Biomolecular shifts occur in our 40s and 60s (2024)
49 comments
·June 27, 2025nakedneuron
safety1st
Without writing a book about it I'll just say that I think the most important thing is people shouldn't look at this info and conclude that their body's going to fall apart no matter what.
I'm in my mid 40s and in the best shape of my life, lots of energy, aches and pains from my late 30s have all disappeared, to get there it took diet and exercise changes that were surprisingly modest. For me it was mostly weights, a little bit of cardio, and cutting back on my worst episodes of caloric excess.
I have friends who didn't do any diet and exercise interventions, and are starting to look like hell and complain about the "inevitable" consequences of aging.
And then there are those jacked dudes in their 70s who are hitting the gym 5 times a week, I can only aspire to be as healthy as them at their age.
Use it (with proper care and feeding) or lose it.
matthewdgreen
I also felt this way in my mid-40s. I still feel this way. But then after a lifetime of perfect vision, one day I was reading a book and noticed that everything was a little blurry. Now I need reading glasses. Not a big deal! I’m doing fine! But a gentle reminder that all the diet and CrossFit in the world isn’t going to save you from a (hopefully) gentle and inevitable decay ;)
andrepd
I'm sure there's also an important component of luck and general health there.
agumonkey
Regular whole body physical activity (not even gym level hard) is such a gem and a free one.
nurettin
> people also stop moving (exercising) significantly in their forties
Also likely that people who never experienced the negative outcomes of a sedentary or unhealthy life style start doing so due to the biomolecular changes. Drinking more likely to hurt your liver, soda more likely to cause diabetes, smoking more likely to cause cavities despite having done all that for 20 years without visible problems.
gspetr
>20 years without visible problems.
Even with the most charitable steelman interpretation of "visible problems", 2 out of 3 things you've listed have strong evidence for being responsible for weight gain, and even smoking has some weaker evidence supporting it.
bsdz
Probably the same study from this slightly older thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41247085
degamad
Yep, both eventually link to https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00692-2 "Nonlinear dynamics of multi-omics profiles during human aging"
aswegs8
That's quite well-known already. The real question here: how do we stop these shifts from happening?
ulf-77723
When I look into my biohacker bubble, the answer might be: enough sleep, regular workout routine with HIIT, healthy whole foods, no alcohol, socializing
admissionsguy
and yet none of that makes even a dent
irjustin
For you personally, maybe not, but statistically yes it does.
There are populations that consistently outlive and the only other thing I would add is stress removal in the form of relatively simple life styles.
bboygravity
It does. Look up Brian Johnson
lm28469
What are you talking about? Doing these things is the only way to increase your quality of life and healthy lifespan, no amount money nor medicine will make up for abusing your body for decades.
These things are quite literally the leading causes of death and impairments in the west...
JumpCrisscross
> The real question here: how do we stop these shifts from happening?
Or what happens when we stop them? Perpetual adolescence seems mainstream now. But it would be nice to know if some of these changes should be brought up as well as pushed back.
lm28469
Isn't perpetual adolescence a lifestyle description, not a biological one?
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JonChesterfield
Possibly with a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.
4b11b4
strength training
bigbacaloa
[dead]
bix6
34, 60, and 78 according to this other one: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2019/12/stanford-scie...
nine_k
The study in the post agrees on 60, but mentions 44 as the (average? median?) age of another intense change.
riskassessment
If you throw some data at a clustering algorithm, the clustering algorithm is guaranteed to give you clusters back. So I'm not convinced about the results suggesting a precise pattern of rapid aging.
bboygravity
Are you at or over 40?
Anecdotally I feel I noticed a very fast ageing speed between 38 and 40. Suddenly got white hairs, feel more tired, more wrinkles, way harder to keep VO2max up (I run a lot), muscle sores after training suddenly lasting up to 3 days instead of 1, face looks older, etc.
I feel like that all happened real fast around this age.
isoprophlex
I'm 38. We had three kids over a period of 8 years. Looking at old pictures I seemingly held on for a long while, until something hit me at 35-36?!
It's like there's two versions of me now, the one who was somehow moderately fit by biochemical decree, with a healthy amount of flesh to his face, voluminous dark blonde hair and a pleasant complexion...
... And the grey haired, weathered, lined, dessicated mummy I see in the mirror. I love my kids dearly but the constant caring really takes something out of you. That and the whole getting older thing in TFA.
I keep telling myself I'll get a gym membership soon to reclaim some of my dignity.
gylterud
Like you I have kids, and it really takes a toll, and I definitely see myself aging in the mirror. But I cannot recommend training enough. I started working out regularly three years ago, after a long hiatus due to kids. And I feel stronger and fitter than ever as I approach 40.
The kids still need lots of care (they are 5–9 years old), so finding time and motivation is still a challenge. For me the trick is to do training I really like. That helps so much with motivation. So, find something you like!
What I happen to like is bouldering and hiking. I have a fixed day of the week for bouldering, just after work, and I never miss it, because I know if I start skipping I might fall off my training habit.
Then the rest of the training is motivated by getting better at what I love. I do pull ups to better my climbing etc…
I will fight hard to keep at it through my 40s, because it is such a quality of life improvement. I also attribute the fact that I haven’t been really sick the last few years to my exercise.
bboygravity
Exercise is not optional.
Go for it!
And try not to be in the majority group of gym goers who pay the membership without attending ;)
bongodongobob
Sounds like something someone < 40 would say. To anyone over, I feel like this study is pretty obvious. I'm in my early 40's and whatever change this is, has been discussed multiple times with my peers, active lifestyle or not, wealth or not, married or not, physical career or not. Everything starts to feel a little harder, whether it's exercise, problem solving, memory, sleep, sex drive, appetite, fuckin everything. Things change in your late 30s, for sure.
All young people think they are special and age is just a number. The rest of the population knows that isn't true. Spare me your weight lifting 80 year old, or "my grandpa worked the farm til he was 90" stuff, we all know those are extreme outliers.
uamgeoalsk
Turning 44 this year and none of this has hit me at all? Still staying up all night on weekends, working harder than I ever did (not more hours, though), feeling more motivated to take on both paid and unpaid work outside of my job. And my sex drive just as strong (and just as unfulfilled!) as in my 20s and 30s.
kilroy123
I'm turning 40 very soon and feel the same.
People also often tell me I look and seem younger than my age.
But I also prioritize sleeping 8 hours a night. Eating low carb. Regular exercise. Plus I have no kids. :-)
petesergeant
Is it possible that scientists employed at Stanford will have also had this insight, and worked around it?
deegles
possible, yes. did they? that's the question
blackbear_
Yes they did, and published it all.
Sometimes I can't believe how low discussions on HN can fall. Did really nobody in this thread bother to check this? Are we fine disparaging research solely based on the fact that they used a method that gives bad results with bad inputs (which doesn't?) and their incentives could be misaligned (whose aren't?)?
If there are well justified concerns about the method or data then by all means let's talk about it, but please let's all try to keep low effort anti intellectual conspiracy theories away from here.
f1shy
It is also very possible that they have big incentives to ignore those just to get something published, don't you think?
raverbashing
Sounds like I still haven't gone through the molecular shifts that would have made me forget when this was first posted.
morninglight
Finally, science has confirmed what our grandparents told us for generations.
Ringo Starr even sang the song, "Life Begins at 40".
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ohthehugemanate
Particularly interesting is that when they split the dataset by sex, the transitions were present and at a similar magnitude in both sexes. We make much in western culture of the (peri-)menopausal change in women. I read this as an indicator that at least significant parts of the transition in this age range for men - acknowledged for a long time now - are just as big as menopause.
I don't remember noticing that the last time this study came around, but then again, I am in my mid 40s. :)
squidbeak
> I read this as an indicator that at least significant parts of the transition in this age range for men - acknowledged for a long time now - are just as big as menopause
Men emerge from it with their fertility intact.
darkwater
Sorry but your post as strong #notallmen vibes. The article itself mentions that part of those changes might just be explained by lifestyle changes at 40s. I quote:
> It's possible some of these changes could be tied to lifestyle or behavioral factors that cluster at these age groups, rather than being driven by biological factors, Snyder said.
Changes in women metabolism due to menopause are pretty known and proved, and men don't experience it. I'm a mid-40s male as well.
Truth is many people also stop moving (exercising) significantly in their forties (reason being probably sitting lifestyle promotes posture and fascia degradation which makes moving less and less enjoyable).
I'd posit that another significant decline in moving occurs in the sixties when many go in rent.
Not sure if the biological clock is cause of abrupt changes or rather our scheduled lives. So, no significant changes from the sixties on? Then what's the genetic function of those programmations?
People who reach old age (100+) are mostly also comparatively healthy.