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.
> 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.
This is spot on. I'm 46 and I've been fortunate to be healthy and in decent shape my entire life; however, a check up that was fine but trending in the wrong direction prompted these lifestyle changes.
I lift run or lift daily, have reduced my carb intake significantly, stopped drinking, perform a short yoga routine each morning, and spend some time on the cushion each evening. I only wish I'd done this earlier because I feel so much better than I ever have.
To lose weight. I was at the cusp of being overweight, so decide to get my BMI (an admittedly flawed, but still useful metric) firmly into the middle of the expected range rather than at the upper bound.
I can't put a number on that, unfortunately. I don't do well with diets that require I keep track of all the details — it feels like a chore and I tend to give up — so I decided instead to adopt a simple rule of thumb: avoid carbs where possible. In practice, this means no breads, no pasta, no doughnuts, no sugary foods, etc. Instead, I eat more protein. This works well for me and I lost 15-20 lbs quite quickly and I now maintain a good weight. YMMV, though.
As for cushion time, my practice is very basic: just 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation each day (usually after working out). I feel calmer, less irritable, and more present in everyday life. It's not a panacea, but I find it helps me.
The counterpoint is that people will report that low carbs is bad for exercise. i also feel like low-carb is the only way I can easily lose weight and don't feel hungry all the time.
This is a good point. I certainly feel like I can lift more (weight and reps) when I've eaten more carbs. It's a bit of a balancing act to keep the weight off, but also have enough energy to exercise hard. To address this, after the initial weight loss I was less aggressive in avoiding carbs.
> In fact most internal organs can’t be felt at all (no nerve endings)
That might be technically true, but I think it's worth noting that many internal organs can produce pain, e.g. kidneys, gallbladder, pancreas, prostate, urethra, stomach, intestines, bladder, heart.
Only through chemical means which triggers relatively far away neurons to produce pain. This has the consequence that the pain is not felt at it's source.
E.g. a doctor will become very nervous if you report dizziness with a pain moving from your chest into your left shoulder or neck. Such pain originates along the path of the vagus nerve, which includes your lungs and heart (and half the digestive organs, and even the womb, kidneys and gall bladder sometimes). It's very tricky to diagnose, and usually extremely serious (as in ignoring it may cause death).
You're correct, but I've personally experienced the kind of referred pain you're describing, for both (at different times) prostate and kidneys, and doctors (and now me!) are pretty able to identify that and treat it.
We get plenty of sensations from our internal organs; just ask anyone who had kidney stones. The sensations may or may not feel like pain, but the internal organs are definitely not silent. The issue of referred pain is mostly related to organs sharing nerve supply at the spinal level, e.g., the liver and the left shoulder.
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)
>"3 sets of 15 to 20 pull-ups depending on the day"
It is always 20 for me. 4 sets. I am 64. I used to do 30 when I was a teen but I was much lighter then. also lots of swimming, cycling, hiking canoeing etc. etc
Prolly because I was doing those all my life. Funny that even after more than a year long break at 50+yo due to trauma it only took me a 1.5 month to recover from 5 to back to 20. I guess once you do something long enough body just gets accustomed.
You are reaping the benefits of having an active fitness regime in your 30s .
The average 50 year old who starts exercising today will never get to your fitness level .
I don’t think I’m convinced of that. Most fitness measures saturate as you approach a limit. For example, you can build muscle mass rapidly in the first couple of years but it slows dramatically as you approach your genetic limit. It only takes a few years of consistent training to get to that asymptotic level. So on that measure, you can basically “catch up” to your hypothetical “always trained” self.
While you might not be able to get to the exact same level of fitness as if you had trained for years, I think you can get fairly close. And without a doubt, you can drastically improve from wherever you’re starting.
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.
It is interesting how the perspective of society can set an expectation of not doing certain things. Of course its personality and body/health dependent but I've seen 95 year olds still doing daily light farm work and totally independent until the day they passed away, or seen 75+ year olds out there on some pretty challenging hiking trails. There's no reason why an average older person can't still do a ton of things.
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.
> As you age, if you're reasonably sane, you start letting go of the idea that you can or should live forever.
I'm (only?) 44, and I still can't quite make peace with the idea of death. I'm not really afraid of it, but I can't stand the idea that I'm going to miss out on so many cool events in the future.
I want to see us colonize our solar system, maybe learn how to travel to other stars. I want to see what a post-scarcity economy might be like, if we as humans aren't too selfish to distribute wealth fairly. I want to see where medical/biological technology takes us, whether that's human cybernetics, whole-brain uploads, immersive virtual worlds, ... hell, the cures for so many diseases could be just around the corner. Man, so many possibilities, and I'm sure I'll be gone (long gone, even) before any of them becomes reality. And it's just a huge bummer to me that I won't get to experience any of it.
But hey, who knows, maybe we'll destroy ourselves via climate change, nuclear war, genocidal AI, or whatever within my lifetime. Or we'll keep sliding toward a dystopian future where 0.0001% of people live like kings and queens, and the rest of us live in miserable conditions, constantly surveilled, oppressed at every turn.
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 a bit like changing the oil on a car engine. You need to keep up with it. Sure, some neglect is partially recoverable but generally it's "wear and tear". You only have so many telomeres and many processes are irreversible.
> 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.
I think this is bullshit. A poor lifestyle over decades will have consequences but there definitely are benefits to be had in taking up exercise and healthier eating whatever your age.
Sure, if you're 50 and haven't been taking care of yourself at all, starting right now is better than never starting. But there's likely going to be some ceiling you hit, a ceiling that would have been higher had you been taking better care of yourself your whole life.
> I think this is bullshit.
At the risk of being "that guy": can we keep the temperature down? That kind of reaction feels unnecessary and is the way we get people polarized about things. (Not saying I'm not guilty of this from time to time, but I'm trying to be better!)
What is the “ceiling” though? Sure, you’re not going to walk on to an NFL team but you will def. feel better from a more active lifestyle and healthier diet even at 50+
Doesn’t matter. Any “feeling” you get at that point is just endorphins and placebo. As soon as you stop, you quickly feel like shit again.
A lifetime of bad eating and no exercise means your arteries are clogged, nothing you can do to change that you just live with it, and physical activity could eventually give you a heart attack as your heart fails to keep up with the new demand.
You will likely have little muscle mass, most of your body will be a bunch of layers of fat covering small weak muscles, and at age 50+ your body is simply not going to build muscle the way it used to, if at all. On the contrary, if you had built a fit muscular body early when you’re young and maintained it all your life, your body in old age would be mostly dense muscular structures, and thin layers of fat. Two old people can appear the same size but have radically different compositions underneath. Even though we lose muscle as we age, the best defense is to have plenty of muscle to spare. The muscles also help in the regulation of insulin.
And then of course there’s the issue of bones. Physical exercise and lifting weights builds strong dense bones and if you’ve neglected both then you’re plunging into old age with a bad skeletal foundation. Your bones will be brittle and hollow and more prone to breakage and unable to tolerate stress. Building strong bones takes time, it’s measured in microfractures. At 50+, you don’t have time.
With bad bones, bad muscles, and a bad circulatory system, it’s easy to see how you should be in a bed “getting some rest” instead of out doing strenuous activity where you can break something easily.
