Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY -- Research from the University of Virginia says you might be getting old sooner than you think. Researchers say our mental abilities begin a downward slide from the age of 27, after reaching their peak just five years earlier.
Most people we talked to in Salt Lake City thought it was much later. "I would say mid-40's," one woman said. Her son thought it was somewhere in the 50s.
Another woman says older people are still just as capable. "Maybe for some things you're not as flexible anymore, you can't learn as fast, but for what you've done so far, I mean, for what you've been prepared to do, probably, you're OK," she said.
Dr. Norman Foster with the University of Utah Department of Neurology agrees with them. He says determining when exactly aging starts to set in shouldn't be the focus. "I think this is an artificial argument that aging begins at a particular time. It's really evolving all the time," he said.
Dr. Foster says each age group shows different levels of intelligence and learning ability.
"If there's a change in the tax law, the first people who raise concern about that are the elderly, because they follow it, they have the time to put the emphasis and really read the details," he pointed out.
Dr. Foster says the only real cause of real memory loss is some kind of disease like Alzheimer's. He says every age has trouble finding the keys or remembering where they left their coat.
E-mail: pmchardy@ksl.com
