by John Schieszer

Every Wednesday morning at nine, Ida Hamilton is busy setting up the first course, which includes doughnuts, cookies, breads, and other foods at The Phinney Neighborhood Association Soup Kitchen. Hamilton is a volunteer at the soup kitchen located at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Northwest Seattle. It feeds hundreds of people every week. Hamilton, who is 90 years old, rarely misses a Wednesday at the soup kitchen. She also volunteers at her church. “I like to help people, which is what I have done all my life. I was a nurse and my life is helping people,” smiles Hamilton.
Her attitude about helping people may well be a key factor in why she is so healthy, active, and living a rather glorious life. New research is showing that possessing a greater purpose in life may be associated with a host of health benefits, including a longer life.
Researchers in Chicago have been tracking 1,238 older adults in two ongoing research studies, the Rush Memory and Aging Project and the Minority Aging Research Study. The latest findings from this study suggest that having a higher purpose in life may significantly increase your life span.
For their study, the researchers defined purpose in life as having a tendency to derive meaning from life’s experiences and to be focused and intentional. After adjusting for age, sex, education, and race, a higher purpose of life was associated with a substantially reduced risk of death. Specifically, the researchers found that a person with a higher purpose in life was about half as likely to die over the follow-up period (up to five years) compared to a person with low purpose.
The association of purpose in life with mortality did not differ among men and women or in different ethnic groups. In addition, these findings persisted even after controlling for depressive symptoms, disability, neuroticism, the number of medical conditions, and income. A total of 151 of the 1,238 study subjects died during the study period.
“The finding that purpose in life is related to longevity in older persons suggests that aspects of human flourishing, particularly the tendency to derive meaning from life’s experiences and possess a sense of intentionality and goal-directedness, contribute to successful aging,” said study investigator Patricia Boyle, PhD, who is with Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois.
She said significant associations with mortality were found with three specific items on the purpose of life questionnaire to determine the study participants’ agreement with the following statements: “I sometimes feel as if I’ve done all there is to do in life;” “I used to set goals for myself, but that now seems like a waste of time;” and “My daily activities often seem trivial and unimportant to me.”
These findings have researchers intrigued and some investigators now hope to further study other variables not measured in this study, such as how religious a participant may be. In addition, future studies may examine whether purpose in life can be enhanced in older adults through interventions.
“Although we think that having a sense of purpose in life is important across the lifespan, measurement of purpose in life in older persons in particular may reveal an enduring sense of meaningfulness and intentionality in life that somehow provides a buffer against negative health outcomes,” said Boyle.
Places to Go, People to See
Hamilton, who will turn 91 in 2010, goes to exercise classes most mornings from 9:30 to 10:00 at the Norse Home, which is a retirement community where she lives. The classes are designed to improve balance, increase muscle strength, and help prevent disability.
“I think it is important to have something to get up and do. Volunteering is important because it allows me to feel like I am still able to help people. I can walk to the soup kitchen, which is three blocks away; and so I know exercise is the best thing for keeping me alive and I also get to help needy people,” explained Hamilton.
That very attitude of having important things to do and people to help may be why Hamilton will still be serving up hot meals and cakes and pies at her soup kitchen 10 years from now. Several studies just released in the past 12 months have shown that getting regular exercise is very good for the brain and may protect against Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia.
In a study published July 9, 2009 in the American Journal of Neuroradiology, physically active older adults were found to have healthier and younger looking brains. Investigators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine used non-invasive magnetic resonance (MR) angiography to examine the number and shape of blood vessels in the brains of physically active older adults. The group consisted of seven men and seven women between the ages of 60 and 80.
The volunteers were divided into two groups. The high activity group reported participating in an aerobic activity for a minimum of 180 minutes per week for the past 10 consecutive years, and the low activity group told investigators they had no history of regular exercise and currently spent less than 90 minutes a week in any physical activity.
More Exercise May Mean a Healthier Brain
The investigators also found that aerobically active individuals exhibited a blood vessel pattern in the brain similar to younger adults.
The researchers identified significant differences in the left and right middle cerebral artery regions confirmed by more than one statistical analysis. The brain’s blood vessels naturally narrow and become more tortuous with advancing age. The study showed the cerebrovascular patterns of active older adults appeared “younger” than those of relatively inactive older adults.
Just recently, researchers at San Francisco’s VA Medical Center found another piece in this puzzle. They looked at 3,075 white and black older adults (70 to 79 years old) and found that those who were physically active experienced slower rates of memory loss and cognitive decline. All of the volunteers were tracked for a period of seven years.    “We found that older adults who were sedentary throughout the study had the lowest levels of cognitive function at the beginning and experienced the fastest rate of cognitive decline,” said study investigator Deborah Barnes, PhD, MPH, who is a geriatric researcher at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, San Francisco, California. “Cognitive decline also was faster in those whose physical activity levels consistently declined during the study period.”
What was also very interesting was that Barnes and her research team found that sedentary older adults who began new aerobic exercise programs experienced improvements in cognitive function, especially the ability to process complex information quickly.
Hamilton thinks these researchers are onto something. Using her nursing skills to help others has kept her busy for the past 75 years and probably for many more to come. “In my line of work we know that prevention is the key. I think exercise helps with keeping your mind sharp and helping me with mobility,” she adds with a twist.