Dr. E. Paul Zehr - Teaching an old brain new tricks (and kicks)
"An older head can't be put on younger shoulders." --Adam West as Batman from the ABC series “Batman” in Episode “Marsha’s Scheme of Diamonds”, 1967.
Right now while you read this you are aging. Biological aging is a steady, continual process which begins pretty much as soon as life has begun. When we think of aging we think of getting older. And when we think of getting older we often think of things we can’t do as well as we used to do when we were “younger.”
As we age, real and perceived limits often get placed on our abilities and capacities. Like the title I used for this post—a riff on that age-old idiom “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
Part of that saying seems real enough. We all know there is a decline in function that occurs after a certain age. The term “senescence” includes this idea and for us humans it sets in after about age 30.
Despite the unavoidable changes that occur in the nervous system with aging, an active lifestyle can help mitigate the overall impact of these changes. Keeping active across the lifespan provides the stimulus to maintain muscle mass and motor skills we need. And they are needed for things like kicking up your heels dancing and kicking up your heels for kicking.