How to hold off ageing and dementia with the power of positive thought

Viswa Nathan is not your typical 81-year-old. The former editor of the Hong Kong Standard (now The Standard) from 1974 to 1980 – still works as a journalist and media services consultant.

He has an active social life and enjoys a whisky or three with friends when he goes out (the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club is one of his regular haunts).

He is as fit as a fiddle and doesn’t suffer from any age-related medical conditions. And, in addition to writing and editing manuscripts, the Hong Kong resident is also involved in the development of a farm in Masbate in the Philippines, where his wife was born.

Unlike many people his age and younger, Nathan doesn’t worry about getting older. “I’ve never had a negative attitude towards ageing,” he says. “I am an optimist and always have been. Life is precious and full of possibilities and I believe we are meant to enjoy every second of it.”

The way we think and talk about ageing is important. Research has shown that people who think positively about their own ageing process are happier and tend to live longer than people who dread getting older.

But a new study from the Yale School of Public Health has uncovered another benefit of thinking positively about ageing: it lowers your risk of dementia, a broad term that describes numerous conditions relating to a decline in cognitive function.