Getting up from the ground without hands, brushing your teeth on one leg… These challenges promise to reveal whether you are aging well. Behind these scenes shared on a loop, a question comes up: what are the real signs, validated by experts, that your body and your mind are holding up?
Aging specialists point out that “aging well” is not just about wrinkles or the number of candles. It’s about increasing your health expectancy: those years when you remain autonomous, mobile, lucid and connected to others. In other words, your biological age sometimes counts more than your age on the identity card.
Physical signs that you are aging well
Big key, your walking speed. A famous study showed that people who walk faster than 1.32 meters per second have a lower mortality risk, to the point of being described as “too fast for the Reaper to catch you”, explain the authors cited by ScienceAlert. Below 0.8 meters per second, researchers speak of sarcopenia, age-related loss of muscles and strength.
On a daily basis, walking briskly, climbing stairs, getting up from a chair without using your arms are signs that you are aging well. Your doctor may time it for you to sit down and then stand up five times. Balancing on one leg also gives clues, although this test varies from day to day and improves quickly with practice.
Aging well psychologically
Aging in good health also means maintaining an adaptable brain. Specialists talk about cognitive flexibility: the ability to move from one task to another and manage competing information. At home, this can be tested with a homemade trail making test (connect 1, A, 2, B, etc.), a Stroop task (say the color of the word, not the word) or by walking while counting down from 100 in threes.
Tests don’t tell everything. For an aging expert, the central indicator remains your feelings: do you still feel engaged, generally happy, connected to others. While around 14% of those over 70 live with a mental disorder, many seniors maintain stable morale.
The Scale of Positive and Negative Experiencea 12-question questionnaire, measures how often you feel joy, calm, but also sadness or frustration.
Putting the signs that you’re aging well into perspective
For researchers, physical health, cognition, emotions and social connections combine. Certain programs such as ICOPE, based on recommendations from the World Health Organization, seek to detect early on weaknesses in memory, mobility, nutrition or morale to preserve autonomy.
To situate yourself, you can, once a year, ask yourself if your body, your mind, your mood and your relationships are feeling better, the same or worse. If you walk briskly, stay curious, have some strong connections, and still find meaning in your days, many experts already see these as real signs that you’re aging well.