What "Anatomy of an Illness" Taught Me About Living Well After 60

Being a participant in my own recovery, not a bystander

The author refused to be a passive patient and instead took an active role in his own healing. That framing struck a chord with me.

For years, I left most decisions entirely to doctors. Now, I look at my own checkup results before appointments and bring a short list of questions. It's less about distrust and more about building a genuine dialogue — deciding on a course together rather than simply being told what to do.

Deliberately making room for laughter and good moods

What resonated most wasn't the science of laughter, but something I recognised from my own experience. Splitting my time between the UK and Osaka means my mood shifts with the seasons and the people around me. So I've started building in a deliberate "good mood" moment each day.

For me, that's often the greenhouse in the morning — checking on the tomatoes, cucumbers, and aubergines, noticing what changed overnight. Finding a plant doing especially well makes me laugh out loud, alone. Our Ragdoll cat Meg winding around my ankles has a similar effect. At an age when it's easy to dwell on heavier topics, I've come to value protecting small pockets of lightness on purpose.

Deliberately making room for laughter and good moods, in the greenhouse with Meg.

A sense of purpose seems to make pain recede

One anecdote in the book — about an elderly musician who seemed to forget his physical ailments entirely while absorbed in his craft — stayed with me.

I notice the same thing myself. When I'm writing a blog post or planning a new bed in the garden, I often forget about the stiffness in my shoulder or knee entirely. On days when I have nothing planned, I notice every ache. So now I try to give myself one small, concrete purpose each day — a paragraph of a draft, repotting one plant — nothing grand, just enough to engage with.

Losing myself in a purposeful activity seems to make pain recede.

Valuing nutrition and the body's own capacity, without leaning too hard on medication

The book also questions an over-reliance on medication — a caution that obviously needs updating for modern medicine, and I'd never suggest stopping a prescribed treatment on one's own judgement. But the underlying instinct — asking first what lifestyle and nutrition can address — is one I share.

I've spent a lot of time researching supplements and nutrients over the years, but underneath all of it is really the same question: can I draw out my body's own capacity before reaching for medication? Eating vegetables from my own garden, moving my body in the sun — small, unglamorous things, but I now think of them as genuine investments in my own healing capacity.

The capacity to heal doesn't disappear with age

The message that stayed with me most was simple: the body's capacity to heal isn't something we lose just because we get older. At 66, that's a quiet kind of encouragement.

Rather than chasing perfect health, I'm trying to stack up small daily choices — laughing, having something to lose myself in, treating my doctor as a partner rather than an authority. This book didn't teach me anything entirely new, but it reminded me of habits that are easy to let slide.

The book I mentioned here:

Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness (Japanese edition, Iwanami Gendai Bunko)

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