Before your twenty-sixth birthday, your life basically consists of parties and living in the moment After your twenty-sixth birthday, your life consists of friends getting married, taxes, and checking your hair every day to make sure there is no balding to be worried about yet. Your body constantly goes through several changes and has so your entire life, but you could be going through an entire metamorphosis, and you’re not even aware of it.
Acne
Maybe you went through your entire teenage years without a pimple to worry about, but now you may start getting out of bed with one blemish too many. Or worse, you spent your entire adolescence combatting blemishes and zits and had convinced yourself you won the war, but now you’re starting to wake up with the same skin you had when you were sixteen. This alone can cause plenty of stress, but what several don’t know is that acne in your late twenties is a pretty common thing that several people battle with.
As we age, we tend to get more stressed, and stress is known to lead to skin problems. Have you recently started smoking, or do you frequently smoke cigarettes? This can also be the reason for your breakouts. You may also want to start looking at your eating habits, too much starch and carbs can mean an increase in skin problems.
The impacts on your mind
Even though you’ll start to notice some negative impacts on your skin, there will be several more positive impacts on your brain. Around this age, your body will start to produce testosterone like never before. Testosterone assists the brain in two ways; resiliency and plasticity. Resiliency is very easy to explain, it’s simply how strong your brain is. Plasticity is especially important when it comes to problem-solving, as well as long-term and short-term memory.
Your brain consists of and white matter gray matter. The white matter is the connections between the cells and the gray matter is the living cells in your brain. At around this age, both the gray and white matter start to reach maturity. This means your brain is collecting information faster than ever in your life. Your concentration and language skills will not improve nor decline, but your capability to moderate emotions, make decisions, and reason will be faster than ever before.
Unfortunately, some of these cognitive abilities will start to decline not long after they peak, and they will continue to decline until old age. After your peak, your brain will go through several changes that can slow down your thinking. Your brain will begin losing its volume, its cortex will start to become thinner, the myelin sheath which surrounds the fibers of your neurons will start to break down, and your brain receptors will start to slow down. Your memory might start to slip, which means your ability to learn new things and memorization skills will start declining. However, it’s very unlikely you’ll be affected by these things right away, and these signs won’t majorly affect your life until several decades into the future.
The impacts on your body
It’s no secret that age will start to affect your body. After your 20’s, your heart will become less skilled at accelerating in response to physical and mental efforts. This causes an increase in heart problems. Later in the years, your body’s ability to deliver oxygen will start to decline. This means physical work, such as carrying large and heavy objects or playing active sports for long periods of time, will start to become more and more difficult. By age 50, there will be a noticeable loss of night vision, as well as close-in focus.
If exercise and stretching are ignored, your muscles will start to become smaller and weaker. However, this can be prevented and delayed simply by integrating a good and healthy amount of exercise into your daily routine. Bone loss is a universal aging trait and will start to occur at individual rates. Your chest wall will start to stiffen, meaning your respiratory muscles will be forced to work harder. After each breath, there will gradually be more residual air left in each of your lungs. Your eardrums will start to thicken, as well as the ear canal atrophies. This means it will be harder to hear pure tones and high frequencies.
The impacts on your face
You may notice your face changing once you start to age as well. As the years pass, your facial bones will start to lose volume. Once you start aging, your eye sockets will gradually begin to enlarge. This causes what we call ‘crow’s feet’ in the corners of our eyes and hanging lower eyelids. The angle of the bones between our eyebrows will start to decrease. This will contribute to the frown lines on our foreheads.
Researchers have also found a reduction in the middle parts of our face, such as our nose and upper jaw bone. The height and length of the lower jaw will start to decrease as well. Most of these changes will start to become noticeable between middle and old age.
Even though near all of these things seem very scary, there are multiple ways to help stall these effects. You can help prevent several physical effects simply by exercising a moderate amount every week. Stretching is also something that is extremely important, but very overlooked. Stretching will help keep your muscles healthy and will make muscle increase become quicker and easier. You should always stretch before and after a workout, as well as in the morning and before going to bed. Wearing sunscreen and frequently applying lotion will assist in delaying wrinkles. Creating a skin care routine will help fight back acne breakouts and blemishes. Reading books, writing, and doing activities such as jigsaw puzzles and sudoku will help maintain your cognitive functions. A healthy diet is always important no matter what age you are, and you should try your best to continue eating healthy foods and drinks.
The aging process is very scary, and it’s reasonable to be unnerved by its debilitating effects. However, with age comes experience, and with experience comes wisdom. Starting the aging process simply means you have experienced life at its most, and that should be something worth celebrating.
