The advice for keeping your heart healthy doesn't change much. "I find myself being redundant throughout the day," says Dr. Fred Feuerbach, attending cardiologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and cardiology consultant at the Hospital for Special Surgery. "I tell every single patient who comes into the office, whether they're 30 or 80, that they have to do a lot of aerobic exercise, lose weight even if they're just a little overweight, and not smoke. That is the foundation of a healthy cardiovascular approach regardless of the decade you're in.
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That said, more heart problems occur in one's 50s than in one's 20s. But those are often the result of either cumulative effects (20 years of smoking or not eating right) or genetics, says Feuerbach. And some of it is simple aging. "As people get older, blood pressure creeps up. The likelihood for coronary-artery disease increases with age. There is plaque buildup in the body — and that's what we're talking about when we talk about coronary-artery disease: the pipes being blocked up with plaques, this sludge that forms. Even teenagers have some plaque. We like to think that with exercise, cholesterol lowering, and smoking cessation we can stop that plaque buildup and even cause the plaque to recede. That's the holy grail."
"This is the power era for your brain," says Dr. Galvin of the Comprehensive Center on Brain Aging. In your 50s, your brain is in its prime. Why? Because you've lived. You have memories. Your brain has reference points for just about everything it encounters, which means it can adapt, absorb new information, and integrate prior experiences. Its processing speed slows a bit, but memory and experience compensate for that. "At the same time as that slowing of our mental activities, we continue to gain information, skills, and wisdom," says Caleb Finch, professor of gerontology and biological science at USC Davis. "People aged 30 can often give faster responses than people aged 50 or 60, but there are very few people aged 30 who have the experience and judgment to achieve high levels of competence. That's why top management positions are usually occupied by people who are 40, 50, 60. That's the trade-off. We can't handle as much information at the same time. Our multitasking ability declines. But on the other hand, we have more years under our belt and are able to make better judgments."
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Try not to be obese or have diabetes or hypertension.
It's time to start challenging your brain. You've developed a lot of life experience, but there's a lot you haven't done. Learn to surf, if that's of any interest. Play Scrabble on your phone. It might seem trivial, but exercising your brain makes it stronger.
Another trick: Teach. When you teach someone, say, how to work out some chords on a guitar or build a fire or change an air filter, you're giving your brain twice the workout: You're asking it not only to remember how to perform the task, but on top of that it has to figure out how to translate the knowledge.
"The penis is the dipstick of the body's health," says Fisch. "It's a telltale. If you have trouble with erections, then it indicates a problem with your health. For example, if you have erectile dysfunction, that could be a precursor to heart disease. Men who have high cholesterol are more likely to have erectile dysfunction. It's interconnected."
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Fisch recommends knowing these five numbers at all times, and especially once you turn 50:
- Blood pressure
- Glucose level
- Cholesterol level
- Testosterone
Prostate-specific antigen (PSA). This is a test for prostate cancer, and you need it when your prostate turns 50. It tests for a variety of prostate problems, including infection or enlargement. "The prostate will grow as you get older, yes. However, if you're getting up to urinate at night, or you have burning, or hesitancy — it takes a while for it to come out — or at the end you have terminal dribble — you finish urinating and it keeps dribbling out a few extra drops — that could be a sign of a prostate problem," says Fisch.
Even though your testosterone is decreasing, and even though this makes your libido droop a bit, the difference should not be noticeable. You should not be less interested in sex or less able to have it. It could be that something else is getting in the way of testosterone production. "You're overweight, you're not getting seven to nine hours of sleep a night. Testosterone is made while you sleep," says Fisch. Chronic-pain medication can also lower testosterone.
Every doctor in the world recommends getting a colonoscopy at 50. And then every five to ten years from there on out.
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A high-fiber diet isn't, like, a good idea. You just have to do it. "We know from studies dating back decades that a high-fat, low-fiber diet can predispose to disease," says Dr. Steven Wexner, chair of colorectal surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. Good news is it's not like fibrous foods aren't delicious. Raspberries, skin-on pears and apples, oatmeal, lentils, and split peas — all are tasty, all help mitigate against fissures and hemorrhoids.
Some doctors recommend taking aspirin to help prevent or reduce colon polyps, but there is not a consensus on this and there are potential side effects, according to Wexner.
Skin cancer becomes more common as you age. Your skin will also start to lose elasticity — it hangs. This sometimes results in jowls and neck folds. This happens because you are in your 50s.
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Sun spots, liver spots, age spots — all the same thing. (And they have nothing to do with your liver.) If you don't like them, ask a dermatologist about getting a simple laser treatment.
Of all the acronyms about how to best maintain the human musculoskeletal system in your 50s, this one from Dr. Vonda Wright is the most useful: FACE.
Flexibility: "Over time, our muscles and tendons get tighter. So you have to stretch. If you don't stretch them back out to a functional length so that your knees fully extend and bend, or your hips can flex, or your shoulders can raise your arms above your head, you'll turn into a shuffling old man."
Aerobics: "If we continue to challenge our cardiovascular system, it does not decline the way it does if we're sitting around. Challenging it translates into less heart disease, better brains, better metabolism, less metabolic syndrome. Do lots of aerobic exercise: Make it burn, then let it rest."
Carry a load: "That's how I describe functional lifting. One of my pet peeves is how the quad machines at the gym just have you sitting there pushing a sled. When you use your quads every day, you squat down, you go down the stairs, you go up the stairs. Functional resistance" — like running stairs for your quads — "is the best way to exercise muscles."
Equilibrium: "We start losing our ability to balance in our 30s, so every day a 50-year-old needs to stand on one leg and rejuvenate his ability to balance, because if you don't do that, in your 60s you'll fall down and break a hip and then you die."
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