Experiences with offsetting aging effects

This theme came up from discussion in a Reddit aging related sub-group, here.  The title for that post was "experiences with reversing aging," which this title version probably corrects a bit.  You can really offset some of the effects, maybe even reversing what is regarded as an irreversible outcome in some cases, but in general it's about positively affecting general health, not turning back the clock.  

To me it's not about aesthetics, but it could be for others.  It also doesn't tie so closely to health markers, from doing bloodwork (general health assessment), but I did just check those results within the last couple of months, and they look ok.  I missed the last two company health checks or I could've assessed changes.  I've started fasting practices and have escalated running volume over the last 2 1/2 years; those recent markers should be better than earlier ones.

Let's start with that post; it also includes limited intro, so a lot of that would be overdoing it:

It's not really one of my things, as it is with Bryan Johnson and those other typically sketchy aging research guys, but I've had limited experience with seeing the effects of aging reverse. My hair was greying some years ago, and it has almost entirely returned to the original color. To be more specific my son counted 13 grey hairs about two years ago, and there are just a few at my lower temple now.

To back up a little I'm 56. In some other ways, partly related to appearance, I haven't aged as fast as I might, with my skin holding up decently, not using reading glasses, still exercising, etc. I can't know direct causes but I'll speculate about that here.

I took up periodic fasting just over 2 years ago, now fasting 5 days at a time, 4 times a year, but it was more that first year, nearly a month in total. I've been running a lot for 3 or 4 years, but I've levelled off at being able to run 10 km three times a week; I can't seem to recover from more than that. I don't know if it makes a difference but I've been eating a little goji berry most days for a number of years (said to help maintain eye health). I've improved my diet quite a bit based on resetting it related to fasting, and have been keeping up with sleep for years. A long cycle of meditation practice may have helped with memory issues.

I have kids, and had them late, so most of that didn't apply in my 40s. I was definitely out of shape over that decade, not exercising much, but I stayed active. I suspect that being a little underweight during my 20s and 30s, related to being a vegetarian then, may have been an earlier cause for slower aging.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend that people try to suspend aging, but maintaining exceptional health seems reasonable.

Feb. 2025; looking a bit middle-aged, ok for 56

The "typically sketchy" part, about aging researchers, relates to them often seeming to package a product as much as search for answers for the benefit of society.  It's as well to not get side-tracked on that critique; parts of the research must hold up to further review, and will benefit many people.

Commentary

That group focus on a narrow range helped shaped what I tried to communicate there, on aging as affecting appearance and some narrow ranges of health.  Without that group-location framing I'd tend to focus more on discussion of just improving health, in general.  I'm also in a biohacking group on Reddit, which I might comment in but never post to, which would be more concerned with supplements, especially experimental versions.  Some people there see fasting as a functional form of biohacking.

Since I don't know the cause and effect sequences of making a few lifestyle input changes it's all vague enough.  I think fasting made a lot of difference, but any positive changes could have related mainly to better diet and getting more exercise.  I'll run through some potential positive changes in more detail here.

Life and location change as a possible input:  three years ago my family moved our kids to Honolulu, Hawaii to go to school here instead of Bangkok, intending to relocate my work, which never worked out.  I've been back and forth since, spending most of my time still in Bangkok, and working remotely part of the time.  

It may be that living a more active life in Hawaii changes things, even though I've only been spending 3 months a year here, while they spend 9.  I swam a lot this spring (in March through the end of May); an input like that couldn't hurt.  "A lot" is relative; I was swimming about 500 meters about 3 days a week, in the open ocean, out to a flag and back in a swim lane.  My son trains for competitive swimming and his daily practices cover a lot more distance, every day versus my weekly total.

out for an early run around Diamondhead

I swim out to that flag, and see turtles there (tourist for scale)

Diamondhead from my daughter's former school

Genetic factors:  one input I see as relating to appearing younger is kind of a random thing:  I have oily skin.  If I don't shower twice a day I end up looking a bit greasy, while living in a warm or hot climate.  That may be relatively equivalent to people using a lot of moisturizer in a cooler and dryer place (which I don't use).  My sister also looks quite young, also in her 50s, and good genetics for aging gradually probably go well beyond that.

these guys are holding up well

Food preferences probably have a lot of effect, along with eating what might be considered a good diet.  The luck of the draw might factor in, related to the former.  Thai food is typically based on natural, whole foods, not involving that much processing, even though use of frying and addition of some sugar does come up. 

I drink an awful lot of tea; it's odd that I didn't mention that in passing in that post.  I've considered before that beyond some polyphenols potentially supporting health, or offsetting aging effects, just ingesting extra minerals every day might make a difference.  Tea plants collect and store minerals, in addition to some contaminants, so I may be keeping topped up on a range of minerals.  Who knows about effects beyond that; maybe it is unusually healthy.

I started drinking coffee again within the last 6 months.  I can't imagine that's having a lot of effect either way, especially since I never drink more than one large cup a day (maybe 10 to 12 ounces), but it's an example of how other inputs keep shifting.  I last meditated regularly nearly two years ago; that's another example of ongoing changes.

Supplements, including anti-aging supplements:  I mostly take a multivitamin, magnesium, and D when I'm not getting that much sun.  I was also taking fish oil for awhile, and replace some salt intake with a potassium chloride based salt product; that's about it.

I also eat some goji berries most days, which is said to contain zeaxanthin, one of two compounds that promote eye health (along with lutein).  My wife said that it would help with eye health and hair loss, but who knows about traditional Thai medical claims.  It seemed like a bit of extra vitamin A couldn't hurt; those are supposedly a good source of that.

There are a broad range of other supplement or drug compounds being developed and tested now, but I don't really investigate those much, never mind taking any.  I'm more ok with aging normally than being a test subject, even though I am concerned enough about health to put effort into all of it.

Recommendations, and justification for them

Exercise:  there's no need to justify endorsing exercise, right?  I can add that running just a little early in my practice, starting nearly 7 years ago, seemed to make a lot of difference, but my cardio conditioning only improved once I ramped up volume.  I run 20 miles / 30 km a week when I'm more active, and maybe two thirds of that when I'm inconsistent, with some extra multiple week periods "off" in the past year or so.  I was more consistent and diligent before moving back and forth to Hawaii made that difficult.  It's not about making the time, or jet-lag disruption, but instead valuing the time with my kids in a different way after we re-unite.

If I run consistently for about 6 weeks my conditioning will change a good bit right around that time, but if I run consistently for only a month it won't.  I'm not implying that your health would change a lot, if you could lean into it all for 2 to 3 months.  Maybe that's true, and probably race conditioning works like that, but I don't know what supports general health well enough, versus what will "drop time" on training paces.

Fasting:  I suspect that fasting makes a lot of difference, but I'm not completely sold on hearsay related to autophagy, the process of your body recycling mis-folded proteins or whatever other damaged material.  Supposedly this always occurs in your body, and helps offset varying long term health issues, but vigorous exercise triggers more of it, or fasting for around 48 hours or longer does.  But if you try to look up research papers linking that this does occur, and that it relates to specific health-related outcomes, it's not easy making the connections.  

Again this isn't a claim either way.  I suspect that I am slightly mentally clearer related to periodic extended fasting, but who knows.  You could observe what you expect to, to some extent.  I also feel like I have more energy when running, that maybe greater "metabolic flexibility" helps with that, training my body to also use fat as an energy source.  I don't mind at all when meals run late, or skipping one is fine; I'm a lot less constrained by habitual eating now.

Diet changes:  my diet was never bad enough for me to see change effects in the same way someone moving off a truly bad diet could.  I took up being a vegetarian over 30 years ago, and tried to eat a healthy, balanced diet based on essentially no actual meat input for that next 17 years.  I was the "lacto-ovo" type; I still ate dairy and eggs, thinking that it would help me avoid deficiencies.  Then I think the deficiencies did enter in, around 13 years ago now, and my immune system stopped working normally.  I had been fine for that first decade, living in the US, watching my diet and eating supplements to help, but after I moved to Thailand I ate meat-based dishes without the meat, and it wasn't the same.  More idle speculation, probably, but that was my take.

So I'm describing improving an already pretty decent diet over the last few years, already based on input of plenty of fruits and vegetables, and whole grains, along with good quality meats input.  I've not eaten much for junk food, processed snacks, and fast food for a long time, with the exception of eating a good bit of ice cream.  Moving back to the US did add some challenges, since it's easy to appreciate different kinds of snack foods, that weren't options back in Thailand.  Those tubs of chocolate chip cookie dough are nice; I may have noticed the input of eating that on my body weight and cholesterol score.

Summary perspective:  the implied claim here, in all of this, is that I feel like I'm really 30 or 40, and not 56, and I guess that sort of holds up.  My exercise recovery is a lot slower; it's all that I can do to recover from around 30 km of running a week (20 miles), which to me doesn't seem like that much.  I switched to 12 km runs here in Honolulu, with hill sections (running around Diamondhead), and I could keep that up indefinitely on an 8-day, 3 run cycle, but not quite 3 times a week.  With more conditioning I could've got there; I was trying to ramp up and maintain that within a 2 month or so cycle.  But it's hard to make changes to training volume or intensity at this age, and I've experienced very minor injuries before that highlight that those can only occur gradually.

I guess that I feel fine.  I keep busy and active, walking a lot, doing many other things, and never feel like it's too much.  I don't notice much for aches and pains, or digestive system changes, or whatever else.  I really did feel less clear in my early 40s, when I was still adjusting to a busy office-life experience, but adding running seems to have resolved some of that.

I wouldn't consider TRT / HRT because all of that seems fine to me.  I don't see anything wrong with others making that choice, but I don't experience any of the other symptoms it's supposed to correct for (low energy, mood issues, problems with exercise, body composition, or sexual function, etc.).

Recommendations:  I should close this by recommending truly low-hanging fruit, what I think would make the most difference the fastest.  It's diet change.  For people accustomed to drinking soda just dropping that out would make a lot of difference.  Drinking water should be fine, or tea or coffee as a healthy input, or tisanes, herb teas.  Maybe drinking enough water alone would make a difference, versus falling short daily, or just getting enough sleep.

Changing diet could relate to making small, periodic changes, like swapping out fast food for cooking healthy natural food versions, or chips for nuts, or maybe replacing processed deserts with fruit.  Fasting makes this easy, because it's easy to see each break and renewed eating cycle as a reset.  But there must be other ways to push the same effect, like making a few small changes at the start of every month.  I "only" fast about 20 days a year, so not a high proportion, and I've gained weight over the past two years, so using fasting to lose weight would require a more specific focus on that.

Listening to your body is important.  The amount of sleep that's enough would vary by person.  Poor diet inputs or unusually helpful inputs also would vary by person in relation to positive or negative impact.  Related to exercise more would be better up to a point, but at middle age injury is an early warning sign that you're progressing too fast, and that's no good.

Being open to life changes may make a difference.  Of course it would help if those are positive.  I went through a period of meditating a lot, the second I've experienced in my life, and that seemed to help.  Getting a new pet can change things in a positive way (although losing one can also be really rough).  Life connections and activities seem to make a lot of difference.

Having kids late seemed to help.  I've been playing in kids' play areas for years (14 or 15), going to water parks, ice skating (a lot; the kids took lessons), biking and hiking with them, and so on.  That decade off exercise involved a lot of activity.  Some of it is just mental, not seeing yourself as sedentary and inactive, but it seems important for that to connect to physical activity.  I don't think it needs to be all that strenuous; hanging out laundry or doing gardening could be enough, to maintain flexibility through varied movement.

my other babies; I miss them terribly, while I'm away for this month

Beyond all of this I think accepting long-term transitions like aging is helpful.  You can focus on health, and change that, and some "symptoms" might diminish.  But in general life is about change, and walking a changing path, so feeling negatively about that context could be unhelpful.  Leaning into whatever activity works for you could tie in with feeling positive about your capacity, and enjoying different activities.  We--as a family, essentially--took up pickleball this year; it's nice when those can involve some limited exercise.

more on this here, especially relevant to people in Honolulu

good experience of meaning can't hurt