There was another recent study that made the front page of HN (would have to search to find it) that found two "peaks" of aging, at 44 and 60. As someone in my late 40s, I certainly identified with that.
I was in fairly good shape and feel like, despite some grays and some crows feet, my body was relatively the same from my early 20s to my early 40s. 44 really did hit me like a ton of bricks though - working out got considerably harder, and my face started to show more permanent signs of aging, like loss of facial fat and neck banding. Can't say I was thrilled to later discover I was "right on schedule".
I’m 49 and haven’t noticed much. I’m in better shape now than in my 20s and 30s so that could be obscuring things. It does take longer to recover from an all nighter at work than it use to so there’s definitely that.
I'm closing in on 62 and I've been saying for a while now that as soon as I turned 60 my body sent me a note saying "That's it - I'm done now. The rest is up to you".
I felt incredibly old from ~36 - 42.
Then I started seriously working out, took control of my diet (it had very much always controlled me) and started aggressively pursuing a "better living through chemistry" approach to life.
I feel 25 years younger now. My BP and cholesterol are under control and I roll out of bed actually feeling rested (probably due to not snoring anymore).
I started weight training at about age 54. I had never done any form of regular exercise in my life. Attempts here and there, but nothing ever stuck for very long. I am stronger now than I ever have been.
You’re not going to find a reliable “debunking” in HN comments of a scientific paper published in Cell.
But this paper is about analyzing tissue samples from internal organs. Which is generally not what people feel when they “feel” aging. In fact most internal organs can’t be felt at all (no nerve endings), which is how people get surprised with Stage IV cancer diagnoses like pancreatic cancer.
What people generally feel are their muscles and joints are weaker and more painful. Or their eyesight gets worse. Or their digestive system works worse. And the truth is, there is a lot a person can do to adjust or mitigate these things, through simple lifestyle changes like diet and exercise.
So there is your ray of hope: you can do things differently to feel less old. Plenty of examples in the comments here.
That said, you are 100% for sure going to age and die, and there are also things you can do to help accept and prepare for that. Your body will change; your mind can change too.
Agree - I’m 58 and still do the same workout I did in my 30s and 40s including 3 sets of 15 to 20 pull-ups depending on the day. I also still skate (hockey) 2 -3 times a week with a bunch of retired pros (echl, nhl, etc) and typically put up a bunch of points every skate (possibly slightly more assists now but I attribute that more toward enjoying that more these days and not needing to be so flashy)
I'm 30, so maybe still too young to have a meaningful perspective, but I take comfort in the fact that I will always get to choose what I _try_ to do. I can't control my body's state, but I can insist on doing exciting / eventful stuff until my body gives in. My friend's grandma (80+ yo) just flew from Bay Area to Paris on her own, to catch up with old friends. I'm pretty sure her doctors would advise her not to do that trip, but she is doing what she wants. I admire her for making the choice to assert her free will, despite the increased risk; I aspire to be like that.
I mean, I'm 61, working at a smallish SaaS company that "just growed" from a startup, having fun. I write code, which is the work I enjoy most, I do architecture and explain to the kids why we're doing what we're doing. My health is fine, but I exercise regularly and eat reasonably healthy.
Re my health, I kinda feel like Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman: "What, me worry?" I worry more about the state of the US than I do about my own health. We're all going to die - I've lived a lot longer than many people. I've outlived Steve Jobs by 5 years at this point. Suck it, Steve! (And Jim Morrison? 34 years. Looooser!)
If you do cardio - even just walking/hiking - and weight training, you're going to be healther than 95% of people, and live longer with better quality of life. It's not that difficult.
As you age, if you're reasonably sane, you start letting go of the idea that you can or should live forever.
From what I gather, the good news is there is a way, but the bad news is if you haven’t been keeping an active and healthy lifestyle your whole there is nothing you can do, you simply can’t cram decades worth of exercise and nutrition benefits into a few short years all at once and expect to reap benefits.
It's very likely that aging is driven by some kind of scheduled gene program. It makes perfect sense to phase out individuals from a group-level selection point of view.
Perhaps not a phase-out program, but a progressive shut-down program, as a trade off between peak performance and total lifespan, where the characteristic patterns of ageing is what allowed humans to live much longer than other animals around the same size. Similar to the idea in this comic: https://www.badspacecomics.com/post/the-suit
By this logic, as a hedge against sudden death around ~50, the human body start cranking down the output of its diverse subsystems by then, to maximize operacional life, just like NASA engineers from time to time turn off instruments in the voyager to keep it operational against the odds. This is what we call ageing.
Maybe. But why in this case do we not see bugs and failures in this program, i.e. no one lived 5 times more than the average or did not live forever at all, for example? I'm not making a statement, just a guess.
This would be an optimistic scenario and introduce a possibility for the "scheduled gene program" to be controlled or turned off. The current thinking in the field seems to favour the idea that aging is a complex combination of programmed changes, stochastic damage, as well as various adaptations to help cope with the damage.
My hypothesis is that it's just the continuation of the development program that starts with conception. It just turns self-destructive at some point, because natural selection didn't do anything about that because when humans were living in caves, no one lived to these kinds of ages anyway.
So, to rejuvenate the body, you would have to find where the current state of that program is stored, and overwrite it to a younger one, as if using a debugger. So far there are two promising developments about that: Michael Levin's research about bioelectricity, and Harold Katcher's research about exosomes (he seems to have abandoned it, but other people are picking up).
Life expectancy much longer than 40 is a modern thing for humans though. So where would the over 40s schedule have come from? Or do you mean the schedule basically says: once you hit 50 start falling apart?
I think this study adds to growing evidence that aging doesn’t progress linearly. There’s less evidence supporting a specific inflection point for aging. If aging is like any other biological process, it’s likely to vary a lot between individuals depending on genetic, lifestyle and environmental factors and within an individual between different tissues. Until we develop accurate measures of tissue aging, there’s much we can do other than live as well as we can and as hard as possible.
Mine started late-thirties. Stomach doesn't handle spices as it used to. Any bravery at dinner time means poor sleep and tiredness for a day or two. Bumps/strained things take days to stop hurting.
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|7 months ago|reply
I was in fairly good shape and feel like, despite some grays and some crows feet, my body was relatively the same from my early 20s to my early 40s. 44 really did hit me like a ton of bricks though - working out got considerably harder, and my face started to show more permanent signs of aging, like loss of facial fat and neck banding. Can't say I was thrilled to later discover I was "right on schedule".
[+] [-] chasd00|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] teapot7|7 months ago|reply
I feel validated by this study.
[+] [-] bdcravens|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] geoah|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] anal_reactor|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kelnos|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wonderwonder|7 months ago|reply
I feel 25 years younger now. My BP and cholesterol are under control and I roll out of bed actually feeling rested (probably due to not snoring anymore).
[+] [-] SoftTalker|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bilsbie|7 months ago|reply
I feel great when I eat clean.
[+] [-] munksbeer|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Mistletoe|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] neom|7 months ago|reply
Study: https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(25)00749-4
[+] [-] braingravy|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mellosouls|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] snowwrestler|7 months ago|reply
But this paper is about analyzing tissue samples from internal organs. Which is generally not what people feel when they “feel” aging. In fact most internal organs can’t be felt at all (no nerve endings), which is how people get surprised with Stage IV cancer diagnoses like pancreatic cancer.
What people generally feel are their muscles and joints are weaker and more painful. Or their eyesight gets worse. Or their digestive system works worse. And the truth is, there is a lot a person can do to adjust or mitigate these things, through simple lifestyle changes like diet and exercise.
So there is your ray of hope: you can do things differently to feel less old. Plenty of examples in the comments here.
That said, you are 100% for sure going to age and die, and there are also things you can do to help accept and prepare for that. Your body will change; your mind can change too.
[+] [-] evo_9|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] pinkmuffinere|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] antonvs|7 months ago|reply
Re my health, I kinda feel like Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman: "What, me worry?" I worry more about the state of the US than I do about my own health. We're all going to die - I've lived a lot longer than many people. I've outlived Steve Jobs by 5 years at this point. Suck it, Steve! (And Jim Morrison? 34 years. Looooser!)
If you do cardio - even just walking/hiking - and weight training, you're going to be healther than 95% of people, and live longer with better quality of life. It's not that difficult.
As you age, if you're reasonably sane, you start letting go of the idea that you can or should live forever.
[+] [-] deadbabe|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] 77pt77|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] piombisallow|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Qem|7 months ago|reply
By this logic, as a hedge against sudden death around ~50, the human body start cranking down the output of its diverse subsystems by then, to maximize operacional life, just like NASA engineers from time to time turn off instruments in the voyager to keep it operational against the odds. This is what we call ageing.
[+] [-] NoOn3|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kkoncevicius|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] munchler|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] grishka|7 months ago|reply
So, to rejuvenate the body, you would have to find where the current state of that program is stored, and overwrite it to a younger one, as if using a debugger. So far there are two promising developments about that: Michael Levin's research about bioelectricity, and Harold Katcher's research about exosomes (he seems to have abandoned it, but other people are picking up).
[+] [-] petters|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jebarker|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jgalt212|7 months ago|reply
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/08/massive-biomo...
[+] [-] beej71|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] randenauthor657|7 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wiz21c|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] drgo|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] exe34|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] 31carmichael|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tangent-man|7 months ago|reply
What is this BS?
[+] [-] slantaclaus|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] exegete|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] msie|7 months ago|reply