How to Age Well

How much do we as adult really hold on to in our lives? Well in this journal scientists are doing specialized test on the older and younger generations on whether they are holding on to regrets in which in turn decrease our mental health in the future. They are commenting on “if only” would have been more of an accomplishment then a regret then aging wouldn’t be so detrimental on our mental status. The scientists put together a game at the University Medical center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany, done by Stafanie Brassen and her colleagues. They have come up with experimental evidence that suggests that one key to aging well might be to just let go of regrets of missed opportunities throughout life. They came up with a game that tests different age groups from 25 years of age to 68 years of age, determining that younger individuals that held onto regret developed depression later in life, while healthy older individuals had let them go. The test was done with a desired material too many, “gold”! They had 8 wooden boxes with gold under 7 of them and a figment of a devil under 1, and based on whether they pressed their luck and went for the opportunity to get as much gold as they could, without picking the devil, in which they would loose everything. Some choose to stop and take their losses, just to come out ahead and later regretting not going on, to see that the devil was further then they thought. Scientist have discovered a section in the brain, the ventral striatum, in healthy older adults that dealt with regret was much less active during rounds of the game that they missed out on a lot of gold, suggesting that they weren’t as worried about it as much as the younger generations were about the loss. They conducted it on other parts of the body like the heart rate and skin conductance of healthy older and younger individuals. The experiment found that it is important to the younger generation to