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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Science
Bianca Nogrady

‘The happiest time of life is as you get older’: can positive thinking help you age better?

A happy older couple resting on a picnic rug on grass
Seeing the joys and opportunities of the so-called ‘third age’ can meaningfully change your ageing trajectory, experts say. Photograph: East Fence Images/Alamy

By most standards, Prof Velandai Srikanth is at the peak of his career. He is the director of the National Centre for Healthy Ageing; his decades of highly regarded research have led to work being published in leading scientific journals; and he has been awarded funding from some of the world’s biggest scientific funding bodies.

He has also turned 60 and says that, as soon as he did, “somebody said ‘so when are you going to retire?’” The comment shocked him – he realised this was the stigma of ageing, and it was coming for him.

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