Looking through some of my web stats recently, I discovered that one of the most viewed of all my blogs over the past couple of years was a piece I wrote 3 years ago. It’s called, ‘Why Time Speeds Up As You Age’.
It gets around 500 – 1,000 organic views every month, so it seems to be a subject that a lot of people find interesting.
It’s prompted me to add a little more to the subject of ageing and suggest four surprising ways to slow it down – surprising in the sense that these are not the usual things we tend to associate with slowing ageing, like eating well and getting exercise.
And one of these really took me by surprise when I first came across the research.
So here they are, beginning with the main essence of the previous blog on why time speeds up as we age.
1) Keep things fresh
Everything is new when we’re children. By the time we’re adults, newness fades as we’ve come to repeat the same things hundreds of times.
Whether it’s brushing our teeth, driving a car, the route we take the work, what we cook. Newness begins to fade with each repeat.
And that’s why time seem to speed up as we age. We experience fewer new things.
The experience of time is linked to newness, or novelty. The brain richly encodes new experiences – every detail, every sight, sound, smell, taste, sensation.
Not so with repeated experiences – those we’ve done a hundred times or more. The brain encodes these lightly, like a faint trace.
It’s an energy saver.
The consequence is that we get a sense that time ‘skips’ and we lose chunks in between – like we can barely remember our commute to work, let alone what we did yesterday, last week, or last month.
The main sense of the speed of the passage of time boils down to how richly experiences are being encoded.
Some people point to the fact that as we age, a year becomes a smaller fraction of life lived to that point. For example, a year to a 50-year-old is 2% of their life, but a year to a 5-year-old is 20% of their life. As we age, this percentage gets smaller and time therefore seems to run faster.
But this is the ‘observed effect’. The main reason for it is the fact that the brain encodes repeated experiences more lightly.
And herein is where the antidote lies: keep things fresh. Do new things.
Adjust your commute to work. Walk a different route or walk a favourite route in the reverse direction. Try new recipes. Learn a new language. Take up a sport or dancing. Go to a class and learn something new. Ride a bike… or a skateboard. Just keep it fresh as much as you can.
2) Practice kindness
This might seem counterintuitive, but kind behaviour has anti-ageing effects. It comes down to the fact that experiences of kindness create physiological conditions in the body that are opposite to those produced by stress.
And stress speeds up ageing.
One of the key players in ageing is inflammation. So much so, that researchers even have a name for it: inflammageing.
And stress increases inflammation. Does kindness reduce it then?
In a randomised controlled trial, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took blood samples from people asked to do 3 acts of kindness per week for a month.
They compared samples taken at the start of the month and one week after the end and the results were astonishing.
Kindness to others had impacted the genetic activity of immune cells in the bloodstream in a way that reduced inflammation. It also bolstered natural antiviral activity.
This was compared with people who did acts of kindness for themselves or who just noted 3 events per week, for comparison.
Kind behaviour towards others slows inflammageing.
3) Enjoy the cold
For small amounts of time!
The Information Theory of Ageing, put forward by David Sinclair, a Harvard professor who specialises in understanding how and why we age, suggests ageing is related to a loss of access to genetic information.
Not the information itself, but access to it.
He uses an analogy of a DVD (for those readers who remember DVD players). Over time, it picks up micro scratches through been loaded and unloaded from the player hundreds of times.
Picture quality becomes impaired, not because information on the DVD has been lost, but because the micro scratches impair access to it.
According to the Information Theory of Ageing, as we age, all our genetic information is still on our DNA, but access to it becomes impaired.
Enter sirtuins.
These are enzymes that act like tiny cleaners that clean and repair the environment in our cells around DNA. The analogy would be cleaning a DVD every time you use it. It would deter scratches and prolong its life.
As sirtuins clean the environment, genetic information becomes more accessible, and ageing slows.
How do we boost our sirtuins then?
One way is exposure to cold temperatures. Not all the time, but for short busts. Like walking ten minutes in the cold without a coat, or ending a shower with 30 seconds of cold water. Or even dipping in an ice-water bath. Short bursts.
It signals a stress to the body that mobilises substances like sirtuins that contribute to repair and cleaning. And this includes improving access to genetic information that keep us young.
4) Moisturise your skin
Moisturising your skin might seem like it has nothing to do with ageing, but growing evidence is painting a different picture.
As I wrote above, one of the major factors in ageing is inflammation.
We know that inflammation plays a role in ageing of the skin, but growing evidence now suggests that it’s a two-way street.
Inflammation in the body contributes to ageing of skin, but ageing of skin contributes to inflammation in the body. And in the brain.
Scientists have begun to wonder: could protecting the skin with something as simple as daily moisturising reduce inflammation and have anti-ageing effects throughout the body and even in the brain?
In 2022, researchers in China studied 200 people over the age of 65, half of whom were asked to apply moisturising cream twice a day between November and May – the colder months – for 3 years.
Those who didn’t apply the cream had increasing water loss through their skin over the 3-year period and experienced cognitive decline at levels that would be expected for that age group.
But in those who applied the moisturising cream, it was a very different picture.
Their skin hydration increased significantly, and they didn’t experience that level of cognitive decline.
The daily application of moisturiser had presumably reduced inflammation, not only in the body, but also in the brain.
And it had slowed cognitive decline.
So that’s four surprising ways to slow ageing, over and above the normal ways we tend to think of slowing ageing – like diet, exercise, and even attitude.
What I particularly like about these is that that they’re science-backed and easy to do.
And for that little investment in time and energy, the gains to our health may be significant.
References
How rich experiences slow our experience of time. Link.
Kindness to others impacts genetic activity of immune cells in the bloodstream. Link.
David Sinclair’s book, LifeSpan. Link.
Study on daily moisturising and cognitive impairment. Link.
Paper on the skin and inflammageing. Link.
More
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