On Aging

What’s the deal with aging? Gosh! Everything time I hear “For people of your age..”, I brace myself for the onslaught. Fragility, senility, dementia, low-T, hypertension, cholesterol, blood sugar, weight, bone density, cancer, … Nothing good comes after that opening. “People of my age” spend a mandatory 30 minutes on health topics every time we gather. It is also a routine to ask, “Is so-and-so still alive?”

There seems to be three categories of aging: muscular, bio-chemical, and psychological.

Most of us lead semi-sedentary lifestyles. We don’t work our bodies the way they were designed. As we age, the effects pile on. The muscles atrophy and bones weaken. Our tolerance for injuries declines. A simple act that used to just strain the muscle now ruptures the tendons. A weight that needed just a bit more oomph to lift now breaks the bones. A cat-walk that was a breeze now a death trap for falling. Study showed that if we exercise our muscles, we can slow down or even stop this part of aging. In this, I treat cardio-vascular as muscles. The sense of balancing is also one; try to stand on one-foot for 2 minutes. Lastly, don’t forget to stretch; stiffness, or inflexibility, is a common cause for injuries.

Sadly, our bodies remember every injury since birth. Each of them chips away a bit of efficiency. Yes, that’s why your old shoulder seized and your knees gave away. We categorized these “wear and tear.” There is not much we can do about these. The older we get, the slower we re-generate and heal. (I don’t know why.) Injury avoidance becomes a key for the aged.

Bio-chemistry is harder. We cannot really exercise our glands to make them stronger. The very fact of living is damaging them continuously. We breath air, ingest sustenance, and drink liquids. All of those generate by-products that are toxic. Our organs and glands, taking the tolls every day, degrade as we live. This bio-chemistry factory eventually ceases. As we feel the factory’s decline, we try to take care of it better: less salt, less fat, less alcohol, or just less whatever. Sigh… less life?

Our psyche works completely differently. It has a strange way to select what to remember and an even more mysterious way to synthesize memories into perspective. We really “see” things differently than when we were younger. We call those “wisdoms” or just experiences. Everyone eventually says, “Boy, I feel old” either by remembering something from their youths or witnessing something that renders their long-practiced skills obsolete. It is not possible to rejuvenate our perception of freshness. Once you know, you cannot unknow. If you have been there, done that, you will have also lost the excitement of doing it the first time. The key is to find newness in life somehow. This is really about the art to forget, or to appreciate subtleties.

Develop good habits while you’re still young. Get used to getting old. Sigh..

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