If you’re in your 30s, longevity may be low on your priority list. Chances are, your brain space is filled with more immediate concerns, like growing your career or family, or both. You’re also young enough not to get wrapped up in your own mortality.
“You still have a lot of innate resilience,” Eve Henry, MD, internist and chief medical officer at integrated health platform Hundred Health, tells SELF. But even if your daily habits don’t seem to have much sway over how you feel now, they can seriously influence how you age in the future, she says, for better or worse.
That’s because aging happens gradually, as does the development of chronic diseases. Consider the buildup of plaque inside arteries that can amass for decades before it manifests as heart disease (the top killer of women in the US) or stroke. Alzheimer’s disease, which affects twice as many women as men in this country, is also a slow burn. It’s the reason doctors have stressed focusing on health at a young age since well before longevity got buzzy.
And your 30s is an especially apt time to develop healthy habits. After age 30, people lose, on average, 3% to 5% of their muscle mass each decade, which is an especially risky trajectory for women, Rachele Pojednic, PhD, EdM, FACSM, a nutrition and exercise researcher, and director of education at Stanford Lifestyle Medicine, tells SELF. Weak muscles put less load on bones, which hinders bone maintenance and decreases bone density, she explains. That’s a fast track to osteoporosis—and women are at baseline higher risk than men, just by having less bone mass to start with, and because of the drop in estrogen that occurs with menopause.
It’s better to “build a big stockpile of biological resilience” while you’re at peak bone density and your hormones are still largely intact in your 30s “versus trying to play catch-up forever,” Vonda Wright, MD, an orthopedic surgeon, longevity researcher, and author of Unbreakable: A Woman’s Guide to Aging with Power, tells SELF. Below, experts share the behaviors to invest in during your 30s for the biggest return down the line.
1. Pick up a form of strength training you don’t dread.
For women, in particular, consistent muscle-pumping is key to avoiding the downward spiral of weak muscles, brittle bones, and falls that happens all too often with age. Dr. Wright points out that 70% of people who have a hip fracture are women, and half of people who break their hip never return to their home after seeking treatment; 22% of hip-breakers die within the year, generally from complications of being immobilized in the hospital, like pneumonia.
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