Chess ratings that decline over time and aging.

I've nosed through a lot of profiles and found this to be the case, where the daily rating has been much higher 10 years ago or more than it is now. I just find it sad that people age mentally as well as physically. I'm talking about daily games, but I'd say it's much more profound with blitz. I'm getting older now and my blitz is terrible and after a 3 year break from chess.com it's been a 6 month crawl to get to where I am now, which is nearly 200 points below where I used to be. Anyone else feeling this? You're welcome to talk about it here. 

Playing Chess might help maintain mental acuity into old age.

Yeah, I'm betting it does. 

Emmanuel Lasker (1868-1941) "...stood clear above the chess world of his day and even after losing the World title, he won major tournaments and was a world force until the age of 67."  Golombeck's Encyclopedia of Chess, 1977

I've read that he would go years without being active in chess and yet maintained his strength. Oddly enough, Fischer never considered him a "natural" chess player.  He felt an affinity with Capablanca.

I'm too young to relate, but I see it when I play in tournaments. The older people who sit at their rating floors. I feel bad about the ones that stay at 2000 - because it means that they were over 2200 (NM) in their prime, but now they can only be thought of as "free rating points" by us kids.

Although there are some people that are able to keep their acuity well into old age, they usually decline significantly. I played this Tennessee IM before (thrice) and his rating is usually in the high 2300s. I thought this was actually quite good until I looked at his USCF history and saw that 20 years earlier, he wavered in the 2650 USCF mark. 2380 is quite a long fall from there. It's sad but there's nothing we can do about it, except try to improve as much as we can early on to soften the fall later. 

But maybe I'm thinking too much into it.

@1
It is the same in any sport.
Age does not help.