Eight easy mid-life habits that can improve energy, memory and metabolism

Mid-life: it doesn’t have a great reputation. While everyone from influencers to celebrities may wax lyrical about the joys of getting older, for many, it can be one of life’s most testing periods. At this age, many people are tackling the dual burden of caring for children and ageing parents, while juggling work, money woes and, if you’re a woman, the menopause. And that’s not conjecture – research reinforces this. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, a longitudinal study running for 85 years, finds that life satisfaction often dips in mid-life. But it’s not all bad. Clinical research by leading clinician-scientist Dr Florence Comite, founder of the first women-only clinic in the US and a leading expert in healthy longevity, has found that mid-life can be a time for renewal and celebration. In her new book Invincible: Defy Your Genetic Destiny to Live Better, Longer, she shows that unhealthy ageing is not inevitable and that energy, health and vitality can be happy bedfellows to mid-life. Here, Dr Comite shares eight tips for boosting energy, metabolism and memory during mid-life. Shorts Get a good night’s sleep (Photo: Maskot/Getty) Quantity and quality sleep You hear about the first part a lot, but quality is just as important. At least an hour of deep sleep within six to eight hours doesn’t just restore your body, it actually washes the brain of metabolic waste. That keeps your brain young and your memory sharp. You can take your first small steps toward this tonight: move your bedtime earlier by just 15 minutes earlier and continue on that track. Stop eating (and drinking alcohol) an hour or two before bedtime. Digestion will undermine the brain-cleansing, disrupt your metabolism and the hormones vital for quality sleep. You want to sleep like a bat in your cool, dark cave. Turn the thermostat down to 18°C and turn out the lights. Also, bats don’t have TVs or scroll through social media before bed. Wear a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) This is a small device that you place on your upper arm for two weeks that tracks how sugar interacts with your body. This is important for two reasons: the first is that everyone is different. I have an identical twin, and even the way we express our (identical) genes makes us very different. The second is that every ageing disorder is caused by how sugar interacts with your body. A CGM will give you a picture of what goes on with your body and sugar on a moment-by-moment basis. It’s fascinating: when I first started wearing one, I discovered that stress could affect my blood sugar levels as much as food. If I meditated, it would actually drop my blood sugar back into the optimal zone. You learn so much about yourself in two weeks. You’ll learn, for instance, how to manage that afternoon energy slump by seeing what spikes and then crashes your blood sugar, and how to avoid it. Try a handful of walnuts (Photo: SimpleImages/Getty) It’s not just what you eat, but the order you eat it in This is the best nutrition tip you are ever going to get: You may not have to stop eating something that spikes your blood sugar – just try eating it in a different order. Try eating, for instance, the protein on your plate first. Try eating a handful of nuts – in particular walnuts with all those awesome omega-3s – before you have a glass of wine in the evening, or the chicken on your plate before the pasta. Just eating the proteins before the carbs could make all the difference in how your body metabolises the food – not just for stabilising your energy, but for your weight. I have patients who have worn a CGM for two weeks and made small changes like this – and nothing else – and lost 20 pounds. Get greedy for muscle Adults start to lose three to eight per cent of muscle mass every decade after the age of 30 – and it increases every decade after that. If you aren’t proactively building muscle, you will lose six pounds of muscle each decade. That is a problem because muscle is the real fountain of youth. Muscle absorbs sugar like a sponge, helping to regulate your glucose levels, lower blood pressure and metabolise fat, even when you are resting. Strength training even protects sub-regions of the brain’s hippocampus that are responsible for learning and memory from degradation. Muscle is as efficient as sleep for reversing your biological age. You don’t need to become a bodybuilder. Start carrying weights when you walk. Do fireman’s lifts with your kids. Do resistance training twice a week. Testosterone is needed for everyone (Photo: MoMo Production/Getty) Measure your testosterone (yes – even women) At the Comite Centre for Precision Medicine & Healthy Longevity, we track hundreds of biomarkers. But I wanted to make this book easy and approachable for everyone, so I boiled it down to just five essential ones: fasting glucose, haemoglobin A1c (average blood sugar level), fasting insulin, cholesterol risk ratio and free testosterone. The first three of those are related to sugar, which is important for reasons I have already explained. Free testosterone is generally the one that surprises people. Here’s why it matters so much. Besides improving muscle – the organ of longevity – testosterone improves brain and heart health, boosts libido, sexual function, mood, bone density, memory and cognition. Testosterone declines in both men and women beginning in their thirties. It declines even earlier in women on birth control pills – as early as in their teens. A lack of testosterone is one reason men and women in perfect shape, working so hard to do everything “right”, will still put on three to five pounds around their midriff, and women especially will lose muscle tone around their triceps. This is not inevitable. Understanding your hormones Ageing without understanding your hormones is like driving down the motorway blindfolded. They are critical to maintaining your health as you age. They control your metabolism, growth, sleep cycles, mood, stress responses and more. Like muscle mass – and 18-year-olds – hormones leaving you as you get older is a natural fact of ageing. (OK, 30 per cent of Gen Z adults still live with their parents. But hormones and muscle mass still decline naturally.) I recommend using bioidentical hormones (like creams, patches, pellets and pills) to optimise your levels, but it has to be tailored to each one of us. One size does not fit all. Unfortunately, many women and their doctors still do not recommend hormone therapy because of unwarranted fears from the Women’s Health Initiative studies in the US, more than 25 years ago, despite the fact that the research was flawed. Under the care of a knowledgeable clinician, appropriate hormone optimisation is one of the best ways to feel amazing through and beyond mid-life. Talk about your family history (Photo: Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty) Know your family history This may sound like a strange tip for boosting energy… talking to one’s family doesn’t always leave you feeling energised. But to really appreciate how to boost energy, metabolism and memory, you need to know what is unique to you – and understanding your family history is a shortcut. I used to say that family history was a “poor man’s DNA test”. Now I think it’s even better than a DNA test in some ways, in that you will know what lies in your future due to the genes you inherited. In addition, knowing your family history can help you know what tests you can ask for when it comes to your GP. Most of the tests you probably need if you’re at risk for certain ageing disorders may not be standard care or routinely prescribed. A tiny bit of regular aerobic exercise boosts everything I hope I’ve convinced you to strength-train as it really is tied with sleep as the biggest key to healthy longevity as we age. But any regular aerobic exercise, for even as little as 35 minutes a week has a massive benefit when it comes to boosting memory in mid-life and beyond. All movement counts – for example, taking the stairs up two flights, instead of the lift or parking further away from the shops. Small changes add up. Aerobic exercise increases blood flow to the brain, which fuels the growth of new neurons and enhances the plasticity of synapses. That means your brain is maximising and adapting. In a little more than it would take to watch a repeat of either the UK or American version of The Office per week, you could reduce your risk of dementia by 41 per cent, according to a study in theJournal of the American Medical Directors Association. The risk dropped even further with every additional sitcom’s worth of weekly exercise they added. Those who worked out for 140 minutes or more per week had a nearly 70 per cent reduced risk. Invincible: Defy Your Genetic Destiny to Live Better, Longer by Dr Florence Comite is published by Cornerstone Press and out now