20 Sobering Realities About Aging We Wish We Were Warned About
Getting Old Sucks, And This Is Why
Like death, age is an inevitability of life, and while we can combat it or lessen the negative effects with healthy daily choices, the years will wear us down eventually. From waking up with body aches for no reason to losing your hearing and growing a beer belly, aging really blows. You may be sitting there thinking you have many years before you have to worry about these things, but it sneaks up on you way earlier than you might expect, and the habits you have when you're young follow you like an annoying younger sibling. Here are 20 sobering realities about aging we wish we knew about sooner.
1. It Starts Way Sooner Than You Imagined
Collagen starts breaking down at 25, meaning you already start seeing fine lines on your face in your 20s, and this just gets worse over time. As early as your 30s, your metabolism starts to slow down, your muscles start to shrink, and your organs start losing cells.
2. You Don't Heal As Fast From Injuries
Because the rate at which your cells divide and multiply slows down, you don't recover from injuries or workouts as fast as when you're young. What's more, pain from old injuries can resurface.
3. You Wake Up Not Feeling Rested
When you age, you spend more time in lighter stages of sleep and get less deep or REM sleep, so even if you've had your eight hours, you may wake up tired. Changes in circadian rhythm mean you may start feeling tired earlier in the evening.
4. Weight Is So Much Harder To Keep Off
It's easy to stay in shape in your 20s, but as soon as your metabolism starts to slow and your muscle mass starts to reduce in your 30s, it becomes a constant uphill battle. This only becomes more pronounced with age.
5. Your Habits When You're Young Will Follow You
You have to form healthy habits when you're young because they have a surprisingly long reach into your future. In addition to diet, exercise, and alcohol choices, this includes stress management, sleep, social, and intellectual habits.
6. Your Parents Age Too
The sad fact of life that no one talks about is that your parents age too. It's normal for you to have your own life and to get caught up in the business of it all, but your parents' advanced age can hit you suddenly, like a punch in the gut, and you'll regret the time not spent with them.
7. Ageism Is Real
One of the most heartbreaking things you'll realize as you age is that people were only nice to you all those years because you were young and beautiful. The way you're received as an older adult will change dramatically. You might feel invisible or downright unapproachable.
8. The Isolation Of Sensory Decline
As we age, our vision and hearing starts to decline due to natural wear and tear. You'll notice yourself missing portions of conversations or finding it harder to engage in activities which may make you want to withdraw and stay home more often.
9. You'll Attend More Funerals Than Weddings
When you're young, you'll attend more weddings than funerals, but at some point near middle age, this shifts. In your 60s and beyond, funerals become frequent as your friends, peers, and siblings sadly pass away.
10. You'll Notice Changes In Cognition
Changes in cognition can start to happen in your 30s and 40s, but most people don't experience noticeable changes until their 50s and 60s. You'll notice you're slower to learn new things, have difficulty concentrating, and are more forgetful.
11. Memory Loss Can Be Scary
It will start with small, meaningless things like forgetting the name of a distant acquaintance or an unimportant fact, but when it gets to forgetting important dates or names of loved ones, that's when you panic. Memory is at the core of who we are so forgetting pieces of information feels like losing your identity.
12. Emotional Resilience Will Be Tested
When you're young, life is full of fun and games, but as you age, you deal with heavier and strarker realities. People close to you pass away, time feels limited, and you're dealing with your own mental and physical decline. From all these constant challenges, you either build strength and resilience or you curl up in a ball and waste away.
13. Dental Health Matters
How well you take care of your teeth throughout your life impacts your old age. It's more than just having a nice smile, oral health problems can lead to gum disease, and speech problems, and can make it painful to eat certain foods, affecting your quality of life and dignity. Dental care is often not covered by insurance and can be extremely expensive so it's best to start taking care of your teeth early.
14. Time Speeds Up
In a cruel twist of fate, time feels as though it speeds up as you age because each year is a smaller ratio over your entire life. What's more, studies have found older brains process sensory information more slowly which makes time feel like it's moving faster.
15. Finding Purpose In Retirement Can Be Challenging
Because you spend so much of your life building meaning and identity around what you do professionally, it can make finding purpose in retirement challenging. While you may enjoy the lack of schedule and abundance of free time initially, it can quickly become mundane and meaningless.
16. Technology Can Become A Barrier
Technology feels like a great friend all your life until it becomes hard to keep up with. The world doesn't slow down with you, which can make it feel like it's moving at hyperspeed in comparison.
17. You Become More Aware Of Your Mortality
As you age and as funerals become more and more common, it can be hard to shake the thought of the Grim Reaper knocking on your door. You're acutely aware that your days are numbered, and that makes it impossible to enjoy your time like you used to.
18. Your Immune System Isn't As Strong
The natural decline in immune function as we age makes us more susceptible to infections and illnesses and makes it harder to recover. Vaccines are also less effective and diseases can hit harder, meaning you can expect to spend a lot more of your days out of commission which is ironic considering you already have fewer days left.
19. It's Hard Not To Get Jaded
Because you've been around longer, it's harder to get excited about things. Very few ideas seem novel and you've experienced enough disappointments that you know not to get your hopes up. If people follow through, it's a pleasant surprise, not the other way around.
20. Parenting Isn't A Balanced Relationship
Aging is a reminder that your kids are a lot more important to you than you are to them. You spend much of your adult life giving, but when it's your turn to be cared for, your kids are likely to be busy in their own lives, perhaps caring for their own children. It's a fact of life that parenting is profoundly unequal and it doesn't mean they don't love you.
