Instant Genius - How to Retire in Good Health, with Tania Wiseman

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

Thinking about retiring? Or maybe someone in your family is. Hopefully, we’ll all reach the age where we can at some point. But how can we navigate it in good mental and physical health, for ourselves and our loved ones? In this episode we speak to Tania Wiseman, associate professor of occupational therapy at Swansea University. She runs us through what can happen to us when we retire and how to best cope with it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit name audio.com to learn more. And welcome to Instant Genius, a bite-sized master class in podcast form. Each week, you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus magazine. Are you thinking about retiring? Or maybe someone in your family is? Hopefully, we'll all reach the age where we can at some point.

But how do we navigate it in good mental and physical health? for ourselves and for our loved ones. In this episode, we speak to Tanya Wiseman, Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy at Swansea University. She runs us through what happens in our bodies and brains when we retire and how we can best cope with it. So obviously retirement is an age-based concept in the current retirement age in the UK, I think, is 65.

But what do we know about that? And when does the average person in the UK retire? Well, there are lots of answers to that, but the main one is either when they can afford to retire or when they are forced to retire, so either through ill health or poor relationships at work. So many people retire in their early 50s, 50s about the earliest age you could draw a pension at some pensions, and many people don't retire at all. So the idea of retirement age is a bit troublesome, really. Yeah, that's why I was thinking. And I think, like, first off, a great coming off that, a great thing to look at is for people who are yet to retire, you know, the so-called resignment anxiety. I mean, I know personally as someone who is mid-aged, this can be an issue and something you think about. So what are the main concerns there?

Well, one of my favourite terms for that is pre-tirement. So people that are thinking of their own. I'm thinking of that. it or are planning. So one of the problems I think with working towards retirement is the uncertainty. So none of us know how our life is going to be, how our health is going to be. The only thing we can to some extent plan for is our finances in later life. So mostly that's what people do. And that causes a great deal of anxiety because everybody knows that a pension is less money than the working wage and that makes life concerning. One of the things that I've begun doing because I'm also someone that's looking towards retirement at some point, not in the near distant future, but at some point, sometime maybe,

is thinking about what am I waiting for? Why am I waiting for? Why am I waiting until a certain point in time where I no longer have the everyday structure of work in order to do the things I want to do? and what of those things can I do already? What can I crack on with now? And so starting to think about, you know, my life's not going to suddenly change and be different

because one day I stopped going to work. All of those other things in your life that you do, you know, you do your daily chores, you look after yourself, you look after other people, you have to shop and care for yourself, you have to care for pets. You know, all of those normal everyday things, they still take up a lot of time.

So you always have to practice. It's like, I think retirement's kind of a marathon these days, isn't it? It's not a sprint. So if you're lucky and you're in good health and you retire around 65, you can look forward to a good 20 years, probably quite a lot more of retirement time. And that hasn't always been the case because it used to be that people retired and they looked at two or three years. And then of course there's not to say, you know, some people never get to retire because they just don't get to that, you know, that time where they can. So there's a real big disparity there. But the sense of practicing and rehearsing for retirement, and I would say, you know, having some fun, as if you're a retired person rather than waiting for it to come. Because if you're unlucky, it won't come anyway. So that's a really interesting point.

So we're talking about perhaps life expectancy and things like this. I mean, I think in what I know, that's changed quite dramatically, hasn't it, over the last 100 years? Can you tell me a bit about that? Absolutely. So there are two main things that influence somebody's life expectancy. One of them is the geography of where and when they're born, and the other is luck.

So life is full of twists and turns and all sorts of luck. One of the major elements of luck I consider is the genetic somebody's born with. So if somebody may have a likelihood of developing a condition or an illness, that comes with them and that's pure luck. So the chances of that one little leg and that one little sperm getting together and bringing together you as a unique human being, the luck that's involved in that is immense.

And then we have the geography, the luck of the time at which you're born and the place in which you're born. And then all of the amazing things that come around that. So your family of origin, the opportunities you have educationally, all of these different expectations that come upon you because of who you are and where you were born.

And they all add in to look towards your life expectancy. And there's a big buck coming. So you can do. There are some wonderful online predictors. You can put your information in and it'll ask about, yeah, they're great fun. I get around about 93, so I'm planning a very long retirement, just keep my fingers crossed. You can put into various predictors and it'll ask when you were born, how long your parents lived, which is obviously that genetic marker thing, assuming.

they are actually your genetic parents, which it doesn't account for very well. And, you know, what kind of level of education? All of these are indicators of how long someone might live. So I knew all of this when I started my study. But then, then I did my study. And instead of looking at great big groups of people, I looked at individuals. And strangely enough, they didn't know that stuff. So it didn't stop them living a good life. So one of the people in my study, he was in his late 90s and he had lived a very, very full and rich life. So he left school at 13 with no qualifications and became a painted decorator,

which as you can imagine was a quite hazardous job at the turn of the century, which is, you know, sort of beginning of First World War. And, you know, he had a lot of geographical and time pointers against him. And then as he went through his life, he left school at 13. So that would suggest he wouldn't have a long life expectancy. but he didn't know any of that

and I'm awfully glad he didn't because he's lived a really long and enjoyable life and one of the things that I noticed was that he became a soldier during the war, he met a nice lady she was someone that wanted to own a home they brought a house together and had a family and they had a wonderful 50 year

marriage which was very rich so his origin if you like his demographic markers that would have him down as someone that's going to die quite young they were interfered with because he lived a different life because he didn't live his life on his own and none of us do. So I think we need to be cautious with those kind of predictions and we need to be really aware of

thinking, well, you know, because we're not individuals, not really. We don't live on our own. We don't live our lives on our own. We live them with other people. And so it's much more complex, the system that we find ourselves within, if we're thinking about our age prediction and how long we're going to live. So you can't bank on living a nice short and very full of things, retirement. You might find yourself living an awful lot longer than you expected if you were to look at just the demographics. That's really fascinating. So what do we know about longevity then? I mean, can you even say anything about that? What we know about it mainly comes from big demographic studies and by their nature they look at individuals. So,

So we have that sense of being able to have a good sense of how long someone might live. But it doesn't account for the randomness of life and the luck, the bad luck, the good luck, the excitement of being with or not being with other people, sometimes the trauma of being with other people. So it doesn't account for all of that. It just accounts for some very simple information. and it's the information that someone would use, for example, to decide how much they're going to charge you for your life insurance policy or how much of a return they might give you on investments for retirement

because those are the people that are working with big data because they have to because otherwise they'll get the sum wrong and there won't be enough money to go around. So this might be a very basic question, but when we're talking about retirement, we're talking about finance and financial worries. So in these times, maybe more than ever, I think people are, they're really worried about when they can actually retire. Yeah.

You know, what's the situation there? You know, is it actually getting worse or are we just getting more anxious? Well, I think both in a way. So one of the things about people in later life is that they are people that have survived. They are the survivors. So the demographic of people in later life is what I'd call a filtered. demographic in that people that were very ill earlier in life or very, very poor, generally won't make it into those later stages.

So many people in later life are still ill and are still poor, but many more are quite well off financially. But one of the things that's happened recently is people have realised that you can't plan so easily as maybe you used to be able to. So, for example, people in my study, many of them have retired, all of them have retired more than eight years ago, some of them have retired 30 years before. Because that initial transition phase, change is difficult for everyone. There's no point studying that point unless you just want to study change. If you want to study retirement, you have to wait a good chunk of time, so I waited eight years.

And imagine if you'd been retired for 30 years now, you wouldn't have planned for your mobile phone bills, your streaming services, your deliveroo, your, your Amazon account, your, oh, any number of things. You wouldn't have planned for any of that. You'd have just planned for your TV licence, which you'd have thought would be free. So in this little period of time where people in their 40s, 50s, 60s

are thinking towards retirement, they've seen the goalposts move pretty dramatically. And they know now that, you know, yes, you can plan, but you don't know who's going to come in with a whole new set of things that you're going to have to have or be left behind. So that's really difficult. But one good thing that's happened is compulsory retirement age is being abolished.

And that means people can continue to work if they need to or they can return to work if they need to. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. It's peak pollination season, and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speed. That's why I chose GoogleFi Wireless. My connections stay strong even when the hive is buzzing.

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and gives it emotional texture. Today, in partnership with French acoustic specialist focal, name audio creates systems that deliver exceptional sound and unforgettable listening experiences at home. Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. Oh, that's an interesting thing that I'd like to speak to in a bit. But so one thing that I think lies heavy on a lot of people that are pre-retirement age, such as myself, is it's not a nice thing, is the death of their parents.

Yeah. So obviously that can be a huge blow. It is a huge blow to everyone, and I'm sorry for anyone who's experienced that. But, you know, how does that fit in with, you know, sometimes. it can be, of course it's always a big blow, but sometimes it can be, you can get inheritance, sometimes you don't get inheritance. I mean, it's not a nice thing to speak about,

but like how do we cope with, how psychologically, how do you cope with that? Well, it is difficult. And thankfully, these days, I think a lot of pre-retirement people don't have to worry about losing their parents because they are living so long. So, you know, chances are you'll be

retired before your parents do pass on because the, you know, the average that life expectancy is 82, 83 at the moment. It's changed a little. I haven't looked at the most recent figures aren't out yet since COVID, but 82, 83 is not uncommon. So you may well be just, you know, heading into retirement and retiring at the same time as your folks. And that's not something that many years ago people would have anticipated. So I think particularly people at the upper end of coming towards retirement maybe thought that that wouldn't be the case. So yeah, I think when people are generally financially very independent

by the time they're approaching retirement and the idea of an inheritance from parents, for some families, that's the case. But I think for most people now it's not something to plan on. Because, of course, you then have the potential cost of care as well if someone's unwell and lived a long time. So I think there was a wonderful spell where adverts all changed on the TV from kind of quite a dark view of later life to quite a joyous one where, you know, the adult parents of very adult people were definitely having fun and spending and enjoying that money. And it's not that everyone does. Everybody's different. They've got their own individual attitudes.

But yeah, I think these days, you know, the idea that someone would be on quite a reduced income for maybe 20, 30 years and then still have quite a lot at the end is quite difficult to imagine for some people. So let's sort of change gears then. So lots of working people now will likely be dreaming of retiring. Yeah. But it doesn't always go so well, does it, for a lot? lot of people. So let's have a look at some of the issues that people face when they do retire and, you know, they don't have a job anymore. Maybe they don't have a purpose or something, you know, what negative thoughts come with that or negative experiences? Well, I didn't,

I specifically didn't look at the transition space in my research, but I did do reading around the transition and change is just really difficult. I think one of the things that we don't talk about enough is that what, you know, what is leisure? So leisure is, for most of us, it's what we do when we're not working. So when you start working, how do you find your leisure? You've got no foil, if you like. Quite often when someone's retired and you'll say to them, what do you do? And they'll say, I'm retired.

And the next question, the follow-up question is, what would you ask them? what did you used to do? Because we're so focused on that as a society, on that work role. And sometimes they'll lead with what they used to do. I'm a retired teacher. I'm a retired geneticist, whatever they might be. And I think that that loss of identity isn't such a worry if someone's had a satisfying work life because they can talk about what they did as opposed to what they now do.

And then they can talk about what they now do, which is probably lots of really interesting and fun things. And they can, you know, they maybe be a role model to you and inspire you to think, oh, actually, this looks like it's a really cool thing. But it's scary. I think all change is scary, isn't it? Yeah. So in the things of you've written that I've read, you talk about a concept known as internalization.

Yes, I do like that one. What does that mean, you know, can you explain that to us? So when we are young, everybody's. old. And as we age, lots of people are still old. And when we're old, believe it or not, loads of people are still old. So in my research, so my research was really quite an interesting methodology. I read people's diaries. It sounds really rude, but obviously I had permission to do that. And it helped me to understand their day-to-day lives. And one of the things that I understood was that they saw old people as other. Does that make sense?

Yes, that means. So as something else other than them, so they would talk about their day and their diary and they'd say all the wonderful things they'd done to show how free and how interesting their lives were and how rich their lives were, which they really, really were, really wonderful lives they had. And then they would, if the diary day fell on a day

when they didn't really have much to say, or maybe they'd just watch TV or something like that, they'd pull in some other old person. That sounds awful, then they'd start to tell a story about a friend of a friend who was really old and really disabled or widowed or something awful had happened to them. So they would invoke, if you like, this idea of unfortunate old people, that they felt they were really brave old people. They were really sad and they were really unfortunate. And this is the way they talked about other old people.

And in that way, they were able to feel more certain that they weren't yet an old person. And I think it's quite a common experience. So I know my daughter thinks anyone over 23 is positively elderly. You know, so it's, it's all the way through. But you find that even people in their 90s will look at people in their 70s and consider them to be old. And that's all that poor old deer that lives down the road. She's having a terrible time.

And so when I say internalized ageism, there's partly that, which is people are ages against other old people, but also that they think about who they are in the world. you think about where you are as a midlife person, the kinds of things you do, you're allowed to do that it's socially sanctioned that society expects of you. And then you work out whether or not

it's comfortable for you to do that. Do you feel dissonant or consonant in your doings in the day to day? So if you have quite a view of yourself as a little bit older and an understanding of how society views old people, particularly given how you view old people, then it might restrict what you did from day to day because you might think, oh, I can't do that because I'm old and what would people say?

And that sounds really flippant, but actually that was one of the biggest constraints to having a good life I found in my research. People concerned that they didn't want to fall out with the tribe by misbehaving or doing things that weren't health-promoting and good for them. And that's a little bit sad. You think if someone's got into their 90s,

they're probably doing something right, aren't they? They must be. You know, so why not, you know, why not trust their instincts, but they found themselves very, you know, it's not that other people are saying to them, oh, you can't do that, you're too old. It's that they're saying to themselves, well, what if I did that and something went wrong,

what trouble would I be in? You know, would people judge me? That's really something that I wanted to speak about, but like just coming off what you said. So I don't know if you know about, this or if you study it. So I'll be on list, I'm 43, but I still feel like it's 1998 and I'm 18. You know, what

goes on in our heads when we feel so much younger than we are? I think it's because age is, I don't be a bit contentious here as a later life research, but age is kind of a rubbish way of organising society because people age at such different rate. You know, when we talk about aging, we actually mean people getting maybe vulnerable or ill or disabled in some way or poor or frail. And all of those things can happen to someone at any point at all in their life. So it's not a very good way of organising us generally. So when you feel 18, it's because you are feeling fit and fabulous and you're socialising with people of different ages, you're happy to do that. And, you know, that's how

Most people have a slightly, sometimes 18, 23 is a popular age, I think, to feel. I'm around about 23 all the time. So it's, except when I'm 13, which is not a good one. But it's that sense of your identity doesn't match with how society views your age should be, because society's not really right about age, and that's what needs to change. We can think about any age we like, because society's not right about age. That's fascinating. I think an excellent point, which I've always.

should take home. So let's think about retirement then, you know, hopefully we'll all get there at some point. So let's have a look at how we can do a better job of that. So I remember when my father retired, he said to me, I'm not going to be lazy. I'm not going to, you know, I'm do, I'll walk the dog, I'll do this. And what you did in the, it's a defence. But, you know, what are that, what is your advice to do for someone who's retired how can you have a healthy retirement well i would i would say that the first thing to do is to consider what you mean by healthy so it might be about physical health but you might not have physical health so it could be about how happy you are in the day how connected you are one of the big things that came through in my research was about connections

with other people so as we know other people can be heaven and other people can be hell So this kind of connection with other people is really important in our lives because we are a very social species and we do need each other to survive. And so I think being conscious that if you set a rule for yourself, then that becomes a chore. So if you have to walk the dog every day because it's fit and healthy and it's good for you, that's a chore. So in my research, people were very fit moving around and doing things, not everyone, but lots of them, busy, busy, busy doing things. but those things they didn't really talk about much. They just said things like did the row machine, went to the gym, did this, did that, went for a walk, you know, had a quick brisk walk, went for the paper.

You know, all these things that we'd normally think of as healthy things, particularly around physical activity, they just popped down quickly. But then they went to town when they talked about other things. So one of my favourite stories from my whole research project was a lady who loved to iron. She really enjoyed ironing. And the reason she enjoyed ironing, it's so delightful. So she tells a story about when her daughter, bearing in mind her daughter must be in her 60s by now, when her daughter was a young girl, she'd gone on a trip to Italy. And in her trip, she had worn these beautiful flowery blouses.

And when she came home and dumped her laundry on her mother, her mother did the laundry and hung the blouses up in the line. And as they floated on the line, she thought, she must have looked so pretty in Italy, wandering around the streets in that blouse. And then as she ironed those blouses, she imagined her daughter parading around being beautiful and gorgeous and fabulous. And now every time she irons, she's taken back to that memory of that relationship she has with her daughter. And the joy of the thought of her being there, she wasn't even on that holiday herself. She didn't even see those things. This is before mobile phones. But just that idea that her daughter was having this beautiful, lovely time.

And through ironing, she remembers those times. and that connection. And so for her, she really looks forward to her ironing. It's one of the things that brings her joy. And that was, because it's so unexpected, I think that was lovely. The idea of the way you can, you know, it's how you feel about something. It's how you feel about what you're doing that matters.

And nobody else knows what that is because it's so private to you. So many other people in the study did other things, which wouldn't necessarily be socially sanctioned, like drinking a lot of whiskey or gambling a lot, for example. But they were able to really explain how those things were leisurely and were acceptable. So the gambler, for example, he learned an awful lot through doing it. He learned about stocks and shares and all sorts of things. And one of those key pillars of active aging is about learning, isn't it?

And he knows that. So he might not go walking or anything else, but he's a really key learner. And he knows that, you know, if he says I'm a gambler, that's no good. But if he's learning about all of these lovely things to do with, you know, making good bets, then for him, he feels he's being a very good active ageer. That's really interesting. And I just have to say that ironing story is perhaps the sweetest thing I've ever heard in my life. It's beautiful, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. There were so many like that. I mean, I was really, you know, I was lucky there were 26 people and each of them at least 15,000 pages of, not pages, 15,000 words of diary entries. So I had loads of just beautiful stories like that, just of the real meaning, the detail of, you know, what is joyous in your life? And actually, if it's just your mind floating off to a cute time, then that's well worth having.

So what I was going to ask next is about like taking up hobbies, a new hobby. Yeah. And your retirement, you know, how beneficial is that? Well, any research you read will tell you that pretty much everything that you could take up that is of interest to the researcher is good for you. I think personally, varieties of spice of life. So doing, trying things, I think, I'm coming back to love again, but I think we love doing things. We love the things we do. And that's why we do them.

And we might tell other people that we don't really love them or they're a chore because we have to kind of negotiate with everyone else, don't me, what we do in our lives. you know, you love doing things and you say, oh, it helps me learn, it helps me keep fit, but actually you do it because you love it. So, yeah, what should people do? I think just try stuff because we don't know. So we're, you know, all that stuff I was saying at the beginning about our situation in life where we land. That also defines the kinds of things we think are appropriate for us to do, the kinds of things we have the opportunity to do. You know, you don't get to have piano lessons if you come from a very difficult background in a country with no piano. So it's, you know, the things we get to do are part of our geography.

But as you get older, you can push that a bit and you can say, well, I'm going to try something that I haven't tried before because I might love it. I might hate it. But I don't care. I'm going to give it a go. And if I don't like it, that's okay. I won't do it again. And that's quite entertaining. I'll tell someone I know about it.

It'll be a good story because everybody loves to tell a good story. But if you do enjoy it, it might be something that you do again, or you might just bank that enjoyment, like the ironing lady, you know, bank that and just use it another time when you're a bit doing something mundane. So that is so, like, in a way, like beautiful and life of foaming. But by way of summary, like, what are your top tips to having a healthy retirement, you know, what should we do? I would say, don't worry about things you can't control. so don't worry that there may be a new financial horror coming around the corner because if it does come you will cope with it, it won't be nice, but you'll cope with it. Try not to worry too much about your health and the health of people around you

except for to have screening and make sure you're looking after yourself because, again, it's not something you can particularly control. But do take opportunities to try new things, and through doing that, maybe meet new people. because that expanding your social circle, just even by one person, can enrich your life in really unexpected ways. And different ages of people as well. Don't just stick with people that won't judge you.

Go and hang out with people that will judge you because they're even more fun. That was Tanya Wiseman, Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy at Swansea University. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. Brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. magazine. The current issue of BBC Science Focus is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download a digital copy from your preferred app store. You can of course also find us online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal.

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