I feel like someone slowly flipped the 'old' switch at 50

August 5, 2024 11:51 AM

This is the first time I've noticed more drastic physical/mental changes in myself, enough to bother me/take notice/be concerned. Am I officially over the hill?

I'm male, I turned 50 last year. Over the past 9-12 months it feels like physical/mental changes have become more pronounced or slightly accelerated. I'll try to be brief, but some background first. I'm generally above average in health. I get some exercise and eat well enough (more below)

Physical: I'm generally above average in health. My exercise routine a few years ago was about 15-20 miles a week of bike riding (mostly flat terrain), some basic stuff like pull ups, push ups, crunches. I've been WFH (sitting at a computer) for the last 4 years and now I am doing just walks and hikes (hilly), 30-45 min / 2-3 times a week, still doing push ups/crunches. My strength feels like it's been degrading, i.e. like grip strength. I drop things more often, my joints get stiffer faster if I am not moving around. If I do something strenuous, I feel the effects more and for longer (soreness, fatigue). Hiking feels like it takes more effort. Luckily my cardio/stamina seems like it has not changed much. My wife says 'do more yoga' which I did with her when we were courting, but I have zero interest in it now.

Diet: I don't smoke or do drugs, I'll have one beer after a physically active or stressful day. I eat vegetables and fruits, more chicken than beef or pork. It's not a super healthy all natural diet, I eat junk too (chips etc), but try to keep that minimal. I have been intermittent fasting for a few years, so my daily routine is a small amount of OJ in the morning, then I don't eat until noon, and stop between 8-10pm. On average I weigh 170-180 lbs. and I'm 5'10", average build.

Mental: Me and my wife had kids later in life (me in my mid-late 40s). So we've got a toddler and an infant now (~5 months). I wish I became a father earlier, because mentally I am stretched kind of thin, and most of the time I'm ready to fall down around 9-10pm. I started a new job ~6 months ago and it's 10x more intense of a workload than my previous one (which basically amounted to a piece of cake sleepwalking gig full-time...I was blessed, but that company is being dissolved as I type this). My self-care basically boils down to some creative/artistic pursuits sprinkled here and there and some 'work with my hands' type activities (I'm a motor/gearhead hobbyist), but free time is scarce with the new job. So, with 2 kids and this demanding job, I am starting to forget or lose track of 1 or 2 things more regularly. Sometimes I walk into a room and totally forget why I did so or what exactly I was going to do in that room. About every ~2 weeks I get some therapy over the phone from a person who helped me years ago with a very bad relationship (wasted years and mostly why I didn't start a family until later). It's more of a casual, life coach kind of talk vibe but it's helpful.


I get good sleep thankfully. I am very leery of taking any suppliments or snake-oil stuff I get targeted ads for. What things could I do other than yelling at the clouds and telling people to get off my lawn?

posted by kilohertz to Health & Fitness (23 answers total)

I’m the exact same age. If I stop strength training for more than six months, I start feeling frail in a way that I never did when I was younger. As soon as I pick it back up, I feel more like a 30 year-old than a 70 year old. Not bad for something I spend about 90 minutes a week doing.
posted by chainringtattoo at 12:05 PM on August 5 [9 favorites]

Pick a sport and compete in the Senior Games (or your area's equivalent). Training for it gives you a purpose, it's fun, you'll probably get a medal, it confuses your friends, it's good for you physically and mentally.

It's such a cringeworthy title and theme that I'm embarrassed to be recommending it, but Tactical Barbell's Ageless Athlete has useful information about rest days, etc that you need to pay more attention to as you get older.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:36 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]

50 is a fucking baseball bat, man. I'm 3 years older than my husband, and he is spending his 49th year turning to me going "seriously??? now this???" Give my condolences to your knees.

If yoga bugs you in a woo way, look into physical therapy mobility exercises. It's many of the exact same movements - the point being to move your body in all the ways it's supposed to move, slowly, with an emphasis on balance and flexibility - but more emphasis on building joint support around your big weight-bearing joints as your elasticity declines, and keep your balance sharp. Your doctor might even be able to find an excuse to refer you to a PT for a few sessions just to get some training, but it's worth some out of pocket cash if you can swing it. There are lots and lots of videos on youtube, just go slow!

Get your bloodwork done to see if you legitimately need to supplement something. B and D are common issues with us, and your doctor may have thoughts on calcium best practices. You may want to track your hormone levels too, in case you hit a sharp change.

Get your eyes checked if you haven't in a year. I had perimenopause to deal with and that comes with extra connective tissue/elasticity issues, and my prescription did something of a jitterbug over my 40s with my numbers going up and down, and I didn't really register some of the changes until I realized I had crushing eyestrain.

But yeah, the processors slow down too and it sucks. At first I thought it was just that all my fucks flew away - especially in regard to work, where I am no longer an overachiever because I've paid for too many Other People's Dumbass Cars at this point, but no, I just cannot hustle on stuff like I used to. I require rest to function. I went ahead and got my Midlife ADHD diagnosis, but meds aren't the end-all-be-all of ADHD treatment; mostly I just had to improve my systems because I cannot depend on my memory to save my ass like it used to. My experience remains meaningful, I just have to capture more detailed to-do lists and use my calendar like my life depends on it.

There's all kinds of reasons retirement age is in the 60s, whatever that means for our generation in real life. The stamina does change. Time takes a toll. Everything is less stretchy and perky than it used to be.

In my mind, I'm still...I dunno, 38? 42? Like, in my head, I don't feel dramatically different. But I've taken more naps between 50-52 than I took from 5 to 50, no hyperbole.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:47 PM on August 5 [7 favorites]

You kind of buried the lede there with the young kids thing. I’m a 41 year old woman and have a nine month old and a three year old. My body is run ragged by these children. My husband is 40 and obviously didn’t have the same physical experience of pregnancy and giving birth etc but he and I both feel like these kids have aged us about a decade.

I mean, you (and we) are undoubtedly getting older and feeling the effects of normal aging, but it’s all compounded by the exhaustion, both physical and mental, of raising very young children. I think the best we can do is exercise, especially strength-based, and hope to god that once our youngest kids are like five that our bodies will maybe just be normal old and not old-parents-of-babies old.
posted by imalaowai at 12:55 PM on August 5 [18 favorites]

50 is rough in a way that 40 and 30 definitely were not. You start getting called "middle aged" and you can't really refute it anymore. I have made myself lose weight and get fit, so it is possible, but my PT friends warn that you can't really build muscle mass after about age 60, you just try to keep what you've got at that point.

Young kids and a demanding job are going to run you ragged to a degree, but losing track of why you walked into a room and stuff like that is no big deal. It happens, and it will happen more as you go. It honestly sounds like you're doing great! Keep up your core and always lift with your legs. If you start to have back problems, THAT will really make you feel old.
posted by rikschell at 1:11 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]

Fifty is the youth of old age.
posted by hortense at 1:27 PM on August 5 [5 favorites]

Young Children are exhausting.even if you’re sleeping well. (Which - you may think you’re sleeping well but your subconscious could still be on alert for crying kids.) I was thinking I had early onset Alzheimer’s or something for all the things you describe and then I was alone without husband or kids for two weeks and my mental acuity was at 1000%. I didn’t forget a thing, objects were where I left them, I understood concepts quickly at work etc etc.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 1:28 PM on August 5 [5 favorites]

Being tired creeps up on you and between young kids and a new job you are going to be knackered. You won’t realise how knackered until you get time off for a few days without kids. And being tired affects both your physical and mental capabilities. You have legitimate reasons to be tired that will only get better in the medium term as your children become more independent and you get more settled in the job or find one that is less demanding. Despite all that, you are managing to fit in some good self care with exercise and hobbies, albeit not as much as you’d like. You are doing a lot better than you think you are.
posted by koahiatamadl at 2:30 PM on August 5

You always want to be aware of stressors. You have two: new children and a new job. That directly causes fatigue, and stress has a way of causing other problems.

I worry about mental health too at my age, but it's worth recalling that when you're 20, when you forget something it's just dismissed as absent-mindedness. Forgetting things when you enter a room is so common it has a name.
posted by zompist at 2:32 PM on August 5 [3 favorites]

Just want to chime in about the grip strength thing. I saw a doctor a while back (age 55) because I was waking up with numb fingers more frequently. Long story short - he said there was a noticeable decline in my grip strength, and sent me for a nerve conduction test which revealed a need for surgery. Because I noticed in time, I'm recovering very well, and have regained some of the lost strength. (I do jiu jitsu 4x/week which can be very hard on your hands, so I see this when I train.) I strongly recommend asking your doc about it, because once the damage gets to a certain degree, recovery becomes much less likely.

As far as the rest - my friend from the gym says: at our age, everyone is going to have aches and pains, but we're at least better off in knowing exactly how we got them.
posted by bashos_frog at 2:50 PM on August 5 [2 favorites]

I recommend Phil Daoust‘s Guardian articles on a few threads - he is a sixty something guy who has decided he wants to live to be 100 and had then worked back from that to particular physical and social goals. As commented above, 50 is the youth of old age - you can mourn what you can no longer do- but you can also prepare for a positive future that you will - always “with luck” - be able to enjoy.
posted by rongorongo at 3:01 PM on August 5 [2 favorites]

One of the things that helped a little bit was to wear an Apple Watch. I got it originally to track sleep cycles, but it also reveled some insights on which exercises were improving my VO2 max. And it revealed some bad habits which were causing heart rate variability. At least it'll give you a baseline so that if one of your numbers goes south, you can start to diagnose quickly.
posted by credulous at 3:07 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]

If you feel this way now at 50 which is still relatively young, how will you feel at 60...or 65...or 70? Keep in mind your well-being is intertwined with your attitude towards that number, so if you are telling yourself you are now an 'old' stop doing that.
The reality of entropy is that complex systems fall apart over time. You're feeling 'old' because the entropy in your body is exceeding the ability of your body to repair and maintain itself. The antidote is regular exercise. Going on walks at 50 is not going to cut it. You need to exercise programmatically and regularly to keep your body in very good condition and fitness. You need to ramp up your Vo2 max, you need to practice flexibility, core strength and weight lifting.
Doing 15-20 minutes of habitual exercise 6 of 7 days and you can increase your well being by a lot. Add in some weight lifting on one or two days and you are making regular progress at extending your longevity.
I was in a similar state at 50 and now much fitter by maximizing my longevity through exercise.
posted by diode at 3:32 PM on August 5 [3 favorites]

Kids are super tiring and everyone with toddlers is exhausted and also out of whack mentally from interruptions and multitasking, so don't be too hard on yourself!

One thing you can do that will almost surely pay off is to get a sleep study and a CPAP machine. Sleep apnea is super common, very easy to fix, and fixing it makes you smarter and less tired. It's a VERY good way to spend a few hundred bucks!
posted by nouvelle-personne at 4:22 PM on August 5 [3 favorites]

Wanted to hop in on the kids thing—I'm the next step down in "had kids a little older," late 30s and I have a 4.5 year old and a 1.5 year old, and I have felt 1000 years older physically since they were born. Less sleep, less time to yourself, more to do, it adds up fast.
posted by Polycarp at 4:42 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]

I hear you. Turning 50 seemed to flip some kind of goddamned switch, both mental and physical.

Echoing all the sleep advice above wholeheartedly. I've found that getting more sleep is a complete and total game-changer. As in getting much more than I thought I needed for my life up to now. Not "7-8 hours if I'm lucky, 6-7 or less if I can't, oh well."

Now if I get 8-9 hours or more I feel SO MUCH better. It's almost a game: how much sleep can I get tonight? EVERYTHING is easier if you're well-rested.
posted by gottabefunky at 5:03 PM on August 5 [4 favorites]

Definitely get blood work done. Several months ago I had a cascade of things going wrong (thyroid levels, vitamin D deficiency, B-12 deficiency, etc). I had no idea low B-12 would make you feel so shitty. Not to say that’s it, but it’s worth it to check. I’m 48 and it seems like things go haywire a little more easily than they used to.
posted by bunderful at 7:15 PM on August 5

Seems like you’re doing relatively well, definitely some things will get easier when the kids are a little older (5+ is less taxing). I tend to concur with your wife that a really solid stretching and balance routine (yoga’s good but there are others) would help with the everyday aches and pains and help prevent injury.
posted by vunder at 8:52 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]

It doesn't seem it's age only. It's the more stressful job and parenting two little kids! Also, intermittent fasting may not be a good thing for you. Are you getting enough calories? You need them. Oj in the morning then nothing for several hours is like running on empty. You might want to get a workup with your doctor too in case something else is going on.
posted by mxjudyliza at 10:27 PM on August 5 [2 favorites]

You could be describing age 30 with two young kids. It's really exhausting. I'm sorry no one really let you know it'd be this way. If I could get you to priortize a few things, it would be these:
Sleep, above all else
Resistance training, at a gym, with the help of a trainer if you need it
Support your wife and partner in both of the above

And skip the oj. Have some milk, maybe, or something that won't spike your blood sugar. Or an orange. But not juice.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:29 PM on August 5 [2 favorites]

New kids and a new job? You'd likely be handling the aging you are experiencing gracefully and without anxiety, if not for those other two stressors. A lot of it is normal for when you have a kid and normal for when you age, and actually very minor.

We tend to get frightened when our memory goes because we think of it as the looming spectre of dementia, but in fact the memory issues are part of the transition to being wise - Your long term memories are becoming extremely valuable, because nobody under the age of forty has that kind of access to the things that you know, and your short term memory is being de-prioritized because it really doesn't matter at all if you forget why you got up and went into the kitchen. Either you will remember it as soon as you turn around again, or it wasn't important in the first place. So these memory changes are not so much a glitch as a change to prioritize your expertise. You don't need to worry if you don't remember where you put down your keys - chaos when you have kids, ensures this will happen - you need to worry when you are holding your keys in your hand and trying to remember what the hell they are even for.

You are definitely moving into the use it or lose it, and it's harder to get it back age, but you have already laid much of the groundwork you need to retain it. And while it is getting harder to get it back, it is never impossible until you are too weak to sit up in bed anymore. They have done lots of studies on exercise programs for seniors in nursing homes, and they can gain muscle mass and strength and cardio and reduce fat percentage by exercising even when they are in their late nineties. You're doing things right because your health regime is so good you are observing these changes at all - the danger is when you don't observe them, and you realise after fifteen years that you haven't been maintaining your health and that you have slipped way, way back. - And that can happen at any age. It's just that if you realised it at sixty-five you'd have one hell of a climb ahead of you, which you could still do even then, but it would take a lot more hours and planning.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:07 AM on August 6 [2 favorites]

Adding to the anecdotes...

Things changed for me around 50 as well, though I didn't have children or a new job to deal with. My overall health was about average for a relatively sedentary USian that was never into binge drinking or junk food/fast food, but even in my 40s I was still able to handle regular physical activities like helping someone move or go on a mountain hike without suffering too much. Around age 50 my overall stamina dropped noticeably and my body started taking longer to recover from physical activities; I also noticed that any sort of injury, from a small cut on a finger to sore over-exerted knees, started taking longer to heal. I gritted my teeth and grudgingly learned to accept that aging is a thing.

I'm now in my mid-60s, and after a decade or so of not doing anything about it I started exercising (cycling and walking) 4 years ago. It really has made a positive difference. I don't feel like I'm in my 40s again, but I sure do feel better than I did 4 years ago, I've regained a lot of my overall daily energy, and my knees bother me less.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:38 PM on August 6 [1 favorite]

It's absolutely true that there are well-documented physical and mental changes that happen as we get older. And it's also a fact that a new job and young kids are tiring for most people at any age.

That said, I'm several years older than you and something I've noticed is that many things got better for me after I stopped thinking about getting older as something "wrong" and started to look at the different issues as practical problems that probably had at least partial solutions. If you're tired, you might need more sleep. Try going to bed earlier, or taking naps. Needing to turn off an hour earlier or take a break in the middle of the day might feel like a "loss" of productive time at first, but it could make a major difference to your functioning. Being someone who needs more than eight hours of sleep per night to be at your best is a lot better than being someone who stays awake longer yet feels like crap all the time.

I'd also recommend that you start keeping a journal or log of how you feel, even if it's only a sentence or two on the days you remember to do it. I've done so since my teens, and it really helps me to look back at some of my entries from 20+ years ago and realize I sometimes felt awful back then, too, and came up with ways to get past it that can still work today. Records are a good antidote to rose-coloured glasses.

North American culture in particular primes people to think that there really is some kind of switch that is going to flip when they turn a certain age, and that mindset does nobody any favours. It might be worth your time to give some thought to your own beliefs about aging, and figure out how to eliminate or at least mitigate the unhelpful ones.
posted by rpfields at 8:48 PM on August 6 [5 favorites]