I read the whole journal article, but to facilitate discussion with less studious people, I'm going to focus my comments only on the information in the OP.

About 44 is when my tendons started going to shit.

Also, at just before I turned 50, my blood pressure shot through the roof for no reason I can tell. It was very easy to control with medication, and I'm at the lowest dose they make, but unmedicated it was dangerously high even in the short term. The top number was over 200.

It's lucky for me that this was noticed in late 2019, because otherwise it would have taken a couple of years to be noticed.

Or just a couple of months, considering what happened in 2020.

It's lucky for me us

It was just much harder to get things like a routine in-person physical in the early days of covid. I also was in desperate need of new glasses because I broke two pairs. They gave me an exam while I was wearing one of those homemade masks with a coffee filter liner. The optician had a real mask.

6: I'm also the only one who brings in my neighbor's trash can now that she can't walk well.

I don't remember how old I was when I realized that I just couldn't sprint anymore. Maybe some of you remember me joking about running to catch the bus being my exercise program. One day I saw the bus coming and started to sprint and realized my body just wasn't cooperating. I suppose I must have been around 55 at the time.

I'm 52, and have had a really noticeable downturn in the last year. As per Moby in 3, I just got diagnosed with high blood pressure, when it has generally been comfortably in the normal range for decades. I've had about 6 months where I haven't done as much cardio exercise as I usually do--the first 2 - 2.5 years after covid I'd been exercising fairly consistently--and my resting pulse, Vo2 max, HRV and other health markers have all gone to shit. I'm also temporarily asthmatic, which I think is a result of having COVID for the fourth time recently, and a couple of other flu like illnesses before that.

Most of the current annoyances are probably temporary, and I'm back exercising more regularly again--2 hour bike ride yesterday!--but I definitely feel noticeably less healthy and fit than I did 2 years ago.

A friend of mine, nearly 30 years ago, had a summer job coding medical records into a computer for a Glasgow NHS organisation, and he had the same anecdotal comment, for what it's worth. He said that for men, in particular, their health record would basically be empty until they got to about 45-50 years old, and then suddenly they'd have literally everything all at once: COPD, heart disease, liver and kidney problems, arthritis, apnoea, cancer, etc.

I was waking up short of breath. I attributed it to the psychosomatic effect of reading the Herman Cain Awards, but it went away when I started exercising harder. I was walking and it turned out that wasn't enough no matter how long I walked.

This sounds right to me from looking at my parents -- they have both seemed to age stepwise. No change for a decade or so, and then they fall off a cliff and settle at a lower level.

For me, I'm 53 and I took a big cosmetic hit a couple of years back, maybe right around 50? Went from looking not spectacular or anything, but younger than my age, and then facial lines really showed up fairly suddenly. Other health markers... I'm pretty fit by my own adult standards still, but I've noticed that soreness doesn't resolve like it used to. It seems as if I'm kind of sore all the time, even if there's no particular reason for it.

Yeah. I'm sore nearly always. Different places if I exercise than if I don't.

I am probably blessed with serious gastric pain if I drink heavily more than once a week or so. I've not seen too many people my own age hit very bad problems drinking and I just can't drink that much without intolerable pain.

When you think about the wide range of time spans for puberty to hit, and the wide range of health outcomes between puberty and this first old-spurt, it's kind of astonishing that it clusters into even a 5 year population-wide thing.

This is fascinating and a little grim (I say, in my late-40s).

Death stalks us all. But while evolution requires women to spend time caring for their grandchildren as they age, men are supposed to play Civ and shop for hiking gear.

I came to the sudden realization that I was an old person a couple years ago, and it's still sinking in. I think I experience time differently from most people around me, probably because I never had kids -- I didn't have that big phase change in my life, and I'm not daily witnessing someone else's big emotionally-impactful milestones. Yesterday I spent the day working from a library where I spent the summer when I was studying for the bar, and I felt like time had completely collapsed -- I could mistake myself for the person I was more than twenty years ago, sitting and reading at the same table, in the same room.

The other day my friend mentioned an old acquaintance, and said, "do you remember her?" And I thought, what are you talking about? Of course I remember her, we just had dinner with her. But in fact, ten years have passed since that dinner, which for my friend (who had two children and a major career change in the intervening period) was a lifetime ago. The past twenty years seem so dimensionless to me! My face and body are aging but my mind is having trouble keeping up with the times.

I have just been inspired by this post to make an appointment with a new primary care physician (my old one, who was terrific but I never saw because I mostly don't get sick, retired suddenly last year with a tragic case of ALS) to get whatever bloodwork people my age get. I don't actually know what it is, but people in their fifties know things about their lipid levels, right? And I also need the shingles vaccine, I think.

Be sure they check your blood pressure.

And the shingles vaccine is two doses, some months apart. The second dose hit me hard and I had to sleep the rest of the day.

I'm also taking lipitor. My cholesterol level didn't go up when I hit 50. It was always high but that was never something they felt the need to fix until high blood pressure and being over 50 happened.

Due to medical interventions of various sorts I look and feel much younger at 45 than I did at 40, but that's obviously a temporary countertrend. My doctor always tells me that we have no idea what to expect as I age because there's basically zero long-term population data.

13: I just started seeing facial lines above my lips and am mad. Two years ago they really weren't there. I looked young for my age because of sunscreen.

The woman in my class who is divorced from the investment banker looks great despite having sunned in the 90's, but she gets Botox. If it were cheap, I'd do it.

I may start dying my hair, but that's also
Pricy. Cops addressed me as Ma'am when I had my accident. Two years ago one person still thought I was in my late 20's.

20: you can get the shingles visit at a pharmacy. Around here an appt w/a new pCP can take 6-9 months. No need to wait for an appt.

Is there an age of onset for "ma'am"? Was it something else when you were younger? "Miss"?

The age of onset for ma'am is when you get hired at a school in rural Texas at age 28.

20: omg yes, get the shingles vaccine. Everybody get it as soon as you can.

26: i think people said, "miss" sometimes. But the police mostly didn't address me with either.

What feels unfair is that men look older faster in the beginning but have no equivalent of menopause (at least when it comes to their face).

Young people's ligaments are made of springs, mine are apparently made of damp tissue paper. Still, at 61, after finally getting past a bunch of annoying injuries, including having surgery to grind off the distal 10mm of one clavicle, I got back to playing tennis and found I was about as good as 10 years earlier. How awesome! But various body parts do keep getting injured, and my stamina is crap compared to back in the day. Still, I am aiming to enjoy this low-level competence as long as I can. If my 60-year cliff hits me at 63, that gives me two more years and I intend to use both of them.

PSA to my fellow middle-agers: Really do get the colonscopy at 45 the way you're supposed to. Don't just do the poop-at-home test. Colon cancer grows very slowly and it's MUCH easier to get pre-cancerous polyps taking care of (quick and simply during the colonoscopy) before they get to the level of being cancer that is detectable at the at-home test.

And if you loathe Gatorade, drink chicken broth or coconut water for prep.

I would very much agree with 31!

What if what we loathe is having a camera up our butt?

With any luck you're out cold for that part!

Then I can't make sure they use a clean camera.

In my experience having a camera up my nose was much worse.

Anyway, a guy I met in a bar said the recovery from the anesthesia was the worst part of a colonoscopy and you can ask them to use lesser drugs. So I compromised and shit in a box.

You actuality have to shit in a plastic tub that's smaller than the box. It's not as effective as a colonoscopy, but it takes talent.

Or a spoon you will never use again.

You will all hate me but at 53 (in July) I have no known health issues other than a mildly low thyroid (for which I take levothyroxine). And a slightly dodgy knee (PFPS). Getting divorced has improved my health, not worsened it as per cliche. Strava PBs are super rare, but do happen (but perhaps I was slow before?). I do have anxieties. Last year I was worried by an elevated HbA1c - and said so here? - but since I couldn't back it up with any non-normal blood glucose readings (i.e. they were a bit up after lunch, but reliably lower again, 5.5-ish, an hour after that) I have decided not to worry and the GP leaves me alone as well. I do take both food and work outs seriously, and increasingly so. I was not a sporty kid or teenager; this is a consciously adult change that I've made, by degrees. Has anything gotten worse for me? If I overcook it with a workout, I do need a few days off, although that's been true for decades. And I don't kill myself with workouts; I try to get them just right. Perhaps the best indicator of decline is the growing feeling that to maintain health is now a full time job? Maybe I'll have a stroke and that will show me.

10, 11: Matt, I'd bet that you can and probably will get the exercise intensity more or less back. Also, Scotland (alas).

39: Finally a use for all those plastic takeout spoons that accumulate!

37: They gave me propofol and it was great, as close to blacked out as makes no difference, but so much easier than full-on endotracheal anesthesia as far as recovery time. Beats shitting in a tub any day of the week.

I've only done it on one day of the week and I don't remember which.

Speaking of age, someone called "Nation of Language" made a song that sounded so much like 1983 that I could not figure out if I'd heard it before until I googled and saw their picture and realized they probably weren't alive in 1983. Someone should do something about this, but I'm still not sure what.

The White House also said the price caps would reduce net spending for Medicare, the public health insurance programme for pensioners, by 22 per cent, or $6bn
[...]
The expected Medicare savings surpassed the initial projections of the Congressional Budget Office, which predicted that the reforms would save the programme $3.7bn in their inaugural year.

46: Weak In Your Light? The algorithm correctly predicted I would want to hear that one a whole lot.

I can't read the article, but there's no way Medicare is only $27 billion. It's 3% of GDP.

But Medicare has parts A, B, C, and D (which is one fewer letter than Hepatitis has now because Hepatitis hasn't rested on this laurels since the Bush administration) and I think they each have separate budgets. Plus there's a state-federal split. Plus, the olds have to kick in something, I think.

46: No. Cross that fine line.

Cross that fine line.

Learn to work the saxophone.

I thought it was a synthesizer. Huh.

I play just what I feel.

Heebie gets me.

Bavarian Nordic, which makes one of two Mpox jabs recommended by World Health Organization experts, said it has 300,000 doses of its Jynneos vaccine ready and enough production capacity to meet demand. But it faces challenges, including the jab's lack of approval in some affected countries and the need for a cold supply chain, chief executive Paul Chaplin told the Financial Times. "We have the capacity, but we need people to start placing orders pretty fast," he said. "We need orders by the end of this month if we're going to meet 2mn by the end of this year."

The 80's-ish sounding musician which I recently learned about and enjoyed is Roosevelt. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zKYxH9Ijfo

I finally shit in a box and sent it in and now they are making me get a colonoscopy anyway, merely on account of my semi-regular intestinal pain.

47: State Federak split I for Medicaid.

16: puberty is roughly within a five-year window, so it kind of makes sense that the warranty runs out at the same time for everyone.

I don't know how much the research tracks experience, but it's pretty common among sporty people living in a sporty place for the mid-forties to be the time where the ego writing checks the body can't catch ramps up. The balance check at age 25 is the torn ACL at 45.

I feel mostly as strong and fit as ever, except recovery from exercise has gone to hell in a hand basket and fitness seems like its point is to play whack a mole with injuries.

Injuries is the thing. People think they can fight aging by exercise. And you can if you don't get injured. You won't not get injured though.

I guess I should try the elliptical trainer again.

The original paper is IMO quite bad- they use a method for RNA-seq alignment deprecated since 2017, the main result mixes difference calculations of disparate data types, there are no meaningful controls to characterize expected variation, the supporting paper they cite has peaks (generated with the same duct-tape and spit methods ) at different ages. I think this is noise.

60: Does that mean numerical age is an illusion and we really are exactly as young as we feel?

58: you are always better off working out; bodies are meant to move. Although the kitchen can't be ignored either. Sympathetic to those navigating injuries, but that is just part of it, no? You continue anyway, maybe with an adaptation.

Yeah, I know.

It's August. Shouldn't Texas start to cool off for fall?

61. Certainly true from the perspective of karma, though such self awareness is more a path to follow rather than a state of knowing in which we can reside. A difficult sentence to assess.

Love Field has only three Pokémon Go gyms. Very small airport.

I don't do a lot of short intense exercise, just longer walks, and it can take a long time for me to get fitter that way. A couple of times in the past decade, I've ramped things up over a period of months to be able to handle 10-15 mile hikes with 3-5000 feet of elevation gain* but I've never maintained that fitness through a year.

During fall 2022-summer 2023, after I recovered from a summer Covid infection, I channeled job dissatisfaction into a lot of hiking, mid-week and many weekends. I was in pretty good shape by July, but then much of my time since then got eaten up by some family health problems, moving to another city, and then taking classes outside of work. I've been doing shorter hikes but at a higher pace to try to make them more like exercise, but I haven't really done anything for about a month.

I've mostly avoided injury, except for some knee pain following an ill-advised route down a boulder field where I should have committed to a longer but more gradual line. That pain has never completely gone away. There seems to be some sort of sweet spot between doing nothing and doing a lot of walking where it basically goes away. But then it comes back after too much doing nothing. I'm much less inclined to walk quickly downhill than I used to be.

Also, I had a lot of gastric pain in the first half of last year, eventually leading to a combined endoscopy/colonoscopy. It started during the period where I was still doing a lot of hiking. They've chalked it up to GERD and I changed my diet and started taking some medication. For a few months last year, I was in an odd position of saying that other than the pain, I was in close to the best shape I'd ever been in since my twenties. The pain has mostly subsided, at least.

What kind of an asshole makes a car with a knob to change gears?

I hope the endoscopy lead to something useful. It didn't for me.

My priors make me inclined to think the effect in the article/paper is overstated, but not motivated enough to read it.

I did have 2 health/old age things hit in my early '40s. One was very rapid onset of the need for bifocals. But my understanding is that it often happens that way as although there is steadily decreasing elasticity as an adult it is not noticeable until passes a threshold where you cannot focus up close. (i do wonder how many other aging things have that characteristic.) The second wa that it was early 40s when I switched from being "heavily muscled to quite overweight. Surely some aging things helped that, but I think more importantly it was when i moved into much higher stress jobs that I held pretty much for the next 20+ years.

Did not really notice anything specific in early 60s. However, this past winter despite being more active in general and losing a good chunk of weight. I felt like I got old all of a sudden (I did turn 70). Several specific things really took a nosedive. Mucle recovery for instance.

69: I hope the endoscopy lead to something useful. It didn't for me.

Speaking of knobs, trying living without me.

I'm currently at the stage of presbyopia where reading is mostly okay except that I can't focus on my phone late at night when I'm drunk. It's probably part of God's plan.

Bifocals make it easier to fall down stairs. Someone should look into that.

Because you're looking through the reading part if you look down at the steps.

I hope the endoscopy lead to something useful. It didn't for me.

It ruled out various things, which is not nothing. By the time I had it, most of the problems had subsided to where I wasn't waking up in pain, so maybe there was less to see? The GERD diagnoses has felt hand-wavy, given my symptoms didn't quite match and a lot of the stuff they told me to do I was already doing, and a lot of the stuff they told me not to do I was already not doing. But that's the most I've gotten out of my medical visits.

The problem is the stuff you aren't supposed to do probably tastes good.

The first time I was prescribed bifocals I was eight. My vision is horrid and I am developing presbyopia, which seems unfair.

Overuse injuries aren't noticeably worse for me, although I've switched to activities that are less about overuse risks and more about acute injuries. Went over the bars on the mountain bike two days ago and while I'm bruised I didn't break anything so I guess my bone density is okay. I'm fit enough that my watch thinks hiking is a rest day. Also unfair.

76: A relative with similar problems asked me how I got things under control and my answer was "make a list of almost everything you like to eat and stop eating those things."

Yeah. Replacing beer with whiskey helped me a bit. I think the gas is part of the problem.

Also, Shiner Bok is pretty good. I just had one.

79.last there's a country song with a line, "I drink the Shiner and the Pearl; sing the Waylon and the Merle"

That's a show-off bit of songwriting.

67: that pattern sounds familiar. Walking seems to be generally pretty good for knees, along with low-ish resistance cycling. Running, no. Breast stroke swimming, also no, apparently. With heart burn: this was something that bugged me for decades until I realised that I was spending hours hunched over a computer while forgetting to breathe somewhat. Changing _that_ made it go away almost completely. I don't know, aging can bring some things on, but the body annoyingly doesn't come with either an operating manual or some sort of control panel with lights that clearly identify what is up, and it feels as though much of my adult life has been spent simply trying to figure out how to run the stupid thing adequately.

81 was me, also.

My visual metaphor for aging is the pictures of abandoned playgrounds, shopping malls and amusement parks. Decrepitude not necessarily evenly distributed.

Like the water">https://abandonedsoutheast.com/2019/01/07/wild-waters/">water park that we used to go to growing up?

I've discovered that sanding my feet helps them look less decrepit but not work much better.

well that didn't land right.

Is Moby a real boy?

You don't sand your feet? I used to cut pieces off with a knife, but sandingv works better.

An Ent?

Don't get me started on my toe nails.

People in Texas are often weirdly polite. It takes too long to do things because of the manners.

Also, it takes effort on my part to remember that with the accent and the manners, the waiter isn't (necessarily) mocking me.

Was he asking you not to sand your toenails?

He suggested I wait until I got back to the car.

91: OMFG YES

The rental car guy was mercilessly unfriendly, but I think he stuck me for the extra coverage when I wasn't paying attention.

In fairness, you are going to sand your feet all over his car.

It's a Chrysler 300, a car so ridiculous I'm surprised I never owned one.

Maybe you repressed the memory?

Seems unlikely since I clearly recall the time aliens abducted me.

100: what kind of car did they drive?

100. Did they abduct you in a Chrysler 300?

84: Heebie's link:
https://abandonedsoutheast.com/2019/01/07/wild-waters/

And yes, like that.

All aliens drive a Scion.

The woman at McDonald's shouted "doscientos tres" like she knew I've got a 150 streak on Duolingo.

Does anyone need a cast iron replica of a Hostess cupcake?

Individual cupcake, unpackaged.

Life sized?

I had to buy a car because my kid wrecked my old one (no injuries), and I decided I had reached the point in my life where I should liberal up to an EV so I got a Hyundai Ioniq 6. I didn't realize how much more fun to drive it would be than a gas engine. I'm probably going to eclipse any gas savings going through tires.

109: Yes.

Then no thanks.

Is that Hyundai still stealable through a USB drive or did they fix that?

Honestly, if you can fit a Hyundai through a USB drive you deserve to have it.

This is going to get worse before it gets better.

Hey. Stay in your lane.

113: The EVs never were affected bc completely different ignitions, but I think 2022 was the last year.

IIRC, it was only models that used a physical key. My (now salvaged) 2017 Kia wasn't affected because it was a push-button ignition.

||

NMM to Alain Delon.

|>

119: The rare one of these that might need to be enforced.

This bar has a signed photo of Phil Graham.

Phil Gramm?

Too late to go back and look now.

||

NMM to Phil Donahue.

|>

Bummer. One of the good ones.

What kind of an asshole puts a switch you need to open the gas cap on the door well below where it's visible without squatting?

126 Car-maker catering to non-white people, obv.

I hadn't read the other thread yet.

My sister just achieved a life goal, and got what is manifestly a piece of carryon luggage counted as a "personal item" by Frontier.

126: Do you have some sort of mechanical asshole? Mine doesn't work like that at all.

I laughed.

Cybernetic.

Does it work with the Tesla charger network?

USB-c

You can't drive to DFW without paying a toll. That's the only way in. So, if you tell Google maps you don't want to pay a toll, instead of telling you to think again, it just puts you in a perpetual loop where it tries to get you to turn into a gated road marked with "Authorized Vehicles Only." So, try to fly into Love Field.

Steal an authorized vehicle? The gas cap is probably more accessible, too.

Do me a favor: what does this logo
look like to you? I'm bewildered.

A seal with a tapeworm?

Or a necktie.

My first thought was volcano.

A seal-shaped volcano?

I didn't see the sealishness at first.

Do me a favor: what does this logo
look like to you? I'm bewildered.

Doesn't quite scan right; first line's OK, but
Syllables missing, in second line (maybe).

Specifically, does it resemble or imply in anyone's mind a hamburger, a phonograph record, or any combination thereof?

Not for me, no.

144: not remotely. The red wiggle doesn't look like anything much but the white outline is definitely a seal.

Oh. It's a pun.
黑膠 hēijiāo vinyl
漢堡 hànbǎo burger
海豹 hǎibào seal

Obviously.

(Their gimmick apparently is as you sea.

)

yay. It's over!

Wrong thread.