After a certain age, it's important not to give a shit. Otherwise the stress catches up to you.

Truth is many people also stop moving (exercising) significantly in their forties (reason being probably sitting lifestyle promotes posture and fascia degradation which makes moving less and less enjoyable).

I'd posit that another significant decline in moving occurs in the sixties when many go in rent.

Not sure if the biological clock is cause of abrupt changes or rather our scheduled lives. So, no significant changes from the sixties on? Then what's the genetic function of those programmations?

People who reach old age (100+) are mostly also comparatively healthy.

• safety1st

  today at 7:45 AM

  Without writing a book about it I'll just say that I think the most important thing is people shouldn't look at this info and conclude that their body's going to fall apart no matter what.

  I'm in my mid 40s and in the best shape of my life, lots of energy, aches and pains from my late 30s have all disappeared, to get there it took diet and exercise changes that were surprisingly modest. For me it was mostly weights, a little bit of cardio, and cutting back on my worst episodes of caloric excess.

  I have friends who didn't do any diet and exercise interventions, and are starting to look like hell and complain about the "inevitable" consequences of aging.

  And then there are those jacked dudes in their 70s who are hitting the gym 5 times a week, I can only aspire to be as healthy as them at their age.

  Use it (with proper care and feeding) or lose it.

  • matthewdgreen

    today at 7:59 AM

    I also felt this way in my mid-40s. I still feel this way. But then after a lifetime of perfect vision, one day I was reading a book and noticed that everything was a little blurry. Now I need reading glasses. Not a big deal! I’m doing fine! But a gentle reminder that all the diet and CrossFit in the world isn’t going to save you from a (hopefully) gentle and inevitable decay ;)

    • animal531

      today at 9:39 AM

      Hah gentle, my vision distance also started degrading slowly but I had no issues otherwise. Text etc. was a bit blurrier but I could still read everything fine, except when it was too close to my eyes.

      Then one day I pretty much hit a brick wall and went from 0 to 100% eye strain in about 2-3 days. Now I need constant eye drops, a humidifier, breaks every 20 minutes, time spent doing other things etc. to just be able to do what I did before.

    • mhfu

      today at 8:51 AM

      I mean, of course exercise isn't going to fix your vision. But if your vision is going to degrade, you can still choose if you want to live as a fit and healthy person who needs reading glasses, or as a person who has aches all over, is in bad shape, feels tired and like shit all the time, and on top of all that needs reading glasses.

      • lynx97

        today at 9:47 AM

        I am in my mid-40s, don't do regular exercise, and still dont feel like "shit".

        Really, this "motivation trainer" rhetoric coming out of obesity-infested America is tiring.

        You sound like there is only two extremes: Couch potatoes and people that run a marathon every weekend. There is actually a middle-ground. And a not-so-small group of people is actually comfortable in that middle-ground.

        You can feel relatively healthy without running around like a wound-up monkey. Step on, don't eat too much. Then you don't have to burn calories to get rid of extra fat. It almost sounds like "uppers and downers"... Mind you, I am not arguing against sports in healthy doses. But whenever I read or talk to fitness fans, I feel like I am talking to a person following a cult.

  • stevesimmons

    today at 9:17 AM

    Agree. There's lots you can do to slow the affects of aging. Most of us just don't try.

    I'm 55 and found - much to my surprise - that 12 months of carefully progressively and intense running training has improved me from a slow plodder (jogging 5km a couple of times a week) to on track for a 3 hour marathon later this year. Along the way, I'm back to the weight I had in my early 20s, but now also am a lot faster and with way more endurance.

    Of course, at 55, I now need to be more careful now about not getting injured. Which means being disciplined about stretching, strength training and recovery. Things I never needed to worry about when I was younger.

    So absolutely:

    > Use it (with proper care and feeding) or lose it.

  • globular-toast

    today at 8:47 AM

    > those jacked dudes in their 70s

    Those dudes are almost certainly on some kind of testosterone. It obviously works for some. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, has almost certainly been "supplementing" for close to 60 years now. The trouble is we don't know for sure what these individuals have been doing, nor do we know the effects of such "cocktails" on the population at large.

  • andrepd

    today at 7:50 AM

    I'm sure there's also an important component of luck and general health there.

    • vladvasiliu

      today at 8:04 AM

      Indeed, but I think that the point is that you shouldn't give up and let everything go.

    • samus

      today at 8:41 AM

      Indeed, but nobody can be quite sure that they will win the lottery and therefore can afford to kick back and do it the easy way. Moderate exercise, eating more of the good stuff, and letting go of some unhealthy habits have big impacts on overall well-being that are hard to describe. Simply put: not sick != healthy

    • adrianN

      today at 8:10 AM

      A healthy lifestyle improves outcomes pretty much regardless of genetics. Genetics just determines the ceiling.

      • 6P58r3MXJSLi

        today at 8:31 AM

        > A healthy lifestyle improves outcomes pretty much regardless of genetics

        to be able to afford a healthy life depends a lot on luck, much more than good DNA.

        secondarily: modern western societies make it almost impossible for a large portion of the population to live such a lifestyle.

        It's more probable than an African lives a healthy life style, even in poverty, than an American working 70 hours/week, with no paid holidays, trapped in stressful groundhog days in highly polluted cities.

        That's why I never left my country, even though it costed me a lot monetarily wise.

• agumonkey

  today at 7:13 AM

  Regular whole body physical activity (not even gym level hard) is such a gem and a free one.

• 6P58r3MXJSLi

  today at 8:34 AM

  > Truth is many people also stop moving

  The truth is, both things happen. People slow down — not just because they stop moving, but because life changes. They feel more tired, take on more responsibilities, and have less time and energy for themselves. And yes, sometimes the body begins to decline — gradually or even suddenly. It’s normal, and it happens to many.

• globular-toast

  today at 8:10 AM

  If this were true then we'd see that people with active jobs like builders, mechanics, cleaners etc. would have different outcomes. I think many people here who have never done a physical job in their lives would be shocked at how physically demanding these jobs are. Going to the gym a few times a week does not compare to all day, every day on your feet for decades.

  • adrianN

    today at 8:52 AM

    Adequate rest is quite important to prevent the kind of injuries people in physical jobs get.

    • amunozo

      today at 9:45 AM

      Not only that, but in my experience most physical workers drink a lot and eat poorly. Not all, for sure, but it's pretty common at least in Spain. But rest is extremely important.

• nurettin

  today at 6:32 AM

  > people also stop moving (exercising) significantly in their forties

  Also likely that people who never experienced the negative outcomes of a sedentary or unhealthy life style start doing so due to the biomolecular changes. Drinking more likely to hurt your liver, soda more likely to cause diabetes, smoking more likely to cause cavities despite having done all that for 20 years without visible problems.

  • gspetr

    today at 7:18 AM

    >20 years without visible problems.

    Even with the most charitable steelman interpretation of "visible problems", 2 out of 3 things you've listed have strong evidence for being responsible for weight gain, and even smoking has some weaker evidence supporting it.

• Jarmsy

  today at 8:17 AM

  "in the sixties when many go in rent" autocorrect from 'into retirement'?

  • lompad

    today at 8:32 AM

    Probably german, "Rente" = "retirement"

  • camillomiller

    today at 8:56 AM

    OP is probably German :)

Probably the same study from this slightly older thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41247085

• degamad

  today at 5:31 AM

  Yep, both eventually link to https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00692-2 "Nonlinear dynamics of multi-omics profiles during human aging"

That's quite well-known already. The real question here: how do we stop these shifts from happening?

• ulf-77723

  today at 5:32 AM

  When I look into my biohacker bubble, the answer might be: enough sleep, regular workout routine with HIIT, healthy whole foods, no alcohol, socializing

  • ukuina

    today at 5:58 AM

    At what age?

    • andsoitis

      today at 6:03 AM

      These should be lifelong behaviors

  • admissionsguy

    today at 6:05 AM

    and yet none of that makes even a dent

    • irjustin

      today at 6:49 AM

      For you personally, maybe not, but statistically yes it does.

      There are populations that consistently outlive and the only other thing I would add is stress removal in the form of relatively simple life styles.

      • TeMPOraL

        today at 8:06 AM

        At some point you have to wonder about the costs. Denying yourself everything that's nice and pleasant, and exercising constant, total active control over yourself sure might prolong your life, but what's the point?

        • bigfudge

          today at 8:29 AM

          The thing is, drinking to excess, smoking, eating ‘badly’ just aren’t pleasures at all if you don’t do them all the time. It’s hard to take the perspective, but there is more to life!

          • TeMPOraL

            today at 8:56 AM

            Right, but that's the other extreme. Then there's everything in the middle, and most of that, unfortunately, do not form a kind of "healthy lifestyle" that has a chance to confer longevity benefits. So when people say, "just have a good diet and exercise regularly and sleep long enough and such" - it's a bit of a lie, because to do enough of these things to matter, you might be required to sacrifice the very things you value in life the most.

            And I mean here both sacrifice the things you hold dear directly, or indirectly - which for us here is predominantly our careers and places of living.

            Exaggerating a little bit to underscore the point: I could likely add years to my QALY lifespan if I moved to countryside, picked up more manual labor that required me to move my whole body, and went hiking in between going to the gym -- but, the things I value are found in cities, the work I like is white-collar, I hate hiking, and I also have people I love to support and lifespan-friendly labor generally doesn't pay enough.

            • CrossVR

              today at 9:44 AM

              Ultimately as much as we love individual responsibility, the truth is only the lucky few have the ability to freely choose their lifestyle. For the rest of us we have to conform to the unhealthy lifestyle that society demands of us.

              To live a life that's even remotely healthy we have to dedicate a significant amount of the precious spare time we have just to undo some of that damage.

              I do not believe we are predisposed to adopt sedentary lifestyles. As kids most of us are very active, but we are taught to be sedentary. Both academically and professionally we are most rewarded for sedentary activities: doing extra coursework, building your resume. Is it any surprise we develop a sedentary lifestyle when such a lifestyle is most rewarded?

            • samus

              today at 11:11 AM

              I think rural life is too romanticized though. It will avoid the diseases endemic to sedentary life, but there will be different health issues instead. Preindustrial agriculture and generally jobs with lots of physical labor are not easy on the body. Coronary heart disease and maybe diabetes and dementia will be replaced by work-related injuries and arthritis. There is a reason many countries allow such people to retire earlier.

        • samus

          today at 10:52 AM

          I don't get the contradiction? A healthy body will make it possible to enjoy all these things in moderation, be the company of your loved ones, and generally enjoy life for far longer. Making life just about the things that damage the body the most will have quite predictable consequences, no surprise there.

        • bregma

          today at 9:57 AM

          If you want to live forever don't do any of the things that would make it worthwhile.

        • dzhiurgis

          today at 11:15 AM

          Amazing times we live in where addiction is woke and abstinence must be fascism?

    • lm28469

      today at 7:05 AM

      What are you talking about? Doing these things is the only way to increase your quality of life and healthy lifespan, no amount money nor medicine will make up for abusing your body for decades.

      These things are quite literally the leading causes of death and impairments in the west...

    • bboygravity

      today at 6:18 AM

      It does. Look up Brian Johnson

      • BennyH26

        today at 7:36 AM

        Bryan Johnson. Brian Johnson is the “Liver King”

        • 4gotunameagain

          today at 7:40 AM

          Both dudes are equally cringe.

          • dzhiurgis

            today at 11:11 AM

            You should actually watch Bryan's videos, he's pretty funny and down to earth techie.

            Are his therapies are over the top and lacking a bit of experimental rigor? Probably. Does he look healthy af? Definitely.

      • RivieraKid

        today at 8:03 AM

        He looks older than he actually is.

• JumpCrisscross

  today at 4:51 AM

  > The real question here: how do we stop these shifts from happening?

  Or what happens when we stop them? Perpetual adolescence seems mainstream now. But it would be nice to know if some of these changes should be brought up as well as pushed back.

  • lm28469

    today at 7:07 AM

    Isn't perpetual adolescence a lifestyle description, not a biological one?

  • today at 5:09 AM

• nmeofthestate

  today at 10:13 AM

  >The real question here: how do we stop these shifts from happening?

  We don't - people inevitably age and die. All you can hope to do is postpone these shifts, and I suspect a large component in the timing is genetic, so there isn't a magical solution that will work for everybody just because it works for the guy posting about the one guaranteed solution for preventing ageing, because it's worked so far for him.

• JonChesterfield

  today at 5:37 AM

  Possibly with a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

  • trhway

    today at 6:00 AM

    and blood of the young.

    • usrnm

      today at 6:54 AM

      Only virgins

      • hkt

        today at 7:00 AM

        There's a subreddit for that

• 4b11b4

  today at 6:01 AM

  strength training

• bigbacaloa

  today at 5:49 AM

  [dead]

I'm wondering if I'm currently hitting '60' early or '40' late.

34, 60, and 78 according to this other one: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2019/12/stanford-scie...

• nine_k

  today at 5:02 AM

  The study in the post agrees on 60, but mentions 44 as the (average? median?) age of another intense change.

If you throw some data at a clustering algorithm, the clustering algorithm is guaranteed to give you clusters back. So I'm not convinced about the results suggesting a precise pattern of rapid aging.

• bboygravity

  today at 6:25 AM

  Are you at or over 40?

  Anecdotally I feel I noticed a very fast ageing speed between 38 and 40. Suddenly got white hairs, feel more tired, more wrinkles, way harder to keep VO2max up (I run a lot), muscle sores after training suddenly lasting up to 3 days instead of 1, face looks older, etc.

  I feel like that all happened real fast around this age.

  • isoprophlex

    today at 6:35 AM

    I'm 38. We had three kids over a period of 8 years. Looking at old pictures I seemingly held on for a long while, until something hit me at 35-36?!

    It's like there's two versions of me now, the one who was somehow moderately fit by biochemical decree, with a healthy amount of flesh to his face, voluminous dark blonde hair and a pleasant complexion...

    ... And the grey haired, weathered, lined, dessicated mummy I see in the mirror. I love my kids dearly but the constant caring really takes something out of you. That and the whole getting older thing in TFA.

    I keep telling myself I'll get a gym membership soon to reclaim some of my dignity.

    • gylterud

      today at 7:57 AM

      Like you I have kids, and it really takes a toll, and I definitely see myself aging in the mirror. But I cannot recommend training enough. I started working out regularly three years ago, after a long hiatus due to kids. And I feel stronger and fitter than ever as I approach 40.

      The kids still need lots of care (they are 5–9 years old), so finding time and motivation is still a challenge. For me the trick is to do training I really like. That helps so much with motivation. So, find something you like!

      What I happen to like is bouldering and hiking. I have a fixed day of the week for bouldering, just after work, and I never miss it, because I know if I start skipping I might fall off my training habit.

      Then the rest of the training is motivated by getting better at what I love. I do pull ups to better my climbing etc…

      I will fight hard to keep at it through my 40s, because it is such a quality of life improvement. I also attribute the fact that I haven’t been really sick the last few years to my exercise.

      • isoprophlex

        today at 8:19 AM

        Thanks for writing this. The youngest is 1.5 years old, and going from two in the same age range to three (where the youngest throws you back into diaper world) has been pretty intense.

        The oldest go to bed later and later & I also like to hang out with my wife for a few hours each week... finding the energy and motivation for "me time" has been tough indeed. I should just do something I like, and stick with that on a regular schedule. It's as simple as what you write.

    • bboygravity

      today at 7:25 AM

      Exercise is not optional.

      Go for it!

      And try not to be in the majority group of gym goers who pay the membership without attending ;)

      • gspetr

        today at 7:38 AM

        Exactly. As a regular at a non-hardcore gym, I had never appreciated it until I saw the gym sell 12mo membership for the price of 4x 1mo, and then I tried to remember how many people sticked around for a meaningful period. Very few men. No women.

        The nearest gym is truly the best gym for 90% of people, as everyone seems to look for excuses not to go. So just go, people there will not bite you or shame you.

        • isoprophlex

          today at 8:19 AM

          Haha yes the pricing really tells you all you need to know about how many people struggle to make exercise a habit...

    • abcd_f

      today at 8:22 AM

      Having kids greatly affects the quality and the amount of sleep, and the rest flows from that.

      But! There's no shame in napping mid-day, even more than once. Even in the office :)

    • RhysU

      today at 8:38 AM

      Reading the comments on this one, awhile ago, helped me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32176193

• bongodongobob

  today at 6:37 AM

  Sounds like something someone < 40 would say. To anyone over, I feel like this study is pretty obvious. I'm in my early 40's and whatever change this is, has been discussed multiple times with my peers, active lifestyle or not, wealth or not, married or not, physical career or not. Everything starts to feel a little harder, whether it's exercise, problem solving, memory, sleep, sex drive, appetite, fuckin everything. Things change in your late 30s, for sure.

  All young people think they are special and age is just a number. The rest of the population knows that isn't true. Spare me your weight lifting 80 year old, or "my grandpa worked the farm til he was 90" stuff, we all know those are extreme outliers.

  • uamgeoalsk

    today at 6:58 AM

    Turning 44 this year and none of this has hit me at all? Still staying up all night on weekends, working harder than I ever did (not more hours, though), feeling more motivated to take on both paid and unpaid work outside of my job. And my sex drive just as strong (and just as unfulfilled!) as in my 20s and 30s.

    • kilroy123

      today at 7:14 AM

      I'm turning 40 very soon and feel the same.

      People also often tell me I look and seem younger than my age.

      But I also prioritize sleeping 8 hours a night. Eating low carb. Regular exercise. Plus I have no kids. :-)

• petesergeant

  today at 5:12 AM

  Is it possible that scientists employed at Stanford will have also had this insight, and worked around it?

  • deegles

    today at 5:33 AM

    possible, yes. did they? that's the question

    • blackbear_

      today at 6:32 AM

      Yes they did, and published it all.

      Sometimes I can't believe how low discussions on HN can fall. Did really nobody in this thread bother to check this? Are we fine disparaging research solely based on the fact that they used a method that gives bad results with bad inputs (which doesn't?) and their incentives could be misaligned (whose aren't?)?

      If there are well justified concerns about the method or data then by all means let's talk about it, but please let's all try to keep low effort anti intellectual conspiracy theories away from here.

  • f1shy

    today at 5:52 AM

    It is also very possible that they have big incentives to ignore those just to get something published, don't you think?

Sounds like I still haven't gone through the molecular shifts that would have made me forget when this was first posted.

Finally, science has confirmed what our grandparents told us for generations.

Ringo Starr even sang the song, "Life Begins at 40".

• jansan

  today at 10:02 AM

  There is a very famous German song with the (translated) title "Life begins at 66".

  So here we have it, 40s and 60s, no science required.

I still stand by my claim that the most common cause of death is chronic iron poisoning, and living past 100 was a regular occurence in the bronze age.

The best explanation again seems that all the modern nutrition is nonsense fed by some double agent to the allies in WW2, (iron, and the toxicity of heavy metals) based supposedly on some secret concentration camp experiments, and nobody is allowed to question it in order to "not let their sacrifice go in vain" or some such bullshit.

Particularly interesting is that when they split the dataset by sex, the transitions were present and at a similar magnitude in both sexes. We make much in western culture of the (peri-)menopausal change in women. I read this as an indicator that at least significant parts of the transition in this age range for men - acknowledged for a long time now - are just as big as menopause.

I don't remember noticing that the last time this study came around, but then again, I am in my mid 40s. :)

• squidbeak

  today at 7:03 AM

  > I read this as an indicator that at least significant parts of the transition in this age range for men - acknowledged for a long time now - are just as big as menopause

  Men emerge from it with their fertility intact.

• darkwater

  today at 7:24 AM

  Sorry but your post as strong #notallmen vibes. The article itself mentions that part of those changes might just be explained by lifestyle changes at 40s. I quote:

  > 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.

  Changes in women metabolism due to menopause are pretty known and proved, and men don't experience it. I'm a mid-40s male as well.