It wasn’t the well-worn topic of a recent New York Times lifestyle article  that struck me.  (White-collar baby boomers, dubbed the “Encore Generation” by Marc Freedman, are staking out do-gooder second careers.) It was the matter-of-fact way this trend was presented within a radically new demographic, biological, and cultural landscape.

So says Professor Leon Simons of the University of New South Wales, whose study
tracking 3000 people for two decades was just published in the Medical Journal of Australia.  What he actually said was, “A drink a day can keep dementia away.”  He found that one alcoholic drink per day cut the risk of dementia by 34 per cent. And you should garden while you drink. 

Knees hurt.  Memory hiccups.  Eyesight and hearing degenerate. I’ve interviewed people who can’t walk unassisted, who’re hooked up to oxygen tanks, who are being treated for cancer. But while those who work into their eighties and nineties face many different physical challenges, they share one attribute:  excellent cognitive function. And as Judy Steed writes in the Toronto Star,  “the harsh truth is that you can't enjoy old age if you haven't got the healthy brain to go with it.”

That maddening “senior moment” when the topic at hand slips away and you assume your brains are leaking out along with it?  According to a growing number of studies, this gloomy assessment is wrong-headed.  Instead, older brains are sifting through the store of information accumulated over a lifetime, filtering, placing information in context —  and often coming up with a better answer or solution than younger respondents.