Everyone will eventually age. Furthermore, the majority of the effects of aging are related to how our bodies function. But in addition to the more noticeable signs of aging, such as white hair on your head and less elastic skin, there are other, less common symptoms that appear as we age.
In all honesty, some of them sound much more intriguing than how our bodies functioned when we were younger. (To be honest, I’m kind of looking forward to how my taste buds will develop as I get older. These physical changes that occur as you age aren’t discussed very much, but they’re still pretty cool.
The pressure placed on women by a misogynist society is undoubtedly a large part of what we think of when it comes to how our bodies change as we age, but that doesn’t have to be the case. While beautiful, wrinkles, gray hair, and other “hallmark” aging symptoms have little to no impact on how your body functions in its most fundamental ways. For unknown reasons, your body’s sleep patterns and reaction to allergies may change as you age. Here are seven unforeseen ways that getting older may cause your body to change.
Your body’s hair changes.
Naturally, developing a few gray hairs in your twenties and thirties is completely normal. However, few people are aware that as you age, the pigment in your body’s hair will begin to disappear. Since the follicle no longer supplies melanin to the hair, the natural tint of the hair gradually disappears, leaving only the clear hair fiber.
The Brittleness of Your Nails increases.
Older people frequently have nails that are either much thicker or much thinner than they did in their youth. This may be something your parents or grandparents have experienced, and it’s especially prevalent in menopausal women because fluctuating hormone levels can have an impact on nail health. However, it can also appear much earlier; nail thinning frequently happens during and after pregnancy for the same hormonal reasons.
Sleeping Patterns Alter.
If you’ve recently established a sleep schedule that enables you to exercise, engage in sexual activity, watch three episodes of Game of Thrones, and still wake up feeling rested, be ready: it’s about to change. The idea that people need less sleep as they get older is untrue. According to the National Sleep Foundation, as we get older, falling asleep takes longer, we don’t get as much REM (rapid eye movement) deep sleep, and we wake up more often at night. We also start to change our sleep patterns as we age; we become more prone to waking up at the crack of dawn, not because we’ve developed a morning habit, but because we are sleepier in the early evening.
Your Allergies Change.
Our immune systems and allergies change as we get older, just as they do when we’re young. According to recent research, aging populations are increasingly displaying symptoms of new allergies and intolerances. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that as we get older, our immune systems change and we become less able to tell the difference between real threats and harmless pollen. Additionally, our physical barriers could be compromised, causing allergies that we had been “hiding” all our lives to suddenly manifest. Furthermore, allergies seem to be affecting people of all ages, not just older ones, as a result of increased pollution in our time, particularly in the air and environment. That may also indicate that as this generation ages, allergies typically associated with older age may start to manifest themselves earlier and earlier.
It shifts how you stand.
Your posture is probably going to change once you’ve passed menopause. As you age, the cartilage between your spine’s bones and the bones themselves move, changing how your spine curves and how tall you are. Your spine’s intervertebral discs gradually harden and thicken, shortening your spine and tilting your posture forward. For this reason, even when working at your desk chair in your 30s, you should always be careful to sit up straight.
Your feet start to sag.
Since childhood, our feet have carried a lot of fat and cushioning, which gradually dries out as we age. Adipose tissue serves as the cushioning, which prevents us from feeling the impact of our bones striking hard surfaces when we walk. (This is also why padding is so beneficial when wearing stilettos all day. It helps us survive wearing high heels. ) As we age, however, the tissue becomes less protective, so we’re more likely to experience sore feet after being on our feet all day.
Your preferences are unique.
There’s a reason why nothing tastes quite the same as it did when you were a child. Because the taste buds, which are tiny nerve centers on the tongue, age along with the rest of the body, your preferences and your ability to interpret taste signals will change as well. Age causes the regeneration of taste buds to occur much more slowly, which results in some tastes becoming “dull,” especially if your sense of smell also begins to wane slightly, which is common after the age of 70. Age-related factors, such as decreased saliva flow, have an impact on how you taste things and what you like. Many elderly people report a preference for sweet foods because they deliver a quick, intense flavor hit, while others prefer strong spices or intense savory flavors.
It turns out that aging, the one biological process that is unavoidable for humans, has more effects than you may have thought. Society would view aging as more of a peculiar adventure if it didn’t focus so much on eye bags.
