I’m turning 60 in just 12 days and on the one hand there’s this in the news. Thanks Sandra!
On the other hand, there’s also this in the news this week!
Just as I’d been successfully talking myself into the view that aging is aging, as my dad would say, it beats the alternative, and there’s nothing magical about sixty, I read this.
“We’re not just changing gradually over time; there are some really dramatic changes,” said Michael Snyder, PhD, professor of genetics and the study’s senior author. “It turns out the mid-40s is a time of dramatic change, as is the early 60s. And that’s true no matter what class of molecules you look at.”
Read more here.
Yikes!!!
What to do? There’s no big surprises.
“I’m a big believer that we should try to adjust our lifestyles while we’re still healthy,” Snyder said.
Regular movement, high intensity exercise, lifting heavy things, spend time in community with friends and family, read, relax, get lots of sleep, practise gratitude. All the usual things.
All good, I guess.
Other fitness things I read this week.
🎈Why swimming might be the best exercise there is
🎈HIIT workouts linked with better brain health, research finds – even five years later
🎈Stop The Clock: The Shocking Truth About Age-Related Muscle Loss and Steps to Fight Back
So swimming, some high intensity exercise, and lifting heavy things.
I’ve got this!
Yes, you’ve got it!
This study, interesting as it is, doesn’t really sort things out enough to tell any of us what our individual circumstances might be. It just opens a lot of questions for future resrarchers.
FWIW, I pretty much missed all of these big transitions. In my mid-forties I was wrestling with a (low grade) brain cancer; in my early 60s I was reaping the benefits of the vastly increased fitness the brain cancer diagnosis had inspired me to acquire. Not a path anyone would choose to follow, of course. It’s really just an example of why we shouldn’t give all these amazing studies undue influence.
That, and the retirement community where I live, where I have finally learned not to gasp in amazement when I realize a companion on a long hilly walk is well over 90.
Best wishes for a wonderful birthday. You’re gonna love the 60s!