Getting Better With Age? Yale Study Says It's More Common Than You Think
We're used to hearing that aging is a one-way street: things get harder, slower, and dimmer as the years add up. A new Yale study says that's simply not the full picture.
Researchers followed more than 11,000 adults age 65 and older for up to 12 years using the Health and Retirement Study, tracking cognitive function through standardized testing and physical function through walking speed — a measure geriatricians take seriously because it's closely tied to disability risk, hospitalization, and mortality.
The results: nearly half of participants, 45%, improved in cognitive function, physical function, or both over the study period. About 32% improved cognitively, while 28% improved physically, and for many, the gains were large enough to matter clinically, not just statistically.
Here's the part we find most interesting. Lead researcher Dr. Becca Levy noted that averaging everyone together tells a story of decline — but looking at individual trajectories tells a very different one, where a meaningful share of people actually got better.
And what set the improvers apart? Those who held more positive beliefs about aging at the start of the study were significantly more likely to improve in both cognition and walking speed — even after accounting for age, sex, education, chronic disease, depression, and how long they were followed.
Why this matters for the families we work with
We see this play out constantly. A client or a parent gets a diagnosis, a fall, a hospital stay — and the whole family starts operating as if decline is now the default setting. Sometimes that's medically accurate. Often, it isn't. This study is a good reminder to keep watching the actual trajectory in front of you, not the script culture hands you about what "old" is supposed to look like.
If you're caring for a parent or navigating your own aging, that's not a call to ignore real changes — it's permission to expect more than decline, and to notice and support the wins along the way.
