“I’m in my mid-30’s, why should I care about aging?”

If you’re anything like the rest of the world, your main encounters with aging have been through skin creams and various warnings about the wrinkles on your face (and how one more might appear). Maybe one or two other incidents, but this is largely it.

So, when you see a semi-crazy company (*cough* us *cough*) making posts about aging and a test about aging aimed for a pretty young demographic (30–55), you may be confused.

So, today, we’ll explain why you should care about your aging health :).

Why should I care? No, seriously.

There are a couple reasons: First, you may be well aware of lifespan but there is a secondary concept, healthspan, that is also very relevant. Healthspan is the amount of years in your life/lifespan that you spend healthy. So, if you live 500 years but are very ill for 450 of them, you’ve really only got 50 years of solid time. However, if you live a mere 100 years (okay, maybe not that small), and you are sick for only 5, you get 95 years of solid time.

Effectively, it seems more useful to maximize the time not-sick rather than the time alive — because more time alive can just introduce more time spent sick, which is unpleasant and not useful.

Another is that aging-related disease risk is actually changeable. Your risk for diseases such as dementia, Parkinson’s, aging-associated CVD, etc is pretty malleable, depending on how early you start. If you’re reading this while 60, you may not be able to affect your risk a TON (but you can a bit), but you can a bit. However, if you’re in your 30s or even younger, you can definitely affect your risk.

Aging-related diseases, outside of genetic factors and pure random noise that causes bodily aging, are very influenced by lifestyle! Aka, you can make a change. You are not subscribed to a fate nor are you absolutely screwed if your lifestyle hasn’t been so hot for the past while. Research shows it’s almost never too late to affect your risk. [1]

Hopefully, this has been some fun motivation so far. There’s one more reason we want to talk about. Aging does affect beauty. You’ve heard it, we’ve heard it. If you’ve committed yourself not to care about aging’s effect on your beauty, skip to the ‘what to do next?’ section and focus on diseases. However, if you do care, before you buy that next cream in your cart (we see it ;)), keep in mind that a healthy lifestyle can also change your skin.

Extrinsic aging, aging caused by our lifestyle and environment, is rampant in our skin. If you can shift your lifestyle, you can change your skin’s fate [2]. Your skin tends to be a representation of what’s going on on the inside (and don’t stress about many wrinkles, they just mean you’re happy!), and if you take good measures to feel good inside — you’ll look good on the outside.

Next steps to take right now (plus one to take shortly!)

Since this isn’t an avenue where we can give personalized tips, we’ll give some general ones. Dietary choices-wise: Eat foods that are low in added sugar (try to cap it, and this is a cap at: 25g a say) [3], don’t consume too much saturated fat (max 20g per day recommended) [4], and eat smaller/reasonable portions and more frequently (except for on holidays of course!!) [5].

Exercise-wise, make a fun habit out of it. For around five times a week, move your body for 30 minutes [6]. You can walk, jump rope, rock climb, do an at-home workout, go to the gym, anything! Just make sure you do it.

Finally, in terms of mindfulness, you should meditate fairly often! It seems daunting, but a little bit a day can make a big impact and leave you feeling much better. It’ll combat cognitive stress.

TL;DR:

• You should care about aging because you can change your risk for aging-related diseases and consequently spend more time healthy while alive. You can also make your skin turn out better when you age via a good lifestyle now.
• To combat aging, eat foods low in added sugar, don’t consume too much saturated fat, and eat smaller portions and more frequently. Also, exercise 5 times a week for around 30 minutes a session. Finally, meditate and be mindful so you can reduce your risk for brain aging-related diseases.

Citations

1. National Institute on Aging. (n.d.). Goal C: Develop effective interventions to maintain health, well-being, and function and prevent or reduce the burden of age-related diseases, disorders, and disabilities. Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://www.nia.nih.gov/about/aging-strategic-directions-research/goal-health-interventions
2. American Academy of Dermatology. (2021, February 24). 11 ways to reduce premature skin aging. Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://www.aad.org/public/everyday-care/skin-care-secrets/anti-aging/reduce-premature-aging-skin
3. Danby, F. W. (2010). Nutrition and aging skin: sugar and glycation. In Clinics in Dermatology (Vol. 28, Issue 4, pp. 409–411). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clindermatol.2010.03.018
4. Barnard, N. D., Bunner, A. E., & Agarwal, U. (2014). Saturated and trans fats and dementia: a systematic review. In Neurobiology of Aging (Vol. 35, pp. S65–S73). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2014.02.030
5. Picca, A., Pesce, V., & Lezza, A. M. S. (2017). Does eating less make you live longer and better? An update on calorie restriction. In Clinical Interventions in Aging: Vol. Volume 12 (pp. 1887–1902). Informa UK Limited. https://doi.org/10.2147/cia.s126458
6. Seegert, L. (2021, June 1). 4 Ways Exercise Helps Fight Aging. Time. Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://time.com/6053055/how-exercise-fights-aging/
7. Epel, E., Daubenmier, J., Moskowitz, J. T., Folkman, S., & Blackburn, E. (2009). Can Meditation Slow Rate of Cellular Aging? Cognitive Stress, Mindfulness, and Telomeres. In Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (Vol. 1172, Issue 1, pp. 34–53). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04414.x