Dr. Ana’s unsolicited advice column.

The secret to eternal youth.

Mar 17, 2024

From the film “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008).

The one thing I hate about getting old is needing reading glasses. I used just to doze off, book in hand, and that would be it. Falling asleep with your glasses on is trickier. For one, I have images of the glasses breaking and the glass cutting my eyes… the odds are stacked against me this year since I am reading War and Peace in

Simon Haisell

book club; and if I doze off, book in hand, the 300 Kg volume will crush the glasses and shred my eyes to pieces, possibly giving me a mild concussion too. “Blinded by the classics”, people will say when I walk into a room. Yeah, thanks Simon.

You might be reading this and think “highly unlikely”; but, is it?

Then there is the whole thing of buying new glasses each time they break. I don’t get paid enough to afford that, and even if I did, my inner stinginess indicates that that would be a total waste of time and money. One could buy 7 of those plastic ones you can get at the supermarket that cost like 3€ a pair. It is way cheaper and, if you do not care about the look, they do the job pretty well.

I once bought one of those pairs. It was because I was trying to make a deadline for a grant, and I was so late that I was looking at two whole sleepless nights staring at a screen trying to write something both grammatically and scientifically sound. My eyes were so sore after the first night that I went to the supermarket and bought the glasses to push through the second night. Needless to say, even if I made the deadline, I did not make the cut to get the money. But the glasses were at home for a while until I decided to dismantle them and make a pair of binoculars for P. He must have been 4 years old. He turned nine in February. Time flies. But going back to those glasses, my husband found them hilarious. Every time I put them on, my eyes enlarged by three sizes; I would say, “Mooooooo”, and he would just crack up.

Of course, there are other things that bother me about getting old. But I try to ignore them. It is hard to turn a blind eye to loose skin and wrinkles, so I guess the whole thing with losing eyesight is just a survival skill for long-term marriages. Nature is wise that way—however, some consequences of old age I cannot really ignore. One of them is losing my capacity to sleep anywhere and everywhere. That used to be a superpower of mine. I could bend into any position, curl up in any corner, and sleep soundly. Afterwards, I could smooth my body out painlessly, completely relaxed and rested, and continue my day. I miss those days. Now, any transcontinental flight is a nightmare, and if I doze off in a weird position on the couch, I will wake up with a sore neck and a headache.

Aches and movement are the reasons I started working out regularly. I give zero fucks about the shape of my butt, but I am desperately trying to retain the capacity to squat past the age of 79. So, I practice every day. You might be thinking that squatting is a movement you will not be using past your 20s when you are trying to twerk into the pants of a casual date. Butt, squatting is an essential movement to keep balance. Balance is what prevents you from falling and breaking a hip. Hip fractures in old age are common and crap, like, really crap, to suffer (I am using highly medical terms here, as you can see).

This obsession with having a fit body started when I had my third child, E, 3 years ago. Having a baby at 41 makes it harder to “bounce back”. Don’t get me wrong, bouncing back after a baby is not a laudable objective. One should lay back, enjoy motherhood and just give in to the brain fog, the leaking breasts, and the taking random naps when your baby dozes off. Nonetheless, during my last maternity leave, I also had to entertain a 5 and a 3-year-old, so I took them to the park pretty often. There, I met a couple of grandparents who were hanging out with their grandchildren.

I was dazzled by their level of energy.

One of them played hide and seek with two small girls and not only ran after them, he actually dodged. He retained at his… 70-plus years? the capacity to change directions randomly, squat and jump and do all of that smiling. I was not sure whether to feel inspired, discouraged or disgusted. In my books, that man had no business being athletic when, for me, sneezing without peeing myself was out of the question.

If sneezing was a challenge, running and enjoying it had been off the table since my first birth. To give you a visual, for C’s 40^th birthday, I bought tickets for a Bruce Springsteen concert in Rome. We flew there with P, who was 1 year old at the time. I flew in my mother to babysit for the weekend (I will not make excuses for the splurge; C was 40, and it was Bruce Springsteen, for God’s sake). Anyway, after two and a half hours of great music, jumping up and down and two pints of beer, the concert finished, and C was so happy he was glowing. He said- “Shall we go somewhere else to continue the party?” and there I had to confess, “Babe, I need to go change underwear and pants. I peed myself”. So, I was the “number one” party pooper.

Fast forward 4 years, and I was in deep shit. I had postponed the whole core recovery for too long, but I decided to take it seriously this time because of “the dodging grandpa” and because I was not going to switch from period pads to old-lady diapers. Uh-uh, that was NOT going to be me. I geared up and set an objective “Have no back pain when I hold my children and crack nuts with my vagina”. Three years later, there is no cellulose in my house anymore. E is out of diapers, and I am running half marathons without the need for bathroom breaks. Even if I have not recovered my superpower of falling asleep anywhere, I can curl up with a book and unfold pain-free. I can play hide and seek and dodge and laugh at the same time and not run out of breath.

And you are all probably thinking- what is this smug woman’s point with this annoying post about how goddamn healthy she feels? The answer is that scientists have already cracked the code for the Benjamin Button recipe: Build muscles and use them. Easy? Yes. Boring? Very. But it is the best investment you could ever make.

A while back, I posted my view on the pursuit of beauty and good looks. But here I wanted to give you hope about old age. It can be full of wisdom and energy. For example, you can do biceps curls with your copy of War and Peace.