At what age do you feel like you were the most attractive?
- I actively work against the notion that we should be slowing down or that physical activity should be lessened, in spite of the rhetoric from job, life circumstances, etc. I purposely try to push myself physically, and it has paid off so far, at 47.
- This Is huge. Take care of yourself, keep in good shape, get a decent haircut and have a bit of style and you will look better than 98% of the dudes our age.
- I feel most attractive now at 48, but I recall getting more female attention in my teens. Like female friends would fall for me. But I just see an awkward teenager in photos. I dont' think I was that attractive. /shrug
- 50. I am rocking the shit out of middle age.
- I’m 47, but yeah, this is the best I’ve ever looked
- Same here, been obese ever since elementary school so I aint really ever hit what you call attractive, but at least now I look better than I did in high school
- Same here. Shortly after high school I started getting attention. My early 30's have been flattering though.
- Same. My 30s have been great to me. A nerdy kid in high school with zits and a head too big for my body. These days I'm constantly told I could be twins with Ryan Reynolds to the point of people actually asking to take pictures with me on occasion when I used to really lean into it with beard and hair style.
- I'm getting more attention now in my late 20s than I did in my teens or early 20s, and if everything I've read about women having their sex drives peak in their 30s women giving less of a shit about how they're perceived for approaching turns out to be true then I don't see it slowing down.
- Yeah, I find if you keep yourself fit, well groomed and dress well you get a lot more attention in your late 40’s because you are rarer. Most young men are relatively fit and healthy. Most middle aged men are comfortable and happy to have a bit of a gut . Women are physiologically attracted to men who have lasted the test of time and look fit and healthy at a stage where most don’t as it indicates good genes, discipline, taking care in yourself.
- I think many women look great into their forties, the problem is most don’t take care of themselves (same with men) so they get overweight.
- Thanks for that. We hear over and over again about how we’re downhill after 25 and the wall is 30 (and I am very post-wall) Honestly it’s been wearing me down recently—I feel like so much of my worth to other people is tied up in how I look or present myself, and how I look is pretty fucking busted (I never was a looker)
- I’m in my early 40’s and most of my gf’s are the same age… 30 is not at all the wall. Lots of us are still looking great - healthy living, keeping in shape and dressing well all make a huge difference.
BEYOND THE AGE OF 30! - What happens to your Health Between Age 30 - 80?
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger was not far wrong about the inevitability of death when he wrote: “As soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die.”The Physical State Of Our Bodies
The physical state of our bodies over time from bones, muscles and hearts to brains and immune systems - depends on everything from genetics to the type of environment in which we have chosen to live out our lives. Access to medication is also important, and even a person’s level of education has been found to influence life span. But age is its own risk factor for death. There’s little doubt that getting old is the biggest single risk factor in contracting life-shortening diseases, from dementia to cancer.Beyond the age of 30, the human body begins a process of streamlining. This might fly counter to many people’s individual experiences of getting older (how many people in their mid-thirties can say they have the same figure as a decade earlier?), but the facts are clear: between 30 and 80, a person will lose 40 percent of their muscle mass, and the fibers left behind are somewhat weaker than their youthful versions. It is a similar story with our bones.
The strength and mass of the skeleton will rise until the early 30s, after which men lose around 1 percent of their bone mass every decade. This figure is the same for women but, around the menopause, their bone loss speeds up to around 1 percent per year. This alarming bone loss does slow down again to the same rate as men after a few years but the effects are chilling: in five years, a post-menopausal woman’s skeleton can age by 50 years compared to a man’s of a similar age.
Weaker bones are more likely to break. Weaker muscles mean an inability to react appropriately to prevent a fall or jump out of the way of a moving car or bike. Both can have devastating effects because, as the body grows older, it takes ever longer and more effort to effect the necessary repairs.
Cancer affects all age groups but the absolute rate of death goes up with age. The most common cancers in this age group are lung, prostate, breast and colorectal cancers.
And let’s not forget the brain. After the age of 40, this organ decreases in volume and weight by 5 percent every decade. Some people are relatively unaffected by this change, while others might become more forgetful over time and develop neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. If the genetics and environment conspire, a person could end up with conditions such as Parkinson’s or Huntingdon’s disease.
Body cells
Body cells are dividing all the time. This is obvious when babies turn into children and children grow into adults. But an adult’s body cells also refresh themselves on a regular basis, partly to replace the cells that die because of the damage they undergo as we go about our daily lives. One of the most damaging things for a body cell is something that it creates itself: a free radical. This is a highly reactive molecule, a by-product of the metabolic reactions carried out inside cells that turn food into usable energy. Free radicals tear through the body, damaging anything they come into contact with - from the proteins that make up the structures and enzymes, to the fats that surround cells, and even the DNA inside the nucleus. Damage to proteins can cause different symptoms depending on where the free radicals strike. In the kidney they can lead to renal failure, they can cause stiffness in blood vessel walls, while DNA damage results in a cell not being able to produce the proteins it needs to work properly.As cells carry out their functions, whether they make up the blood, liver, skin or muscle, they will eventually pick up damage from free radicals, poisons or for other physical reasons, and become less efficient at what they do. Many will die. New cells with new machinery are always required to make up for the unhealthy or dying cells. In a process called mitosis, a healthy body cell will split into two over a period of days, each cell an exact copy of the original, now able to do double the work of the original.
But cell divisions also have their problems. Cells that have divided many times will accumulate mutations in their DNA, since no copying process in such a complex molecule can ever be perfect. Most mutations have no effect on the function of a cell but, every so often, DNA damage can lead to uncontrolled cell division and cancer. Cells therefore have several inbuilt limits to how many times they can divide. One mechanism, called apoptosis, is activated when a cell is too damaged to repair for whatever reason. This programmed cell suicide means that it is removed from the body before it can do any further harm.
Life is a drag on the body. All those years of eating poisons, fighting illness, getting stressed, breaking bones, sunbathing, refusing to eat vegetables and countless other things that build into a typical life, all take their individual toll on the body. Human cells of all types are remarkable at fixing themselves on a minute-by-minute basis. Whenever there is danger, an array of internal machinery leaps into action, ready to destroy invaders, knit bones together, plug breaks in the skin or repair the DNA inside the cell nucleus.
But our already overworked cells cannot possibly fix everything. One biological definition of death is simply the final result of this never-ending attrition: as something grows older, it accrues more faults and its repair machinery simply cannot fix them all. Perhaps some damage to a piece of DNA leads to a fatal cancer. Or perhaps a perfect storm of smaller faults, each manageable or innocuous on its own, combine to make the body susceptible to a pathogen at a particular moment. If the protective parts of the body cannot work together fast enough, death is inevitable.
The mechanism that prevents cells accumulating too many dangerous mutations in its DNA involves the cap on the end of the chromosomes inside cells, called a telomere. Every time a cell divides, the DNA is copied but the telomeres, which are glued to resulting chromosomes a bit like the caps on shoelaces, get shorter. When the cap is too short, the cell can no longer divide. This successive shortening implies a limit to the number of times a cell can divide and, perhaps, an upper limit to the age of a cell. If, after its assigned number of divisions, a body cell cannot divide and replace itself in the event of damage, it will eventually die or continue to work well below its best.
Reversing the inevitable
Death might be inevitable but the path need not be quick nor painful, however many blocks life might throw our way. Modern medicine has already done a remarkable job of extending our life spans, and the benefits keep coming: by this time tomorrow, your life span will have increased by almost five hours. At the turn of the 20th century, anyone reaching the age of 60 was considered to be near death’s door. A hundred years later, they are barely old enough for retirement.In addition to the scores of treatments already available for diseases such as cancer, hypertension and diabetes, scientists are also working on a range of drugs to deal with the stuff that wastes away. There are already medicines that can prevent muscles and bones wasting away so quickly, and research teams are working on ways to stimulate safely the growth of these vital parts of the body so that older