What’s more depressing than the thought of a long, slow decline in health? The thought of several short, sharp declines. Thank you, science!
I don’t believe ageing is linear: I reckon we have long plateaux, then everything falls apart all at once. I realised this at the close of my harrowing 31st year, when I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognise the sad, grey ghost staring back. I swear one day I was young and moderately dewy with a functioning musculoskeletal system; the next my face imploded, shortly followed by my knee (yes, it was a fun year). There’s a phrase for this kind of sudden ageing in French: prendre un coup de vieux, which feels appropriate, since I was living in France during that first precipitous decline and prolonged exposure to the angry rigours of Parisian life was at least partly to blame.
Anyway, now science is catching up. Earlier this year, researchers identified two “peaks” for ageing at 44 and 60, and now a new paper points to three peaks in brain ageing. At 58, there are changes in proteins associated with wound healing, metabolism and mental health; at 70, it’s age-related brain conditions; and when we hit 78, immunity and inflammation-associated proteins are affected.