The Two Critical Stages of Aging You Need to Master
Humans age dramatically at two key life points, risking health. Fortunately, there are evidence-backed secrets to maintaining vitality
We tend to think of aging as linear — like sands falling through an hourglass or hands moving around a clock face. Each morning, we wake up a day older. Each birthday, we add one more candle to the cake.
But science is proving that aging isn’t all that simple. Rather than being a slow and steady process, new research from Stanford University’s School of Medicine points to two major waves of chemical processes that occur in accelerated bursts.
“We’re not just changing gradually over time,” Michael Snyder, PhD, a geneticist at Stanford and senior author of the study, said in a statement. “It turns out the mid-40s is a time of dramatic change, as is the early 60s.”
For most functions, Snyder and his team found, the drama unfolds differently at different ages. For example, 40-somethings undergo a significantly decreased ability to metabolize alcohol, while 60-somethings experience a decreased ability to metabolize carbohydrates. The study was published this month in Nature Aging.
