I really hated this story which was in the news the month before I turned sixty.
I was all “age is just a number” and “there’s nothing special about sixty” and then this was in the news, Massive biomolecular shifts occur in our 40s and 60s, Stanford Medicine researchers find.
Just as I’d been successfully talking myself into the view that aging is aging, and as my dad would say, it beats the alternative, and there’s nothing magical about sixty, reporting about this research has to be in all of my social media newsfeeds.
“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.”
Yikes!!!
Sixty is special after all, especially bad.
Truth be told, I couldn’t bear to read beyond the headlines for a few weeks.
Of course when I went back to read the study it turns out the researchers aren’t sure whether it’s biology or lifestyle driving the changes that clump at forty and sixty.
From the report linked above, “It’s possible some of these changes could be tied to lifestyle or behavioral factors that cluster at these age groups, rather than being driven by biological factors, Snyder said. For example, dysfunction in alcohol metabolism could result from an uptick in alcohol consumption in people’s mid-40s, often a stressful period of life.”
A Scientific American report on the research suggested that the declines in physical activity associated with middle age could be to blame.
So what to do?
Really, there is no news here from a ‘how to live your life’ point of view. Just a heads up, aging is real.
Sure we ought to get regular health screenings for things like diabetes and colon cancer, high blood pressure, breast cancer, and heart disease.
In the meantime there is still lot we can do–Eat lots of vegetables, get lots of regular everyday movement, work in some high intensity exercise, lift heavy things, spend time in the community with friends and family, read fiction, relax, get lots of sleep, practice gratitude.
