The site is slow so I can't see it. I'm 68, eat well, lost 20 pounds, work out twice a week. Everything is working fine. But I live in a place surrounded by people in walkers, wheelchairs, or using canes. Some of them have had strokes or accidents making improvement hard, but many simply chose to not do anything to avoid the aging. You don't ordinarily wind up with a walker at a single point; it often starts many years or even decades earlier when you failed to keep in decent physical shape. I almost started too late (last couple of years), I can see how easy it is to not notice your physical being slowly going down. But assuming no major injury or disease, you can improve your body at almost any age, a little at a time, and avoid or at least postpone physical aging for quite a while.
I also write code daily, read the same things I read when I worked, thus keep my brain going too. You can't ignore body or mind, you have to keep both in tune.
I am still getting older, but I am in better shape than I was before I retired. The last time I felt as fit was when I was still playing basketball 30+ years ago.
Don't wait, it's easier to do a little for decades than wait until it's almost too late.
MontyCarloHall · 13m ago
>but many simply chose to not do anything to avoid the aging
Thank you for saying this. A depressingly large proportion of people are seemingly resigned to the fact that once you hit 40-50, you'll inevitably turn into an achy tub of lard and it's rapidly and irreversibly downhill from there.
Barring injuries that are truly irreversible (e.g. severe damage to joints/cartilage), with the correct diet and fitness regime, it's entirely possible to remain lean (≤20% bodyfat) and muscular (≥80th percentile in strength standards [0]) well into what most consider "old age." So many people have no idea just how poorly they eat or how inactive and physically weak they are, and consider the result to just be a normal part of life.
>I also write code daily, read the same things I read when I worked, thus keep my brain going too. You can't ignore body or mind, you have to keep both in tune.
Thanks for saying this too. So much cognitive decline is due to inactivity of the mind. My mom was whip smart until she retired in her mid-60s to a life of idle leisure, and her mental faculties noticeably deteriorated within a few months. Thankfully, she noticed this and deliberately re-engaged with more intense intellectual pursuits (including consulting part-time in the professional field that she loved), and the improvement was night-and-day.
My dad is 85 and this article hits hard about what he fights going on in his body. What sucks is how much of a downward, self reinforcing spiral it all is. It's so hard to see the curbs to walk over or how to get to a thing himself, so he just naturally chooses to do fewer and fewer things. Watching TV is safer and kinder and becomes the default to anything. Which just makes his brain less and less stimulated and active, and you can imagine the drag that adds to keep figuring out life.
But like the empathy found in this article, it's caused me to be incredibly more patient with anyone struggling to walk in front of me on a crowded or narrow sidewalk.
Aging is rough. Thank you to everyone working on accessibility and aging related tech and science.
costcopizza · 2h ago
My grandma is 83 and I could’ve written this exact same post.
I know it comes for everyone, but the pace of said spiral is frightening.
Wish we were in a timeframe with more alternatives for rapid loss of mobility and muscle.
SlowTao · 1h ago
While it is challenging, looked at one a life time scale it is kind of a neat thing. It isn't a purely linear decline and that means while the later years kind of suck, you get a lot of decent time before then.
Yes, we should try and work against this but I am just looking at the silver lining.
raincole · 1h ago
One of the technologies I look forward to is exoskeleton. Yes I know it will be used by the army. But the potential to improve elders' lives is huge.
pfannkuchen · 16m ago
Why would it be used by the army? Seems like you don’t need the squishy meat filling for that use case.
ACCount37 · 1h ago
Aging should be recognized as a disease already. It's long overdue.
1718627440 · 1h ago
Disease is abnormal to some "norm". When everyone has it, it's not a disease.
ACCount37 · 1h ago
I would appreciate if the "norm" was recognized to be not having your body rot away over time.
It really is simple: aging is incredibly harmful and undesirable. It strips away your quality of life until there isn't much left and then you die. It doesn't take any more than that for it to be declared a disease.
Whether it's "natural" or whether "everyone has it" is a distraction. If everyone was born with cancer, that wouldn't make cancer any less of a disease.
1718627440 · 55m ago
> It really is simple: aging is incredibly harmful and undesirable.
Doesn't make it a disease. Dying is a normal part of life as well as the decline before that.
> If everyone was born with cancer, that wouldn't make cancer any less of a disease.
No, then the people not having cancer would have the disease.
> I would appreciate if the "norm" was recognized
That's not how a norm works. You get that by doing trials and statistics, not by wanting it to be different.
ACCount37 · 49m ago
Starvation used to be "a normal part of life". So was having half your children die before they hit the age of 10. That was the normal, natural outcome of having a child - if you want to have grandchildren, just make more children! Some of them would live, surely!
This is how it was - until humans decided that this sucks and something should be done about that.
I see no reason not to dispose of aging at the earliest opportunity. And this starts by recognizing: aging sucks for everyone, and should be disposed of.
lelandbatey · 33m ago
It's not fightable or optional, so it's less like starvation and more like gravity. Humans have decided that we'd like to "dispose" of aging, but unfortunately reality has this annoying habit of not responding to our categorization and despite thinking of it as a disease we cannot fight it like we can other diseases. Those other things you mentioned are considered outside of the usual because we have been able to make them less common through effort; despite all our effort though, aging isn't something we have that control over. We're all gonna die, of old age or a short-sharp-shock, at least until we figure out some wild medical breakthroughs.
Once we have those breakthroughs, sure folks might start thinking of aging as a disease that's not "normal" or a thing that we can actually avoid, but until then it's a fact of life, same as gravity, the sun, or the tides.
gowld · 4h ago
When you stop walking, that's the beginning of the end.
amarant · 3h ago
This! My grandmother adopted a dog late in her life. She walked 10km a day with that dog for nearly 20 years! (That dog was the oldest dog I've ever known). At 92 she was famous in my small village, she was in better shape than some of the 30 year olds!
Then the dog died. Instead of walking 10km per day, she lay on the couch staring at the ceiling. About 3 months later she started getting lost on her way to the supermarket. Fifth time she got lost we decided to put her in a home for demented people. We simply couldn't provide the care she needed any other way. Took a few more months and she stopped recognising us.
I think she outlived her dog by about 18 months, iirc.
She stopped walking, and then age came fast for her.
ChrisMarshallNY · 1h ago
I'm 63. I make a point of walking 5Km (3 miles), every morning. I'm usually out the door, by 0530, and back in about 50 minutes.
I was running, but kept getting injured, so it switched to walking, several years ago.
I think keeping my mind occupied is just as important. It's entirely possible that the visual stimulus of her walks was as important as the exercise.
For myself, I make a point of constantly working on shipping software, and constantly learning new stuff. LLMs have been a godsend, for the latter. I had pretty much given up on trying to ask questions, because of the awful, sneering responses that I was getting, more and more.
adastra22 · 3h ago
I have never been a dog person. Now I want a dog.
trhway · 2h ago
A couple of neighbors adopt older dogs. We never discussed that specifically, yet it seems to be a smaller commitment lifetime-wise (few years instead of 10-15 for a young dog), and you'd have to train and deal with a puppy energy (which is a great thing if you have the time and energy to engage in it) if you adopt younger dogs, while the older ones seem to be well set in their good behavior ways. Long walks, established routine, no drama. Also of course fostering is a gateway drug into getting a dog as well as good way to learn what dog would be a match for you.
bayesnet · 4h ago
My grandfather, with whom I was very close, suffered from Parkinson's in his last decade or so. For a long time he was doing OK: Occasional confusion and the slow, shuffling walk that is characteristic of the disease.
One day he had a minor operation that left him needing a wheelchair for what we thought would be just a few weeks. But he never regained his strength and was never to walk again, which led to a steep and sudden decline in his mental condition. It was truly devastating to see one of the sharpest people I knew become an angry and confused simulacrum of the man I so admired.
I wish I had realized two things then: First, as you say, maintaining mobility is the crucial to the well-being of the elderly. Second, immediate physical/occupational therapy after a fall or surgery is essential to people at risk of losing mobility. Sadly it wasn't offered to us and we didn't think to ask.
hnhnhnaccount · 2h ago
My dad is going through that shit right now. He fell a few weeks ago and hasn’t walked since.
I live abroad to make more money and feed my ego and I only see him 3–4 times a year. On top of that selfishness, every now and then I catch myself selfishly thinking I don’t want to go through that, which makes me feel like an even worst piece of shit.
Life sucks.
SlowTao · 1h ago
When it comes to physical exercise, this is the key fundamental one. Yes, others things help but it is the foundation on which everything else rests.
Alas, it can be taken away without choice, hopefully not.
squigz · 4h ago
Beyond the obvious (medical care, accessibility, etc), I think technology has a huge amount of untapped potential to make the end of our lives a lot more bearable, and a lot less lonely. TV is one thing - and whether it's a net good or not has been discussed to death, so I won't here - but I wonder how video games might be used. They're a lot more engaging - both generally and cognitively - than TV, you can build and achieve things and feel a sense of accomplishment (yeah yeah pride and accomplishment), there are communities around them, you can play with your family, etc. Even online board and card games would be an option. Have you ever considered showing your dad some simple games?
Slow_Hand · 3h ago
Can’t speak to the cognitive benefits of video games in late life, but my grandma really took to our N64 one summer when my brother and I stayed with her.
She used to stay absorbed in a little battery powered draw poker game that she had, but by the end of the summer she had gone through a large part of our game collection and could put up a real challenge in Mario Kart 64.
Eventually we gifted it to her and she played it for years after that.
greyb · 2h ago
From what I recall, there are retirement homes (the examples I'm thinking of are in Asia) that make use of these suits in their onboarding processes, where they need to wear these suits for a few hours to understand some of the challenges their patients experience, and develop empathy when they can't walk as fast or do things that we'd expect in short order.
I would love to see more widespread adoption of these suits in training and employee onboarding in these facilities, mostly because if I'm in that situation or I want to think about a retirement home for my family members, I'd want to see that no one is losing their temper because my mom can't sprint 12km/hr to the elevators for breakfast.
This being said, anecdotally, it seems elder abuse is more the norm, simply because of compassion fatigue, so I suspect that even in however many years time, I'll be punched by a PSW for no good reason.
EZ-Cheeze · 4h ago
If you want to see what you will look like when you're older, stand in a spot and jump up and down repeatedly. Take photos (or pause a video recording) right at the moment after the lowest part of your jump. The upward acceleration will make your skin sag the way gravity will as your collagen weakens over decades.
But then again, by the time you're older you might look younger than you do now, e.g. "Ageing changes our genes – epigenetic atlas gives clearest picture yet (nature.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45095532 (from the other day, no comments yet)
ge96 · 3h ago
Or watch someone pull G forces in a plane (sim here but I had another vid in mind this one is better)
One thing you have to experience to really get it, that cannot be simulated with a mechanical suit or transmitted through words, is all the f-ing little aches you get past a certain point. I´m now convinced it is this that makes older people cranky. Some days, my body is just constantly in a low but annoying pain somewhere, and it seems in increasingly weird, obscure places you never even thought about. I dont even remember when or how it started but although I would be considered fit by most people, now I have to watch my running, otherwise ITBS, I have to watch my pull exercises, otherwise shoulder impingement syndrome, I have to watch my dips, otherwise elbows, hell even after just _sleeping_ I have to roll and stretch my neck out because it hurts just from lying apparently. I used to scoff about warmup, now I take it really, really seriously. "Going with the flow" of the moment, instead of sticking to a carefully dosed plan? That´s for young bodies! Thankfully I can still use my full range of motion everywhere but Im acutely aware now how quickly it can all go away and how long any overuse or even minor injury now costs me in recovery.
Getting older has its benefits too but mostly mental, in physical terms I cannot think of a single benefit.
sdeframond · 2h ago
Not OP but it started happening to me a few years ago. I'm 37 now and it is slowly getting worse.
The only thing that keeps it at bay is regular exercise, both strength and mobility. I'm careful about running.
Karrot_Kream · 2h ago
This is one of the big psychological benefits of being physically active. If you're fairly physically active, e.g. doing 60+ min of high heart rate cardio or intense anaerobic exercise a day, you'll always be sore somewhere. Maybe it's your thighs from yesterday's squats. Your lower back from a long run. Your elbow when you tried that dynamic move on a climb you've been projecting. And once you accept and embrace that minor pain you become a lot better at psychologically dealing with the small constant pain that comes with aging.
Also if you ever compete in a physical activity at more than just a "with your friends" level, you'll quickly find that whether you're 15 or 50 warming up makes a huge difference.
A lot of the problems of aging that I suspect folks today are facing are the problems of leading a fairly sedentary lifestyle.
munificent · 1h ago
There is a profound psychological difference between:
"My legs are sore from running yesterday but it means the muscles are getting stronger and I'll be healthy."
And:
"There is this weird twinge in my back. Did I sleep weird and it will be fine tomorrow? Or do I have to start doing more stretches and if I keep up with that forever, I can keep this pain at bay? Or does it mean that one of the vertebrae is starting to crack and if I don't go to the doctor soon enough and get surgery I'm going to end up paralyzed for life?"
Pain is easy. It's not knowing what the pain means that's hard.
Karrot_Kream · 1h ago
You can have the same feelings toward pain from physical activity. "Did I strain my shoulder in my workout or did I tear a ligament??" or "Are the ligaments in my foot sore from snowboarding or did I tear my ACL??" I used to be afraid of this kind of thing all the time when I first started being active. My general point is that regular physical activity gives you psychological faith in the resilience of the human body. Having done loads of activities and sports for over a decade now I am much more confident in my body's ability to bounce back from injury than I did when I was more sedentary and every ache and pain filled me with fear.
I think folks are really focusing on the "psychological" part of my comment in isolation and not the "problems of leading a fairly sedentary lifestyle" which is probably my fault because I don't think I structured my post well.
I think a lot of the problems that are associated with aging, such as minor aches and pains, are consequences of leading mostly sedentary lifestyles. Part of being fairly active (meaning well above most state-recommended guidelines) is the psychological resilience to pain that I mentioned. But also part of it is that because you are constantly pushing your physical abilities, the strain that comes from occasional bad movement as part of everyday life (sleeping badly, holding the faucet tap the wrong way, hitting your wrist on the corner of a table, etc) is usually well within the envelope of pushing yourself compared to your actual sport.
My greater point is that leading a sedentary lifestyle is a whole package of things. This includes the physiological consequences of not developing strength, flexibility, and joint elasticity; this also includes the psychological resistance to risk and pain that comes from being sedentary.
AngryData · 2h ago
That is an interesting idea and it follows some patterns I previously noticed with friends.
The ones who are not or never were physically active are all complaining about aches and pains and acting like they are old men twice their age just doing basic household things. I kind of just chalked that up to them not being in shape, but it never really fully explained the extent of their complaints. However I grew up with a very physical life working on the farm and doing trade work since forever. By every measure I should be the one complaining about aches and pains and old injuries and such, but perhaps because im so accustomed to pains just from work and more intense physical activity the age related stuff just hasn't hit me hard enough to really notice like they do.
Noumenon72 · 2h ago
I don't accept and embrace the minor pain, I treat exercise as a way to fix what I did wrong that led to the pain so I'm more resilient and don't develop it chronically. There are many aches I used to get (elbows while washing hands, hip socket, sleeping with my neck to the side) that are years in the past because I figured them out. I just realized right now that I haven't woken up with sore collarbones this year, which I can probably attribute to incline bench.
Cracks and pops are another case where constant introspection and following tips on TikTok has made many of them go away. The received wisdom is they're not proven harmful, but in my case they at least represent using muscles in wrong patterns that pull things off center.
throwawaylaptop · 2h ago
I can't argue if it's 'healthy' or not, but anecdotal accounts say that going meat only cures most of these pains in about 30 days.
I've tried it. 65 year old dad tried it. Coworkers and friends. It worked for everyone. No one has remained meat only, but it taught us all to watch what we eat like hawks.
brewdad · 1h ago
Not sure if "meat only" can be a cure-all but anecdotally, I feel better when I reduce my gluten intake. I've never been diagnosed with a wheat sensitivity but my son has been forced to go gluten free because of one. When he is home on school breaks, we eat gluten free and I do notice a difference in how I feel.
I'm not giving up beer or the once a month pizza anytime soon but I have made conscious decisions to reduce my overall gluten intake.
SlowTao · 1h ago
I mean, it is a hard line elimination diet. If you watch what happens with reintroduction, you can provably figure out where the issues are.
IAmGraydon · 3h ago
How old are you?
layman51 · 3h ago
I think these kinds of aches start happening to a non-negligible number of people beginning in their early 30s. It isn’t that they can’t still be active, it’s just that they have to be diligent about warming up their joints before certain exercises, whereas before they may not have had to even consider warming up.
No comments yet
tempestn · 3h ago
I'm not the parent, but could've written all the same (44).
IAmGraydon · 1h ago
I’m 43, and though I seem to get more injuries in the gym since I hit 40 (usually tendon overuse), I’ve noticed that proper nutrition and good sleep make a big difference in how my body feels. I also go to the gym at 5:30am and do an hour of free weight strength training 4 days per week.
If you guys are hurting all the time in your 40s, I would really advise you to do a full assessment of what you’re putting in your body and what kind of message you’re sending your body with your exercise routine. It might also be a good idea to get checked for markers of inflammation as well as testosterone levels. You should not have constant nagging pain at your age.
BubbleRings · 3h ago
And how much caffeine do you drink?
GratiaTerra · 5h ago
Geriatric simulation is interesting, but couldn't this also be applied to pediatric simulation for improved vision, hearing, strength and endurance? I don't see any show stoppers preventing the development of a youth-augmentation exosuit blending AR sensory augmentation, powered exoskeleton support, haptics, and AI adaptive controls.
Stevvo · 5h ago
I think you're missing the point. You use something like this to help in design/testing of accessible spaces. An exosuit can't cut you half to help you make better children's spaces.
GratiaTerra · 2h ago
Floating the idea of a youth simulator (like a VR app with integrated exosuit) could be used to measure physiological and cognitive age gaps. It might be valuable for science and medicine, but also for things like understanding empathy/social knowledge or understanding workflows/applied knowledge.
nonameiguess · 1h ago
Additionally, assuming you're not already geriatric, simulating it is the only way to experience it short of waiting. If you're an adult, you were already a kid at some point.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 4h ago
Just spitballing:
- Powered exoskeletons aren't quite "there"
- If moving at all is painful, having an exoskeleton move you will also be painful
- Haptics and AR aren't quite there either
- Batteries, it's always batteries
beezlewax · 1h ago
I tried on an obesity simulation suit once. It was designed for caregivers - with the goal of increasing empathy in mind. It was amazing how difficult ordinary tasks were.
snickerdoodle12 · 5h ago
I'd be more interested in the other way around
ge96 · 4h ago
Use it to make yourself stronger, break free like the running man in Animatrix
mwigdahl · 4h ago
Or Harrison Bergeron...
libria · 3h ago
Yeah, clickbait title for some of us. Should be "Advanced Age Simulation Suit".
OptionOfT · 4h ago
My initial thoughts too.
ilc · 4h ago
Amen.
philipov · 44m ago
Can I get a suit that simulates being 20 years old again?
jkestner · 3h ago
One of my professors in undergrad pioneered research into the eldery’s interaction with the world. Not just the physiological, but sociological aspects — she got a makeup artist to disguise herself.
Alternatively, one might ask someone with those disabilities to provide feedback.
trhway · 3h ago
While i think we should do more things in that direction, it borders on human experimentation.
Btw, somebody should mention that Putin/Xi's talk about living to 150 years and the 70 being just a children age today (if you have state resources at your disposal).
dsign · 2h ago
Awful idea #1: If you are one of those advanced-age president-dictator of a big super-power, you know, one of those guys that get caught in a hot mic talking about immortality, you could seal your pact with the devil by forcing anybody in your big chunk of the planet who doesn’t ace their STEM topics to wear one of these suits. Who knows, maybe if the youth get properly scared of their old age, they will stop being a subversive thorn and instead focus on fixing the ending of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Awful idea #2: Just listen to your grandmother when you are young. She will tell you how brutal is to be old. Read the science, not just biology but all the connected sciences, specially mathematics. And then listen to the priests (critically!), and read the writers, and peruse the written record of the human civilization, which almost begins with the Epic of Gilgamesh. It will reveal shadows you didn’t know were in your mind. None of it, of course, prevents you from becoming old, but it puts most things into perspective, and it digs out a certain light that we have lost and which we very much need if we are ever going to do anything about the suffering that aging brings.
Awful idea #3: Take a shortcut and paste everything I wrote before this paragraph into an LLM. Any LLM which is reasonably state of the art. Prompt with “what’s the meaning of this?” It will significantly change the intended meaning of what I said in “awful idea #2”. That’s the bias/zeitgeist in our vast cultural recent corpus, that the LLMs swallowed for training, being regurgitated at you in condensed form. And they said that LLMs aren’t useful! Repeat the experiment, but this time use Simplified Chinese to prompt. Observe the very slight cultural drift. Meditate. Now abandon this shortcut and execute awful idea #2. Borrow somebody else’s grandmother if you must.
xunil2ycom · 5h ago
I could have used this about 40 years ago.
steve918 · 2h ago
If you preorder I can get you the same thing for half the price. It just sometimes takes a few years for delivery.
hollerith · 1h ago
Most German thing ever (for post-WWII version of "German").
bitwize · 3h ago
Looks like Harrison Bergeron's gear, which means it's probably well suited to purpose.
languagehacker · 4h ago
Finally I can be Karl Havoc
GuinansEyebrows · 5h ago
> For many years our age simulation suit GERT has been by far the most popular product worldwide.
GERT: Bigger than the iPhone.
eweise · 3h ago
too bad it can't make my 60 year old body simulate a 20 year old.
dmcq2 · 6h ago
Well I dont think I need all that equipment to experience the effect. So I can save myself the money, yay!
shikon7 · 4h ago
I'm still waiting for the youth simulation suit.
ourmandave · 3h ago
Does it also simulate out living your friends and spouse and being alone?
dhosek · 3h ago
I think if you walk around in one of those, your friends and spouse will abandon you pretty quickly.
I also write code daily, read the same things I read when I worked, thus keep my brain going too. You can't ignore body or mind, you have to keep both in tune.
I am still getting older, but I am in better shape than I was before I retired. The last time I felt as fit was when I was still playing basketball 30+ years ago.
Don't wait, it's easier to do a little for decades than wait until it's almost too late.
Thank you for saying this. A depressingly large proportion of people are seemingly resigned to the fact that once you hit 40-50, you'll inevitably turn into an achy tub of lard and it's rapidly and irreversibly downhill from there.
Barring injuries that are truly irreversible (e.g. severe damage to joints/cartilage), with the correct diet and fitness regime, it's entirely possible to remain lean (≤20% bodyfat) and muscular (≥80th percentile in strength standards [0]) well into what most consider "old age." So many people have no idea just how poorly they eat or how inactive and physically weak they are, and consider the result to just be a normal part of life.
>I also write code daily, read the same things I read when I worked, thus keep my brain going too. You can't ignore body or mind, you have to keep both in tune.
Thanks for saying this too. So much cognitive decline is due to inactivity of the mind. My mom was whip smart until she retired in her mid-60s to a life of idle leisure, and her mental faculties noticeably deteriorated within a few months. Thankfully, she noticed this and deliberately re-engaged with more intense intellectual pursuits (including consulting part-time in the professional field that she loved), and the improvement was night-and-day.
[0] https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards
But like the empathy found in this article, it's caused me to be incredibly more patient with anyone struggling to walk in front of me on a crowded or narrow sidewalk.
Aging is rough. Thank you to everyone working on accessibility and aging related tech and science.
I know it comes for everyone, but the pace of said spiral is frightening.
Wish we were in a timeframe with more alternatives for rapid loss of mobility and muscle.
Yes, we should try and work against this but I am just looking at the silver lining.
It really is simple: aging is incredibly harmful and undesirable. It strips away your quality of life until there isn't much left and then you die. It doesn't take any more than that for it to be declared a disease.
Whether it's "natural" or whether "everyone has it" is a distraction. If everyone was born with cancer, that wouldn't make cancer any less of a disease.
Doesn't make it a disease. Dying is a normal part of life as well as the decline before that.
> If everyone was born with cancer, that wouldn't make cancer any less of a disease.
No, then the people not having cancer would have the disease.
> I would appreciate if the "norm" was recognized
That's not how a norm works. You get that by doing trials and statistics, not by wanting it to be different.
This is how it was - until humans decided that this sucks and something should be done about that.
I see no reason not to dispose of aging at the earliest opportunity. And this starts by recognizing: aging sucks for everyone, and should be disposed of.
Once we have those breakthroughs, sure folks might start thinking of aging as a disease that's not "normal" or a thing that we can actually avoid, but until then it's a fact of life, same as gravity, the sun, or the tides.
Then the dog died. Instead of walking 10km per day, she lay on the couch staring at the ceiling. About 3 months later she started getting lost on her way to the supermarket. Fifth time she got lost we decided to put her in a home for demented people. We simply couldn't provide the care she needed any other way. Took a few more months and she stopped recognising us.
I think she outlived her dog by about 18 months, iirc.
She stopped walking, and then age came fast for her.
I was running, but kept getting injured, so it switched to walking, several years ago.
I think keeping my mind occupied is just as important. It's entirely possible that the visual stimulus of her walks was as important as the exercise.
For myself, I make a point of constantly working on shipping software, and constantly learning new stuff. LLMs have been a godsend, for the latter. I had pretty much given up on trying to ask questions, because of the awful, sneering responses that I was getting, more and more.
One day he had a minor operation that left him needing a wheelchair for what we thought would be just a few weeks. But he never regained his strength and was never to walk again, which led to a steep and sudden decline in his mental condition. It was truly devastating to see one of the sharpest people I knew become an angry and confused simulacrum of the man I so admired.
I wish I had realized two things then: First, as you say, maintaining mobility is the crucial to the well-being of the elderly. Second, immediate physical/occupational therapy after a fall or surgery is essential to people at risk of losing mobility. Sadly it wasn't offered to us and we didn't think to ask.
I live abroad to make more money and feed my ego and I only see him 3–4 times a year. On top of that selfishness, every now and then I catch myself selfishly thinking I don’t want to go through that, which makes me feel like an even worst piece of shit.
Life sucks.
Alas, it can be taken away without choice, hopefully not.
She used to stay absorbed in a little battery powered draw poker game that she had, but by the end of the summer she had gone through a large part of our game collection and could put up a real challenge in Mario Kart 64.
Eventually we gifted it to her and she played it for years after that.
I would love to see more widespread adoption of these suits in training and employee onboarding in these facilities, mostly because if I'm in that situation or I want to think about a retirement home for my family members, I'd want to see that no one is losing their temper because my mom can't sprint 12km/hr to the elevators for breakfast.
This being said, anecdotally, it seems elder abuse is more the norm, simply because of compassion fatigue, so I suspect that even in however many years time, I'll be punched by a PSW for no good reason.
But then again, by the time you're older you might look younger than you do now, e.g. "Ageing changes our genes – epigenetic atlas gives clearest picture yet (nature.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45095532 (from the other day, no comments yet)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/m3wljWlAVss
Getting older has its benefits too but mostly mental, in physical terms I cannot think of a single benefit.
The only thing that keeps it at bay is regular exercise, both strength and mobility. I'm careful about running.
Also if you ever compete in a physical activity at more than just a "with your friends" level, you'll quickly find that whether you're 15 or 50 warming up makes a huge difference.
A lot of the problems of aging that I suspect folks today are facing are the problems of leading a fairly sedentary lifestyle.
"My legs are sore from running yesterday but it means the muscles are getting stronger and I'll be healthy."
And:
"There is this weird twinge in my back. Did I sleep weird and it will be fine tomorrow? Or do I have to start doing more stretches and if I keep up with that forever, I can keep this pain at bay? Or does it mean that one of the vertebrae is starting to crack and if I don't go to the doctor soon enough and get surgery I'm going to end up paralyzed for life?"
Pain is easy. It's not knowing what the pain means that's hard.
I think folks are really focusing on the "psychological" part of my comment in isolation and not the "problems of leading a fairly sedentary lifestyle" which is probably my fault because I don't think I structured my post well.
I think a lot of the problems that are associated with aging, such as minor aches and pains, are consequences of leading mostly sedentary lifestyles. Part of being fairly active (meaning well above most state-recommended guidelines) is the psychological resilience to pain that I mentioned. But also part of it is that because you are constantly pushing your physical abilities, the strain that comes from occasional bad movement as part of everyday life (sleeping badly, holding the faucet tap the wrong way, hitting your wrist on the corner of a table, etc) is usually well within the envelope of pushing yourself compared to your actual sport.
My greater point is that leading a sedentary lifestyle is a whole package of things. This includes the physiological consequences of not developing strength, flexibility, and joint elasticity; this also includes the psychological resistance to risk and pain that comes from being sedentary.
Cracks and pops are another case where constant introspection and following tips on TikTok has made many of them go away. The received wisdom is they're not proven harmful, but in my case they at least represent using muscles in wrong patterns that pull things off center.
I'm not giving up beer or the once a month pizza anytime soon but I have made conscious decisions to reduce my overall gluten intake.
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If you guys are hurting all the time in your 40s, I would really advise you to do a full assessment of what you’re putting in your body and what kind of message you’re sending your body with your exercise routine. It might also be a good idea to get checked for markers of inflammation as well as testosterone levels. You should not have constant nagging pain at your age.
- Powered exoskeletons aren't quite "there"
- If moving at all is painful, having an exoskeleton move you will also be painful
- Haptics and AR aren't quite there either
- Batteries, it's always batteries
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Moore
Btw, somebody should mention that Putin/Xi's talk about living to 150 years and the 70 being just a children age today (if you have state resources at your disposal).
Awful idea #2: Just listen to your grandmother when you are young. She will tell you how brutal is to be old. Read the science, not just biology but all the connected sciences, specially mathematics. And then listen to the priests (critically!), and read the writers, and peruse the written record of the human civilization, which almost begins with the Epic of Gilgamesh. It will reveal shadows you didn’t know were in your mind. None of it, of course, prevents you from becoming old, but it puts most things into perspective, and it digs out a certain light that we have lost and which we very much need if we are ever going to do anything about the suffering that aging brings.
Awful idea #3: Take a shortcut and paste everything I wrote before this paragraph into an LLM. Any LLM which is reasonably state of the art. Prompt with “what’s the meaning of this?” It will significantly change the intended meaning of what I said in “awful idea #2”. That’s the bias/zeitgeist in our vast cultural recent corpus, that the LLMs swallowed for training, being regurgitated at you in condensed form. And they said that LLMs aren’t useful! Repeat the experiment, but this time use Simplified Chinese to prompt. Observe the very slight cultural drift. Meditate. Now abandon this shortcut and execute awful idea #2. Borrow somebody else’s grandmother if you must.
GERT: Bigger than the iPhone.