Age Simulation Suit

The site is slow so I can't see it. I'm 68, eat well, lost 20 pounds, work out twice a week. Everything is working fine. But I live in a place surrounded by people in walkers, wheelchairs, or using canes. Some of them have had strokes or accidents making improvement hard, but many simply chose to not do anything to avoid the aging. You don't ordinarily wind up with a walker at a single point; it often starts many years or even decades earlier when you failed to keep in decent physical shape. I almost started too late (last couple of years), I can see how easy it is to not notice your physical being slowly going down. But assuming no major injury or disease, you can improve your body at almost any age, a little at a time, and avoid or at least postpone physical aging for quite a while.

I also write code daily, read the same things I read when I worked, thus keep my brain going too. You can't ignore body or mind, you have to keep both in tune.

I am still getting older, but I am in better shape than I was before I retired. The last time I felt as fit was when I was still playing basketball 30+ years ago.

Don't wait, it's easier to do a little for decades than wait until it's almost too late.

>but many simply chose to not do anything to avoid the aging

Thank you for saying this. A depressingly large proportion of people are seemingly resigned to the fact that once you hit 40-50, you'll inevitably turn into an achy tub of lard and it's rapidly and irreversibly downhill from there.

Barring injuries that are truly irreversible (e.g. severe damage to joints/cartilage), with the correct diet and fitness regime, it's entirely possible to remain lean (≤20% bodyfat) and muscular (≥80th percentile in strength standards [0]) well into what most consider "old age." So many people have no idea just how poorly they eat or how inactive and physically weak they are, and consider the result to just be a normal part of life.

>I also write code daily, read the same things I read when I worked, thus keep my brain going too. You can't ignore body or mind, you have to keep both in tune.

Thanks for saying this too. So much cognitive decline is due to inactivity of the mind. My mom was whip smart until she retired in her mid-60s to a life of idle leisure, and her mental faculties noticeably deteriorated within a few months. Thankfully, she noticed this and deliberately re-engaged with more intense intellectual pursuits (including consulting part-time in the professional field that she loved), and the improvement was night-and-day.

[0] https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards

My dad is in his mid-70s now, and still swims 3-5 miles a week in the ocean currents and waves. He’s so active and so healthy, I literally have a hard time imagining what he’ll be like when he’s feeble.

15 years ago, we went for a hike at elevation and he actually kicked my ass despite being around 35 years older than me. Crazy stuff. That alone was enough to kick my ass into gear. Now I do sprints and lifting, and I actually enjoy it now that my goal is just “do something for health” rather than “reach a half-ton total across my big-3” or something like that.

I've noticed that the difference between 30 and 40 isn't the level of performance I have, but how quickly performance drops when I stop exercising. In my 30s, I could just not go to the gym for months, and I'd be fine. Now, if I don't go for a few weeks, stuff starts aching.

This is very true, which is why consistency is so key. I think the reason so many people perceive their health falling off in their 40s is that this is when the cumulative weight of increasing life responsibilities (kids, career advancement, caring for elder relatives, etc.) really hits hard, making it more and more difficult to find time/energy for regular exercise.

Yes and: Maintain your balance. Get tested (assessed). Do the exercises. (For anyone who hasn't heard.)

My mom and her bf were hard core. Swimming, biking, running, the works.

They served as one of the hosts for BBC's program Are You Fitter Than a Pensioner? [2010] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tyr5n My mom was 70 at the time. Spoiler: The seniors smoked the youths.

Alas, as with so many: falls -> injury -> idleness -> decline.

Some balance stuff can't be helped. Mom's bf got spells of vertigo; apparently the little balancing sensor bone inside the ear gets loose with age.

My grandma is 90 and still lives alone, walks around her neighborhood daily, and swims in a community pool outside her back door. She attributes it (I think rightfully) to a lot of walking and activity throughout her life.

Probably some good genes too (her brother is 100, her sister just passed at 104)

Reminds me of a guy I knew when I was growing up. At the time he was in his 80s. Walked miles every day, he was in great shape. Still died before 90, so it did not buy him notable longevity, but he was mentally sharp and physically capable up to very near the end. That sounds way better than slowly turning into a vegetable over the last 20 years of your life.

Could it be survivorship bias? You'll only ever inhabit your own body. You don't know what it's like to be someone else. Some people are built different.

Only 19.7% of men live at least 88 years in the US, let's define notable longevity to be the top 1%, that would imply living at least 99 years.

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6_2004.html

I'm glad this is the #1 post. I love hearing this. Thanks for sharing!

Your mom's boyfriend probably already knows this, but just in case: I once suffered from loose crystals in my inner ear (probably due to stress and burnout) and had such bad vertigo that I thought I was going to die. There are exercises that move the crystals back to where they belong, where they get absorbed and metabolized again. It's called Epley maneuver, and while it can be extremely uncomfortable and should preferably be done under supervision (some people throw up when doing it) it solves the issue quickly and pretty much permanently.

I've heard of people who lived months or years even before figuring this out.

There's some hoping that some maladies of aging such as vertigo are more treatable in the coming decades, for those fortunate to be alive by then.

The age you die shouldn't be an accomplishment. The quality of life is.

I didn't realize this until a couple of years ago (in my 40s) but boy did it alter my perspective on life. And I've heard what you're saying here from a couple other people in their 60s too. When you're young you don't really think about it much, health comes for "free."

But as you age your biology will force a choice upon you, one option is you spend progressively more time maintaining your health, in which case it drops off MUCH less than you'd expect. Or you can neglect that maintenance, in which case your quality of life WILL drop off in a big way due to health problems.

That's what it is, it's a choice, one you don't get to opt out of, but there is a path where you're in remarkably good shape for less effort than you would probably assume... for most people even just 2-3 hours a week of moderate exercise at the gym is probably a game changer.

I'm a little worried about the health of younger people today, because I read the statistics about obesity, blood pressure, ED and so on all going up for them. I'm also occasionally taking 20-30 minute walks with people in their 20s, who want to take a car, they're exhausted at the end of it, and they can't keep up with me. I get it, I was like that a couple years ago before I started hitting the gym, but really, at 25, you can't handle under a half hour of brisk walking? Oof, habits sure have changed.

nah it's not probably. it is certainly is a big role

True. But you can also be smart about it, and it doesn't have to be something that takes your whole afternoon. 15 minutes of home exercise instead of media scrolling, and at the end of the week, it is 1:45, at the end of the month 7:45 that you've done something. Or just a simple door frame exercise bar where you do a pushup or two now and then. These small things add up. Or to go with friends to play football or my friend started to run, they made a Sunday morning running group. To end with what you've begun, regularity is the key.

> When you're young you don't really think about it much, health comes for "free."

I can't stress this enough. So many of my peers have complained about back pain and other physical ailments, as if it was an unavoidable part of turning 30.

No, it didn't just suddenly appear the moment you turned 30, it's the symptom of accumulated damage from a sedentary lifestyle.

For what it's worth, I've managed to get a lot of them into fitness, and they're doing much better now

My grandma is 90 and seems like she hasn't aged at all since I was a child. She is still fit and independent. She eats whatever she wants. She went to the doctor for a checkup and told him that she eats cake and pastries almost every day and asked if that was alright; the doctor looked at her test results and literally told her "Mrs... You can eat as much sugar as you want." It's kind of funny that she is the longest living of all my grandparents because she was the least neurotic about her health to the point of negligence.

She would constantly bake rich chocolate cakes and thick hot drinking chocolate for herself and grandchildren and when she cooked pasta, she would put ketchup + mayonnaise on top. All the recipes she knows are quick/easy and supposedly unhealthy. She literally doesn't know how to make a salad. I've never seen her eat a salad.

This is linked to the superb concept of Senescence [1].

In 'Exercised', the author goes to great lengths to show how, in some societies, people don't turn into 'vegetables' because they're active and engaged. They just… die eventually, without an awful decay into death.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senescence

I am around 30 and at least still I feel same as 20. Although I try to walk at least 30 min per day but the city I live in Asia is really shit for walking so it ends up being through shopping malls or some park.

Also I have been taking metformin (daily) and rapamycin (weekly) since like age 24 not sure they have helped but it's easy to buy here so I am giving it a try. I also use sunscreen if I go out during the midday which I rarely do in the tropics..

Aging is such an interesting topic that I find myself thinking about it almost every day but more of from the scientific point of view, like what is going wrong and why is the rate of aging so different in the animal kingdom. There are mammals that can live super long compared to ones in the same species and even same sizes, like some birds I remember 50+ while other do less than 10 years. Then there's something like naked molerat etc, the greenland whale hundreds of years lifespan..

Even between people, like Queen Elizabeth lived relatively long and her mother I think also, if you look at pictures throughout her life she always looked younger than her age IMO. And when she died it was very quick not like drawn out years that many have to endure, many long lived people actually pass very quickly..

If I wasn't in software dev, I think I would be in this field.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aixnlVbmzE8

This is a bit like the "my grandad smoked a pack a day and it never hurt him" anecdotes where, yes, they're remarkable because it killed all the others who tried it !

I'm turning 60 later this month - biggest thing I've recently done on the wellbeing front is getting a dog - suddenly I'm walking 10km every day (on average) and talking to a lot more people - I had no idea how sociable dog walking is!

I run 4 days a week (4km per day), fast for two days (72 hours total) do two gym strength workouts, one sauna session, and two Zumba classes. I also do cold showers daily. Floating once a week, facial ferment therapy once a week.

And still, I feel like hell today (and it is only Friday morning)

I used to run half a marathon every Thursday in a fasted (36 hours) state, but now I can't, I became weak and frail. Aging gets us all!

In only a very few cases with specific degenerative diseases.

For the other 99.9% of us, the number of studies showing the difference made by exercise, healthy eating, not smoking or drinking alcohol are too numerous to mention.

Ignore the information about exercise at your peril. You can probably use motivated reasoning to convince yourself you are right to remain in your chair and your growing list of ailments have nothing to do with your lack of exercise, and you may even remain convinced until you die. That will not change the opportunity you miss to enjoy decades of better health and life.

To grossly oversimplify it, our bodies literally evolved over billions of years to exercise and rest, eat so we are alternately storing excess energy as fat and removing energy from fat stores, and only eating sugars, alcohols, and inhaling smoke as extremely occasional events. I it stupid to assume switching the routine to sitting most of the time, only storing energy as fat and rarely if ever depleting those stores, and frequently consuming sugar alcohol and smoke would make no difference.

I could regale you with pages of personal experience (fmr intl-class athlete, trained and sedentary for periods of life and observed results) and data, but those are easy enough to find. All I can do is encourage you to change your POV, and start exercising well

You will find the 'built different' is how you build your own body —— weight lifting isn't called "body building" for nothing —— it (along with running and stretching) really does rebuild your body over the course of months.

Good luck and I wish you well on your journey.

To be realistic, lots of times a simulation would have to capture the feeling of having 6x to 7x the fairly mature adult experience compared to the same person at 30 years old.

And the accompanying multiple of confidence and proven ability to go with it.

Plus a much bigger multiple of both, compared to your younger self at under 30.

You really can do most of the same things after 60, and with maturity it's easy to accept how the big difference is that you wont be doing them as many additional decades into the future.

I've managed to build a significant amount of muscle mass just from doing stretchy-band PT exercises to deal with shoulder pain. 10-15 minutes nearly every day makes a big difference. I've also started developing some serious leg muscles just from walking up and down stairs in my 2-story house (+basement) and around my mildly hilly neighborhood.

I drive as little as possible; I went on a 1200 mile road trip last weekend and I'm still paying for so much sitting.

For smoking, it is also important to check what happened to people living under the same roof (or in the same multifamily complex even) due to their likely frequent inhalation of secondhand smoke.

That's fair. In my family and wider circle of friends, most people live into their 90s, so I have a biased view that expects this to be pretty routine.