. I became a father late, and my parents were no longer expecting to be grandparents. I remember their faces of satisfaction, and how my mother turned to my father and said: "Pere, we have to reach 90!" She said it as if it were madness. But do you know what the modal age is?
Modal age?
— The age at which most people die in Spain. For women it is 92 years. These are higher figures than we think, but we have an outdated idea, which is why we must rethink this third age and how we live it.
You talk about the golden rules for arriving well.
— The most obvious is health. Eating well, exercising, but we already know this. If we don't do it, it's not for lack of information, but of habits. That's why I emphasize habits. It's not about making an effort.
I liked this part.
— Effort is not going anywhere. Habits should not be an effort. Because if you don't like it, there will come a time when it will be useless. We have to achieve an environment or circumstances that lead us to perform healthy actions and that are routines that become automatisms.
What is the power of muscles?
— Do you know when it was discovered that exercise was good for health? There were a couple of curious studies in London, on double-decker bus drivers. There were those who drove and those who went up and down with the tickets. And it was seen that the health of those who went up and down was better. It was concluded that physical activity was the explanation; at first it was not so obvious. And it was said that the best was aerobic activity. Later, from the 2000s onwards, it was seen that by exercising the muscle, by doing strength training, chronic inflammation was reduced, the immune system improves, insulin is better regulated... In other words, it has very large systemic implications. That's why they now say that strength training is necessary. It's also good for the brain.
Another important rule: psychological well-being.
— It is the richness of connections we have, of friendships in uppercase and lowercase. It is not just about good friends, but about the people we interact with day to day, it does us good for the relationship to be good. Be generous, everything that is towards others. There is a topic that is often more taboo, the financial one. There is a minimum to be well, and if you want to prepare for this stage, one of the conditions is to try to save.
A striking thing: our age is not necessarily the one on our ID card.
— Think about a 15-year-old car that has been in the garage and another one that has been used. Aging, on a biological scale, is an accumulation of errors. Some happen with age, others may be more or less deteriorated depending on what we do. And when we look at telomeres, we don't see a chronological number, we see biological age.
I love the topic of telomeres. Explain to us what it is.
— They are structures at the end of chromosomes that get shorter. We can compare it to jeans, which wear out over the years and get those thin threads at the end… Well, the length of telomeres wears down, and that's what indicates the biological age of cells.
Have you looked at it?
— It was perfect in terms of telomeres, I didn't want to look at anything else.
Can we end up controlling telomeres with drugs?
— There is a gene therapy in telomerase, which is the enzyme that regenerates telomeres. And it is being investigated why telomeres are also related to cancer. So... it might be possible to try to rejoin telomeres and rejuvenate.
Is the system sustainable if people live 90 years?
— No, it is not anymore. And in the future, when the baby-boom retires, even less so. Surely there will be adjustments, let's assume that. I'm not saying everything has to be cut back, but I think it's something that will happen, and that I won't be able to retire at 65. I'm not an economist, but everyone I've spoken to for the book says that owning property will be very important.
It is difficult for maturity to be the best stage of life if we are working at 80 years old.
— Of course, just as you don't have to have an illness, neither do you have to have debilitating poverty. Otherwise, it cannot be a good stage.
What demographic and economic transformations do you imagine?
— I believe in the new role that older people should have. There are associations or centers, where it seems we want to entertain them so they don't get bored, so they are not alone. But we can ask for more. Older people can have a proactive social role, do things for others, such as senior volunteering. And we can involve them in projects. A senior brigade can be formed in Tortosa, to identify what is needed in the delta and be proactive in doing it. This new social role for older people is one of the key transformations.
You say that to know what we want to be when we grow up, we have to ask ourselves difficult questions. Which ones?
— There is a difficult, delicate one. Couples who can say: at 65 I'm not separating anymore. But what if I tell you you have 25 left? Do you want to continue with the person by your side? And people who have a job that gives them a lot of identity, may find that with retirement they say: and if I'm not my job, what am I? You have to prepare yourself beforehand because, if not, it's a shock.
And what do you want to be when you grow up?
— I want to try to be healthy, both physically and psychologically. I would like to have two spaces, one urban and one rural, but that requires money… and something else comes up, but I'm afraid the word has a touch of arrogance.
Which one?
— Intellectual. I am ashamed, but I like academic life, documenting myself, learning, being able to have my own thoughts. And I would like, in addition to traveling and other things, to be involved in an intellectual environment.