Poll: what's the worst part of getting old?

it's true, we were family

but a homeless guy called me "young man" today! (i gave him a buck for the compliment)

f u i graduated college that year

― mookieproof, Friday, August 29, 2014 9:34 PM (11 minutes ago)

f u i could have gotten my third 4-year degree that year

If I were voting in this again I think I'd say "moles." These goddamn things are taking me over all of a sudden. The fatness, the slowness...I did that to myself. But these barnacles are God giving me a Nelson laugh.

it's true, we were family

that's the only part I remember.

i actually promised myself, as a child, that i would invite willie stargell to my wedding. but he died first

What did I just read recently about something like that?

probably me, on some other thread, when i was similarly drunk

Oh, it's not online. It was that crazy motivational speaker we had that handed out the $2 bills.

One of his big things was writing five thank-you notes a week. Mostly to clients, but to also fill the quota, also writing them to friends, family, neighbors, etc. He said he got the idea from Willie Stargell.

One day, he realizes that he he hasn't thanked Willie Stargell yet for giving him this idea. He puts it off, procrastinates and finally gets around to doing it.

Three months later, Stargell died. If crazy guy had waited any longer, he would've missed his chance. Who knows if WIllie ever read the note, but at least it got sent.

And that .... is the rest of the story...

...Good day!

welp when i was 4.5 years old my parents took me to pirates spring training in bradenton and encouraged me to go down to the railing and get autographs. everyone was very nice -- omar moreno had the best signature -- but when willie signed my program he said, in this super-deep voice, 'now what do you say?'

and i stared at him for like an hour before blurting out, 'thank you?'

Waiting to hear back how much diabeetus I got. Getting old rocks!

Answer: plenty.

What a fun birthday present.

WmC, that sucks big time. I hope this doesn't mean you will be insulin-injection dependent, cz if it is Type 2 instead of Type 1, then you can probably reverse some or even all of it. Which is 100% worth attempting.

Yeah, sensible diet and metformin are the new ingredients here -- I've already been on the exercise bus for almost two years.

xp, yeah, I gave myself the WORST.PRESENT.EVER., roughly 30 years in the making by one count and 13 years by a much more cynical count.

Does an exercise bus work like a Flintstones car?

On the bright side, you got a Rx for metformin.

Nice! That's cheered me up considerably, thank you!

Metformin is known in the experimental gerontology field as a calorie restriction mimetic, inhibiting mitochondrial respiratory complexes, activating AMPK, extending lives of rodents. I crossed the big 40 and started turning grey a few years ago, so made getting into trim a priority. While after few thousands research papers, an hour of daily dogwalking, adopting a low-fat vegan diet, my lipids & blood glucose are in the very low-risk category, I've considered adding metformin to my regimen. The benefit/risk is that good.

Diabetes appears to be in large part a matter of the innate immune system, stimulated by endotoxins from the gut and circulating free saturated fatty acids, attacking pancreatic beta-cells. #1 goal should be dropping weight by any means, but do look into sorting out yer microbiome and reducing dietary saturated fats (and fructose/added sugar) wherever possible.

Muscle tightness, it's unreal. At 39, my only complaint so far.

My capacity to not give a fuck is increasing exponentially though, and that's worth almost any physical tradeoff.

Currently weighing my love of grapefruit and the fact that my work client just sent me a boxful against the warnings I've been reading about grapefruit and statins (which I now take for cholesterol).

#yolo

My father-in-law was talking just the other day about how he can't eat grapefruit because of his statins.

Noticed my first gray chest hair the other day. That's cute. Can't seem to keep on top of my ear hair these days though. Even using a trimmer it comes in fast and dark.

FOUR people i cared about died in the last six weeks. this is the worst thing. i feel like i'm living in a fucking sun kil moon record

An interesting thing about growing older
is being able to see precisely how the mundane, tiny, seemingly inconsequential flaws of a person’s youth
may butterfly-effect and snowball and very gradually, though no great or particularly consequential fault of that person’s own,
turn said person into the kind of ruined, compromised, contemptible mid-lifer you used to look at and wonder:
how does someone wind up like this, why would they choose to be like this, why would they not just stop being awful.

Christ on a bike.

life beats us all into submission at some point. the dreams of youth are stupid anyway, so it's pretty much a wash.

xp yeah, as r. hitchcock cheerfully put it:

the spoiled baby grows into
the escapist teenager
who's the adult alcoholic
who's the middle-aged suicide

something to look forward to anyway

late vote received

Hugh Laurie ✔ @hughlaurie
The loss of elasticity in aging skin. If I frown now, I can still be frowning 20 minutes later, while discussing something delightful.

Inelastic skin is among the most salient of my current symptoms of aging. That and my very slowly eroding energy and vitality. I count myself lucky that nothing worse has arisen yet.

it's depressing what super powered hand driers can do to one's skin

Anybody else here with hypothyroidism? My levothyroxine dosage just got quadrupled and I'm a little nervous about a jump that big.

Hi.

have to pee too often
diminishing libido
knees
face

xp - Hi!

Jumping from 50 mcg to 200 unnerves me. My wife's been on this stuff for a decade and her doctor's never nudged it in any direction more than 20 at a time.

I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism last year. I'm still on a relatively low dose. If you are worried about the jump in dosage, just remember there's a hard limit to how low your thyroid output can go. Once you're at zero, your levothyroxine dosage will no doubt stabilize.

more seriously, I'm not sure there's anything effective you can do to halt the erosion, so worrying about it seems unavailing.

Well, I actually haven't been treated for it at all yet, as I only got diagnosed at my last doctor the day the surgery closed, and they wanted my new GP to monitor it, so I basically have to do blood test -> diagnosis -> treatment all over again.

It's not really a "getting old" thing for me, though, it's genetic - like, literally *everyone* on my mum's side has a fucked up thyroid, and I'd been waiting for it to happen since I hit my 20s. It fucking sucks, though, and it's given me anaemia and tinnitus and weird skin and all sorts of shit.

cysts

Talking with another coach at our badminton tournament today. She was, I don't know, 30 maybe? Talking, talking, and I'm really attracted to her. And she's got no ring of any kind--rare with female teachers. Then the George Costanza flash of awareness: when you're 56 and looking more and more like Nick Nolte's mug shot by the day, you're officially out of the contest.

Nah, not necessarily. Why shoot yourself in the foot like that?

xp, haha
Yeah, and no amount of "but some women like older men!" rationalization can convince you.

Half your age plus seven is a widely accepted creepiness measure. (56 / 2) + 7 = 35

Over 30 is fine no matter what.

It’s in the ten commandments.

But I’m 110.

It’s ok, plenty of fly 62 year olds.

https://i.imgur.com/Df2XGJL.gif

https://www.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/hero_mobile/public/thumbnails/image/2012/10/09/13/glitter.jpg

xp!

I'm 3......6? and the half my age plus seven rule is not gonna wash tbh even if it were on any of the few cards I have left