This is a thread for ILXORS IN THEIR 50's

*get

I had shingles at 48. Not sure if had postherpetic neuralgia - but I couldn't sit back fully in a chair for ages afterwards without unpleasant irritation (I wouldn't call it pain though.

If you've already had shingles will the vaccine do anything for you? I had it all up and down my right arm and in a few spots on my back a couple of years ago.

(I turned 50 just about two weeks ago.)

shingles can recur and even become chronic, so I'd go with the vaccine ... I got it a couple of months ago along with flu and TDAP vaccines and didn't notice much of a reaction besides a sore arm

Yeah definitely get the vaccine. My mom had a case of it some years back and she was vehement about its awfulness. As soon as I turned 50 in March I arranged to get my shots.

(Other thing I did was get a colonoscopy, which you should also do assuming coverage is there. In my case they combined it with an endoscopy due to a bit of GERD issues, and I'm glad for that.)

The strange world of the UK's NHS:

You're eligible for the shingles vaccine when you're aged 70 to 79. The shingles vaccine is not available on the NHS to anyone aged 80 and over because it seems to be less effective in this age group.

apparently i am now older than Frasier's dad (John Mahoney was 53 during the first season)

I've heard that Paul Rudd is currently older than Wilford Brimley was when he was in Cocoon

The British equivalent is Victor Meldrew, Richard Wilson was also 53 when it started.

I don't OW!

i'll tell you what are nice: werther's originals

Oh hai, this is me I guess. Someone told me I don't look 50, but did I look 49 a couple of weeks ago?

One thing about being in my 50s: some days a knee or a foot or an ankle will just decide it isn't going to be cooperating. Minor inexplicable aches and pains will arrive and leave, with no precipitating event and no explanation.

Okay, I can mostly live with that. But what's novel and interesting to me is that I have become a connoisseur of pain, and can detect differences between types of it. Like, I get at least three distinct kinds of discomfort, and their particular flavors are as distinct as wine varieties.

Lyme arthritis: exquisitely sharp pain in the bursa of the left knee accompanied by a high fever. Lasts three days and then vanishes, mysteriously, for a decade.

Gout: excruciating pain in the right big toe, comes and goes on its own schedule. Supposedly caused by beer and beef and seafood, but even if I avoid those entirely for years at a time, the pain still comes and goes on its own schedule.

Garden-variety arthritis: just shows up from time to time, no logic to it. Every now and then, just for fun, there's an actual injury, a hernia, or a sprain.

My diet and lifestyle and exercise habits are decently healthy. I have weeks, months, and years of nothing going seriously wrong. Then I get a week or two where Advil is basically a condiment.

Whoops I forgot one more flavor: cervical radiculopathy, where a pinched nerve made one of my hands decide not to work for a week. Departed as quickly as it arrived. Never recurred.

Latest physical grumble (I have blessedly few, knock wood) is what seems like it may be creeping carpal tunnel in my left hand. I attribute this not to all the typing I do but to holding my damn phone all the time, which I am seeking alternatives to. It's starting to turn into a bit of a tiny chronic pain, which I dread — things that are going to start hurting and will just continue to hurt from now until cremation.

things that are going to start hurting and will just continue to hurt from now until cremation

This is, indeed, the downward slope. Welcome.

Not to be all Doctor Internet, tipsy, but: I was 99% sure I had carpal tunnel, but it turned out to be a pinched nerve in my neck (C5) showing up as pain in the wrist. Confirmed by nerve conductivity testing. Bodies are weird.

Huh! Yeah, I need to go for an actual exam of it, it's reaching that point.

I need to go to my doctor and figure out why my right shoulder (and sometimes my left, but always my right) has been hurting for six months.

At least I'll not wonder about my left shoulder in future years given the recent fracture. (I'm about 90% back but I suspect there'll always be a little tinge at least, though physical therapy has gone quite well.)

> pinched nerve in my neck

i had three weeks where anything but staring at the floor meant that my left arm developed pins and needles after 2 minutes and was unbearable after 5. it was basically the arm equiv of sciatica.

had 6 months of frozen shoulder on a different occasion. just couldn't lift it above 45' angle and was shouting-out painful when knocked for a good part of that. ultrasounds showed nothing.

both things just went away with time.

I had that in my shoulder/arm, and it also went away with some PT. Sadly I have awful sciatica right now, and it has lasted over a year. I’ve had two disc surgeries and last week I had a PRP shot. If that doesn’t work, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

We're basically the same as used cars with high mileage and a fuzzy history of ownership.

Bartending has given me Shaker (Tennis) Elbow in my left arm -- it's receded a lot from when it was at its worst, but I think maybe it will always be with me. There are some angles where I just can't lift anything heavy, like a gallon jug of olives, unless I'm lifting straight up.

Going for a walk with a book in a bag over my shoulder used to be fine, until last year, when it resulted in a sore neck for the rest of the day.

Bartending has given me Shaker (Tennis) Elbow in my left arm

I hadn't considered that, I bet that happens a fair amount. Not an issue for me since we just do specialty gigs here and there. But regular 8-hour shifts would be rough, yeah.

My dad was a potter until he retired, and in his 50s he had to have elbow surgery for all the strain from throwing pots on the wheel.

@52 trying to determine an acceptable cost of my day to day happiness to maintain my health. i hate to think that snacks & cocktails have become my enemies but my BP & BMI are starting to say otherwise. And as stated, any exercise has to stay pretty low level and non-repetative to avoid constant body aches.

This all depends on personal physical situations, but I will say that just in the past year I've started low-level strength training for the first time — just dumbbells and pushups right now — and even at a frequency of 3-4 times a week for like 20-30 minutes I really feel a difference. I've always been ok on cardio stuff, I like to walk and hike, but I've never done anything deliberate to maintain muscles. I realized that if I didn't, what little muscles I have will deteriorate and that's how you end up seriously hurting yourself while, like, lifting laundry baskets or changing light bulbs. Highly recommend whatever level you can do it at.

Also yoga obv.

Can only speak for myself, but since the beginning of the pandemic I got pretty ritualistic about doing yoga everyday (the Yoga with Adriene videos are great!) and going outside and walking around. The end result is that I’m back to the same weight I was in college and my health overall feels more - I dunno, resilient?

I have tennis elbow in both arms, and I think it's probably from taking the garbage down to the RV park dumpster and throwing it in. I also have arthritis in both pointer fingers from various injuries, a painful left knee from decades of nurse's aide work and the incessent driving I do for my companion work now, and a stiff and very painful right ankle and heel from stepping off of a park fixture wrong in the middle of the night a few years ago.

since the beginning of the pandemic i've been doing tons of youtube strengthening, HIIT & stretching videos. working from home has helped so i can use late afternoon for exercise rather than getting home at dinner time after commuting 1+ hours every day. not back to college weight (pretty amazing ET) but in better shape than when i was going to the gym pre-pandemic. definitely get aches and pains with mysterious origin that luckily fade away after a few weeks. also go through the maintain health vs cocktails/ "i'm old & life is getting shorter" internal debate.

My view of health vs. cocktails/"good life" is AND rather than OR. Doing things to keep myself healthy makes it easier for me to enjoy cocktails and french fries. All things in moderation including moderation, etc.

Quite right

I turned 50 late last year and left my 40s much healthier than I entered them after getting back into running. And am still improving now as had a half marathon PB of 1:26 this morning so it's not all downhill.

Like others have said, the main reason I exercise (other than enjoying it and also the social side) is that I then don't have to worry about eating cake/pizza/beer

Half-marathon! Congrats, that's awesome. Running has never been my thing, but I admire the dedication it takes.

bloody hell, nice work groovypanda! not got a marathon planned have you? you're defintely in the zone for a sub 3 there

I think i’m finally “mid 50s” at 54.5. I’ve got a history of serious injuries:

-(broken femural neck/hip now bolted)
-3 separate incidents of broken rib(s)
-3 broken collarbones (plated and screwed, then de-plated, then finally resected (doc just cuts the last 6mm right off) to fix a-c arthritis)
-separated shoulder w/ a
-broken scapula
-3 broken metacarpals in right hand (third meta now w/ 3 wee screws, four and five were temporarily pinned) and
-finally, a broken skull with subdural hematoma and some scattered diffuse axonal brain injury. Severe traumatic brain injury.

Then prostate cancer with robot surgery last Dec.

The TBI is by far far far the most difficult- killed my career, almost my family, but we hang in there.

What I’m saying I guess is I’m “aging” well, all of this is me being good only at catastrophe. It’s a recipe for arthritis and joint issues. But no recent arthritis probs until the last 6 months— on the broken hip from 1991. That’s pretty dece outcome. I can still run just as terrible as always. I was told post-surgery that I would lose my hip, either in 6 mos or eventually, and will likely need a replacement.

still and as fat mantises kno (ancient iltrmb ref) my weekly endurance hours are 6 to 12 of combined bike and nordic ski (rollerski in summer). I got back on the bike for real 8 weeks after cancer surgery, now i can do 3 hour rides and I don’t really notice the diff even on my usual saddles, which are stereotypically minimal.

hopefully this is less brag than encouragement. do try to be kind and good to yourself. also try not to give up. the body often responds well. until it does not or cannot. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Wow. Wishing you well through all that.

thx. rereading, it sounds like a stupid humble/brag, sorry. the tbi does tip me impulsively to blurt out too much of my crap.

maybe the greatest thing that a couple months in a rehab hospital taught me is that i have no fucking clue the extent to which many many people i whom see or meet regularly have also had huge difficulties, and they are overcoming challenges i cannot imagine. nor could i meet those issues as well as they are. and never to assume that my issues are more challenging than another person’s. people are absolutely astounding and work far harder than i have. more than once i’ve learned that they are people whom i know. but until you start sharing stories and support, you may not have an idea. ppl are often amazing.

and now, back to “fightin’ the fifties”…

words to live by, thanks for the update

I did my first live DJ set in two years last night and spent a fair amount of time on my knees on the floor digging through the two LP crates I brought. After carrying the record crates back to the car for the night, the backs of my knees were in excruciating pain that only subsided overnight after bed rest. OK, I am officially out of shape.

My neck is fucking killing me all the time. The pain moves from one side to the other. I think it's just tired of holding up my head.

Two devices that made the random aches of my latter 50s bearable: a continuous ice machine and a USB rechargeable TENS machine.

The organ recital isn’t supposed to start until your 70s, people!

While we're trading health tips, these massage pillows are killer. I get sore shoulders and neck a lot, mostly from time at the keyboard typing. My wife and I both swear by this: https://zyllion.com/collections/body-massagers/products/zma13bk-shiatsu-massager-pillow-with-heat.

I posted about it on FB and got like seven friends to buy it, all of whom were happy with it. Sadly I do not get any commission from the Zyllion people.

One health tip I learned after having two separate basal-cell carcinomas frozen off my head - wear a hat if you're spending any significant time outside. Take care of your skin as you would any other organ of the body.

Re massage, those fleshhammer massage guns are incredible for local muscle soreness. I was a huge skeptic but a couple trial uses proved incredibly effective. I find less is more, i now rarely hit any spot more than 30 or 40 secs, in low or middle speed. Difference between “i cant walk down stairs” to no problem really.

In the days when I went to see bands on weeknights, I never called in sick the next day because I was hungover or tired.

Last night I went to see a movie and am fighting to stay awake. Even allowing for the time change and the stress of taking my mother to the theater, this is weird. But I assume this is a sign of my age?

I think it's more you forget how much of a struggle the next day was, when you were 20, even then.