Like, to a degree, you’re not wrong. Desk jobs, car culture, a lack of free time, it all adds up to bonus aches and pains that a more active person can avoid. But there’s another angle to it, which is simply that you don’t heal from every injury in full. And you don’t heal as quickly or thoroughly once you’ve stopped growing. So your body keeps the score.
A lot of getting older is about avoiding strains as much as keeping in shape. You’re trying to avoid adding new injuries to the pile, because they confound what you exercises you can continue to do and hobble your ability to stay limber and maintain muscle over time.
You see this a lot with people in their 40s and 50s. They’re healthy, they’re strong, they’re going along just fine. And then they get into a car accident. Or they experience some emotional trauma. Or they get a nasty illness. Or anything that puts them in bed for too long. They gain weight. They lose muscle and flexibility. They slow down. And one bad year ages them more than a dozen good ones.
Then you see it again in the 80s and 90s, when a single bad fall will straight up kill you.
Exercise helps, sure. And eating rights. And being on the right medications early on. But everything you’re doing is about dodging that next bullet. Trying to over-exert yourself can be just as dangerous as sitting idle. My grandfather died in his mid-60s after what my grandmother claims he insisted was the best tennis game of his life. Heart gave out in his sleep. My grandmother lived another 30 years, half of them in a wheelchair, until she took a spill trying to get out of bed and cracked her hip.
I’ve started sitting on the floor a few times a day because getting off the floor was getting to be more challenging than it ought to have been. We’ve really opted for physiqal convenience as a society and it’s killing us.
You’re absolutely spot on. It’s terrifying how much one accident can mess you up as you age. The thing about falls in an elder is that it isn’t just the body that gets hurt - it’s the brain, too. I knew a sweet lady who started as someone who simply forgot important things sometimes, who was living in the independent “assisted living” part of the nursing home I worked in. One fall in the bathroom later, and after spending a few weeks in the hospital to heal her broken leg, she ended up transferred to the end stage dementia floor. She had become so irritable and confused that I barely recognized her. In fact, a lot of stories of people coming to nursing homes start with a simple fall, it’s scary. People come in confused why they can’t “go home,” with brains so damaged they aren’t even aware of how serious their disabilities have become.
It kind of makes me wonder if similar accidents in younger adults can be making changes to our brains that we simply don’t realize yet.
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Like, to a degree, you’re not wrong. Desk jobs, car culture, a lack of free time, it all adds up to bonus aches and pains that a more active person can avoid. But there’s another angle to it, which is simply that you don’t heal from every injury in full. And you don’t heal as quickly or thoroughly once you’ve stopped growing. So your body keeps the score.
A lot of getting older is about avoiding strains as much as keeping in shape. You’re trying to avoid adding new injuries to the pile, because they confound what you exercises you can continue to do and hobble your ability to stay limber and maintain muscle over time.
You see this a lot with people in their 40s and 50s. They’re healthy, they’re strong, they’re going along just fine. And then they get into a car accident. Or they experience some emotional trauma. Or they get a nasty illness. Or anything that puts them in bed for too long. They gain weight. They lose muscle and flexibility. They slow down. And one bad year ages them more than a dozen good ones.
Then you see it again in the 80s and 90s, when a single bad fall will straight up kill you.
Exercise helps, sure. And eating rights. And being on the right medications early on. But everything you’re doing is about dodging that next bullet. Trying to over-exert yourself can be just as dangerous as sitting idle. My grandfather died in his mid-60s after what my grandmother claims he insisted was the best tennis game of his life. Heart gave out in his sleep. My grandmother lived another 30 years, half of them in a wheelchair, until she took a spill trying to get out of bed and cracked her hip.
I’ve started sitting on the floor a few times a day because getting off the floor was getting to be more challenging than it ought to have been. We’ve really opted for physiqal convenience as a society and it’s killing us.
You’re absolutely spot on. It’s terrifying how much one accident can mess you up as you age. The thing about falls in an elder is that it isn’t just the body that gets hurt - it’s the brain, too. I knew a sweet lady who started as someone who simply forgot important things sometimes, who was living in the independent “assisted living” part of the nursing home I worked in. One fall in the bathroom later, and after spending a few weeks in the hospital to heal her broken leg, she ended up transferred to the end stage dementia floor. She had become so irritable and confused that I barely recognized her. In fact, a lot of stories of people coming to nursing homes start with a simple fall, it’s scary. People come in confused why they can’t “go home,” with brains so damaged they aren’t even aware of how serious their disabilities have become.
It kind of makes me wonder if similar accidents in younger adults can be making changes to our brains that we simply don’t realize yet.