Men often develop multiple age-related diseases that lead to disability or death. Instead of treating each one separately, a more effective strategy may be to focus on combatting aging itself.
Good sleep habits, optimal sex hormone levels, eating a healthful diet and exercising regularly all contribute to healthy aging. Learn how your lifestyle choices impact biological ageing and how to turn back the clock!
Exercise
At 50 and beyond, healthy men experience a gradual decrease in body performance. Strength weakens over time, leading to stiffening joints; heart function decreases by 5-11% every decade after age 25, even among disease-free hearts; bones lose density leading to fractures; memory lapses become more frequent; sleep becomes less restful; while some men even go through menopause with its attendant loss of libido and sexual drive.
Exercise programs may not be the magic fountain of youth, but they can certainly slow some of the changes associated with ageing. A program including endurance training may help maintain flexible heart muscles and arteries while lowering resting heart rates and blood pressure and increasing peak capacity of oxygen-rich blood delivery to the organs.
One of the most stunning findings from the Dallas Bed Rest and Exercise Study was that even sedentary 20-year-olds responded similarly to 8 weeks of intensive exercise training as their active counterparts, according to Harvard Alumni Study results. Furthermore, exercising can actually extend life expectancy; one hour spent exercising led to two additional life years gained according to this particular research project.
Zero Health co-founder Max G recently claimed that Bryan Johnson’s age reversal regimen made him appear 18 at 28; his comments became widely circulated on social media platform X (formerly Twitter). Max G listed impressive biological markers as benefits to Bryan’s intense regimen; however, social inflexibility and time investment for tracking could present obstacles for this approach.
Hormones
Age-related changes to hormone production can negatively impact muscle, bone and fat mass as well as immunity, cardiovascular and neurological function. Restoring levels of key hormones that have decreased may help counteract some of these negative impacts and promote overall wellness.
Hormones are essential to human life, and even small changes in their concentration can have profound repercussions for our body’s wellbeing. Therefore, when considering using hormone replacement therapy it must be approached carefully – its use could result in both positive and negative side effects depending on how it’s utilized and treated hormonal deficiencies.
Rudman et al1’s 1990 article spurred an explosion of “antiaging” clinics and lay publications extolling growth hormone’s benefits in slowing or reversing aging, though no definitive studies exist to demonstrate its effect. Furthermore, due to being a peptide and vulnerable to degradation by gastric acidity, oral preparations of growth hormone are unlikely to work effectively.
Men typically begin the aging process around age 30, when growth hormone, testosterone and nitric oxide levels in their blood decrease, leading to muscle mass loss and increased fat tissue accumulation. Lack of physical activity as well as tendencies towards weight gain all play major parts in this process; studies have demonstrated that those who remain physically active through middle age and maintain strength have higher rates of functional independence even with chronic illnesses taken into consideration.
As women approach menopause and enter perimenopause, their hormone levels, particularly estrogen and testosterone, also shift. This alteration to their endocrine system leads to symptoms like hot flashes, lower bone density, and diminished sexual drive.
Hormone replacement therapies that have been clinically tested and proven safe and efficacious exist. Bio-identical hormones derived from plant or animal sources that have been chemically modified to match the molecular structure of one’s own hormones should also be available, however physicians must evaluate an individual woman’s family history of breast cancer and cardiovascular disease prior to prescribing long-term estrogen and progesterone replacement therapy.
Diet
While a healthy diet cannot reverse biological aging, it can slow its process. Studies indicate that frequent fast food consumption accelerates biological aging in young adults.
Diet also plays an important role in combatting age-related muscle loss, or sarcopenia, which can lead to decreased mobility and an increased risk of osteoporosis. Strength training combined with healthy nutrition is proven to stop and reverse this condition – helping reduce metabolic syndrome as well as chronic inflammation.
Valter Longo conducted a recent study which demonstrated how an eating plan similar to fasting can reduce biological age by 2.5 years.
Sleep
Sleep-wake cycles are essential to human health and play an integral part in biological aging. Sleep provides time for the body and mind to recover energy and focus, and promote cellular repair through processes like DNA repair or the expression of p16INK4a. Unfortunately, the mechanisms linking sleep with biological aging remain poorly understood; recent evidence suggests chronic disturbances of this cycle may increase accumulation of cell damage, shorten telomere length and alter telomerase activity as well as epigenetic pathways associated with biological aging pathways.
Sleep has been found to deteriorate with age and decrease both in terms of length and quality. Men appear more affected than women by this decrease, yet its biological causes remain unknown.
Aging-related changes in brainstem and hypothalamic sleep-wake regulatory nuclei could be the driving force behind the decline, evidenced by declining numbers of VIP neurons within the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) and galanin-expressing neurons within the preoptic area of the hypothalamus, with subsequent instability within brainstem circuitry possibly accounting for greater NREM fragmentation among older adults than in younger ones.
This deterioration may also be related to a decline in noradrenergic sleep-promoting signaling despite an unchanged level of total daily adenosine production, leading to reduced NREM homeostatic discharge and loss of consolidated periods of slow wave activity and sleep spindles.
NREM sleep fragmentation among older adults also results in decreased strength of slow-wave oscillations and an inability to synchronize these cycles, which is crucial for memory formation, consolidation, retrieval and the creation of new neuronal connections.
These factors, combined with a high-calorie diet, may explain the correlation between sleep disturbances and an increased risk of degenerative diseases like cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, and dementia. Although more research must be conducted to establish causal pathways, this research indicates that lifestyle approaches designed to reverse aging might mitigate some of these effects through manipulating metabolic processes like caloric restriction and fasting-mimicking diets.
