Our environment in private and professional everyday life is becoming more complex. At work in particular, we are expected to be able to operate in an environment that is technically demanding, as simple processes are increasingly being taken over by automation or software equipped with artificial intelligence.
The OECD has devoted a great deal of attention to this topic, and the status quo and challenges have been worked out clearly.
On the one hand, we have the need to cope in a technically complex environment; on the other hand, analysis shows that older people have significantly less ability to cope productively in this environment.
(from: Ageing and Employment Policies Working Better with Age, p.67
Source: OECD (2016), Skills Matter: Further Results from the Survey of Adult Skills, OECD Skills Studies, OECD Publishing,Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264258051-en.
StatLink https://doi.org/10.1787/888933991508
Here 2 factors come together.
On the one hand, technological progress has accelerated massively in recent years, work processes and life routines change in a short period of time, and we have to integrate new technologies and processes into our everyday lives in short periods of time.
On the other hand, as we get older, we find it harder to adapt to new things; behind this is the biological process of aging, our memory capacity and ability to learn decrease.
Of course, the question arises, what to do? Is this a hopeless constellation?
To answer this question, I looked around a bit in the scientific literature and came across the following publication:
Zocher, S., Overall, R.W., Lesche, M. et al. Environmental enrichment preserves a young DNA methylation landscape in the aged mouse hippocampus. NatCommun 12, 3892 (2021).
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What the researchers have found out is almost fantastic.
In this publication, it is shown in mice that a stimulating environment significantly counteracts biological aging of the brain.
For this purpose, 2 groups of mice were kept in different environments each. One group was housed in a standard cage, and the other group was housed in a cage equipped with tunnels and plastic toys, an "enriched" environment. The plastic toys were rearranged once a week.
At the end of the experiment, after 14 months, the brains of the test animals were compared. For this purpose, samples from the hippocampus brain region, which is so important for our learning behavior and memory, were subjected to very precise analyses. It was examined whether there were differences between the groups in the patterns of DNA methylation (DNA methylation is an epigenetic process; the DNA methylations can be understood as directing instructions for regulating gene activities that the cell itself writes; this mechanism reflects aging processes quite significantly); likewise, it was checked how pronounced the formation of new cells in this brain region still was with advancing age.
The results were striking:
For simplicity, only 1 result from the publication will be shown here:
During aging (Young => Aged), the genome-wide methylation pattern of the control group almost turns upside down (red pattern).
In the enriched environment, this is almost completely prevented (blue patterns)!
It was also shown that in the aged mice, new cell formation in the hippocampus had greatly decreased in all experimental animals. This has been known for a long time.
Then, however, the animals that had lived in the enriched environment showed a 3-fold increase in the number of new young cells compared to the control. Factor 3 is enormous.
An additional particularly nice result was that even when the enriched environment was not experienced until "adulthood", it was still possible to influence the methylation patterns in a substantial proportion of genes that had been conspicuous in the context of the aging process described here.
Thus, one can say in a simplified way: it is never too late.
Of course, the researchers asked themselves whether what they found has any relevance for us humans.
And again, their experimental results are very exciting. They were able to show that a number of the genes at which the enriched environment counteracts the methylation changes induced by the aging process belong precisely to the gene groups that are dysregulated in humans in connection with age-related cognitive decline (including Alzheimer's disease).
Thus, the findings obtained from the experiments with the mice give reason to believe that we might find similar mechanisms in humans.
An enriched environment changes the organism that lives in this environment. In the experiment, enriched meant tunnels as well as toys that were repeatedly rearranged.
How can we apply this to our human situation?
I think that on the one hand, through our actions, we can do a lot to make our lives correspond to the enriched environment. Movement of any kind seems to stimulate us.
We can try ourselves out, we can look for challenges (small obstacles) that always bring us into learning situations that we can master.
It may do us good not to book a full board (also in a figurative sense), so that we have to open up the respective environment. It might be interesting to venture into fields at work that we don't know so well yet, but which fascinate us.
It could be really exciting to expand our living space bubble a little bit and to have people in our circle of friends with whom we don't completely agree. And we could park the autopilot for a while and go on a journey of discovery.
On the other hand, we could change our attitude to the vicissitudes of life. We cannot avoid some events, we should accept them and deal with them constructively. A broken relationship, a defeat at work often stand for a forced new beginning, which can certainly lead to new horizons.
People with handicaps sometimes succeed impressively in turning their weakness into a strength. Migrants or refugees develop a tremendous energy to settle in the new place of life, to gain a foothold and to make their fortune.
Our brain does not care whether the enriched environment was actively approached or we simply could not avoid it, as long as we can integrate it positively.
When photographing on the streets, I always meet people who for me embody the above;
At times they are for me the personified movement, often bundles of energy, they demonstrate by their mere presence that they have found means to counteract the standard aging process. Sometimes it is also just the inkling that it will be so.
Slalom through the world
If the world doesn't move fast enough, I'll just do it myself.
On the way up
A young man serves in a friendly and competent manner in a street kiosk. He is outgoing and gets along very well with the diverse clientele. When asked, he tells me that he enjoys this a lot, but that he has another 4 jobs, including as a video assistant at a theater. His confident demeanor, his energy, combined with a great curiosity tell me that he will make his way to the top.
The Christmas Trumpeter
In the Advent season, a man plays the trumpet virtuously in the pedestrian zone; when I approach him, I see that he is already somewhat older. He tells me that he is 88 years old and that he is suffering from age-related macular degeneration. Because he suffers from age-related macular degeneration, he can no longer read music and plays by heart. However, due to his long years in the wind orchestra, this does not cause him any problems.
At 18, he fell seriously ill and felt disfigured by a facial operation, which bothered him a lot as he would have loved to have had a girlfriend. His job as a precision mechanic was also no fun, it was piecework and the time pressure was always present. His various activities, gliding, downhill skiing and the music club were his sources of energy, and he put himself at the service of the respective community in all his leisure activities, as well as in his trumpet playing. I had the feeling that I had met an extremely vital and happy person
We also change
A picture on the sidelines of the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice in Giessen. It may remind us that things do not just happen; we ourselves are the alteration tailors in our lives. The young man will also become a tailor, he too will take the scissors in his hand and tailor his world.
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