At 55, I thought my body was pretty well used up.
I had type 2 diabetes.
I weighed 98 pounds more than I do today.
My feet hurt. My knee hurt. My back hurt. My shoulder hurt.
Several surgeries were being discussed.
And there was an explanation available for all of it that was incredibly easy to believe.
I was getting older.
Fair enough.
Except I’m 72 now.
And I feel considerably better.
So what the hell happened?
That’s a Question I’ve Been Thinking About for 19 Years
Obviously, I aged.
Seventeen more years showed up whether I invited them or not.
But a surprising number of things I had associated with getting older changed when I changed what I was doing.
I lost the weight.
My type 2 diabetes went into remission.
I started moving differently.
Resistance stretching made an enormous difference in my pain and mobility.
The surgeries being discussed never happened.
Eventually I found myself teaching movement instead of wondering how many things were going to need fixing.
That experience changed the way I think about aging.
Not because I believe aging isn’t real.
It most certainly is.
But because I’ve become much less willing to automatically blame everything that happens as we get older on aging itself.
Scientists Are Asking the Same Question
This is where aging research gets fascinating.
David Sinclair is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School whose lab studies the biology of aging.
One area his lab has investigated is the epigenome, part of the machinery that helps regulate which genes are switched on and off.
Sinclair’s lab has proposed that loss of epigenetic information may be one contributor to aging. In animal experiments, researchers have been able to manipulate some of these processes and even reverse certain signs of aging in cells and mice.
That’s extraordinary research.
It’s also important to say what it doesn’t mean.
Nobody at Harvard has discovered how to make Dave 35 again.
Unfortunately. 😂
Much of this work is still laboratory and animal research. Translating it into safe, effective ways of changing human aging is an entirely different challenge.
But the larger idea fascinates me:
Some parts of what we call aging may be biological processes we can influence.
Is Aging a Disease?
This is where things get controversial.
Sinclair and some other researchers have argued that aging should be treated more like a disease, or at least as something medicine should actively target rather than simply accept.
Other scientists strongly disagree.
The World Health Organization does not simply classify biological aging itself as a disease, and researchers continue debating whether doing so would be scientifically useful or even conceptually correct.
I don’t know who’s ultimately going to win that argument.
And frankly, I don’t need to.
Because there’s a much more practical question sitting right in front of us.
What Can I Affect Today?
At 72, I can’t change the year on my birth certificate.
I can’t guarantee that I won’t get sick.
I can’t stop every biological process associated with aging.
Neither can David Sinclair.
But there are things I can influence.
Strength.
Mobility.
Balance.
Cardiovascular fitness.
Blood pressure.
Blood sugar.
Body composition.
Sleep.
What I eat.
Whether I spend my day sitting or moving.
Whether I continue doing things that challenge my body and brain.
How connected I am to other people.
None of those makes me immortal.
They make my life better now.
That’s a pretty good return.
This Is Where I Think We Get Into Trouble
Something becomes more common as people get older, and eventually we start calling it normal aging.
Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Loss of strength is common.
That doesn’t mean you’re powerless to get stronger.
Stiffness is common.
That doesn’t mean you should stop moving.
Poor balance becomes more common.
Balance can still be practiced.
People become less active, lose capacity, become even less active because things are harder, and pretty soon the entire process gets blamed on the number of candles on the cake.
Sometimes age absolutely matters.
Sometimes disease matters.
Sometimes an injury changes what is possible.
And sometimes we’ve simply stopped asking the body to do something.
Those distinctions matter.
I’m Not Fighting Aging Anymore
I think that’s another thing that’s changed for me.
A few months ago I might have written this as a battle.
Fight aging. Defeat decline. Don’t let the system tell you what’s possible.
I don’t particularly like that anymore.
I’m not at war with being 72.
I’m actually having a hell of a good time being 72.
I want to see 73.
And 80.
And 90 sounds interesting if they’ll have me.
I’m curious about what I’ll still be able to do.
That’s different from trying not to age.
Your Life Isn’t Fixed
That’s the part of my story I wish I’d understood at 55.
I thought I was looking at my future.
I wasn’t.
I was looking at where my choices up to that point had brought me.
Some of what happened next was changeable.
Some of it probably wasn’t.
I couldn’t know which was which until I started doing something differently.
That’s still how I approach it.
Move.
Eat in a way that works for me.
Stay strong.
Walk.
Sleep.
Keep learning.
Pay attention.
Change direction when something isn’t working.
And don’t assume that because something is common at my age, I have to quietly accept it.
Science may eventually discover remarkable ways to alter the biology of aging.
I’ll be watching.
In the meantime, I’ve already got plenty to work with.
I’m going to keep getting older.
My goal is to keep living while I do it.