It’s fabulous to be 50!

Once you hit middle age all the talk seems to be about the inevitable decline into a miserable old age. But it’s not all downhill, as Louise Atkinson reveals.

After the age of 50 we tend to be less affected by seasonal allergies such as hay fever. This is partly because as we age, we produce less of the allergic antibody IgE which triggers the reaction. As Dr Adrian Morris, of the Surrey Allergy Clinic, explains: ‘In allergic people, IgE levels rise through childhood, then stabilise in the late teens to 30s, and start to drop through the 40s and 50s. So by the 60s and 70s, the allergic reaction is less severe.

Many of us think hard-edged competitiveness is a young person’s game, but a recent study at the University of Oregon found older men are far more so. The researchers suggested older men may have a greater drive for social dominance because by middle age, men expect to have attained a certain level of success and, therefore, feel the need to demonstrate this success through competition. Women showed a similar pattern of competitiveness, but their willingness to challenge others was consistently lower than men’s.

With age, a drop in inhibitions means many older people report more enjoyable sex after 50. A National Council on Ageing survey found that of people aged 60 and over who had regular intercourse, 74% of the men and 70% of the women had more satisfying sex lives than in their 40s.

Although the menopause is often linked to a drop in libido, some experts believe a woman’s sex life can improve. For many, orgasm becomes easier with age, according to research by Dr Debby Herbenick, a lecturer in applied health science at Indiana University. ‘While 61% of women aged 18 to 24 experienced orgasm the last time they had sex, 65% of women in their 30s did and about 70% in their 40s and 50s,’ she says.

She believes that as women become more sexually experienced, they have more confidence and, therefore, enjoy themselves more. And men don’t do too badly, either. A 2008 study in the British Medical Journal found that an increasing number of 70-year-olds are having good sex and more often.

Fewer colds

Each time your body is exposed to a virus, it develops antibodies that make you immune to that virus in the future, so the older you get, the more likely it is that you’ll be immune to some of the estimated 200 cold viruses in circulation. Experts estimate that after the age of 50, the average person has one or two colds each year - this compares with two or three for 20-year-olds and many more for children. Unfortunately, this increased immunity doesn’t apply to the flu virus which mutates every year.

Although we associate the ageing process with failing mental prowess, some areas, such as vocabulary and long-term memory, can be sharpened with age.

Verbal ability continues to improve into old age, particularly if we keep reading. A recent study by the University of Texas found that beyond the age of 60, we are also better at making decisions that guarantee long-term benefits than we might have been in our 20s and 30s. The researchers believe that the ventral striatum region of the brain, associated with habit formation and immediate reward, deteriorates with age, and we compensate by using the prefrontal cortex which controls rational and deliberate thoughts.

click to enlarge