It might sound like science fiction if it weren’t so ordinary: our bones break and mend…we burn a hand and it heals…we forget words and remember in a flash. The body has an astounding ability to bounce back that can feel like a miracle of sorts.
That healing power, though, does slow down as we grow older. We lose a few more words, or more days elapse between a scrape and smooth skin. While our expected life spans have nearly doubled in the past 100 years, our physical bodies exist more or less as always.
As we age, our skin and our musculoskeletal and organ systems suffer wear and tear. Resources for repair take longer to marshal their forces. But we can help our bodies retain resiliency; that incredible ability to absorb stress, strain, and pain and then adapt and recover. Doctors and researchers are making fascinating discoveries about how we can build a more resilient system at any age. Here’s exactly what you can do to keep your body bouncing back.
Keep your brain young
Our brains tend to shrink as we age, explains neuroscientist Richard Hunter, and certain cognitive abilities can suffer. For instance, after age 60 our perceptual speed declines: it takes us longer to notice a shift in the environment like a traffic light change. Our verbal and spatial memory can suffer too, making it harder to remember names and where we’ve left things. Sound at all familiar?
While this is a normal aspect of aging, you can fight it. “Brain resilience generally means holding on to more brain volume and cognitive function longer,” Hunter says. He knows scientists he describes as “supersharp” who have devoted their lives to learning and are cognitively intact well into their 80s. These may be what the National Institutes of Health deems “cognitive super-agers,” who perform like people 20 years younger on memory tests. Want to be one of them?
For a more resilient brain: socialise smarter
To build tomorrow’s cognitive reserve, Hunter suggests increasing your social and intellectual engagement. That could mean meeting new people and enjoying new experiences, such as by having a chat at the bus stop en route to a new destination. Participation in regular social activities and tasks (calling your cousin or catching up with a co-worker) can help too.
“Humans are social animals, and our connections have helped us succeed as a species,” Hunter says. “In a sense we need to socialise to survive, so building good social connections seems to protect you from aging’s worst effects.”
In one study of people 65 and older, loneliness was connected with accelerated cognitive decline even after accounting for factors including depression and health conditions.
Find activities that combine inter personal components with educational or exercise ones, such as participating in a beach cleanup, rock climbing in a gym with a friend, singing in a choir, or playing cards. Taking partner-style dance lessons gives you triple benefits: learning, moving and socialising.
Age-proof your skin
A skinned knee probably took a week or so to heal when you were a child. If it now seems to take twice as long (or longer), you’re not imagining it. As we age, cells in our three skin layers don’t turn over the way they used to, a necessary process for clearing out damage and making repairs. Cell turnover slows down even more quickly if we have failed to wear sunscreen (oops), smoked, or been exposed to air pollution. By our mid-40s, our skin tears more easily and forms wrinkles.
“If we don’t invest in fixing the machinery that turns over the skin, it goes to sleep,” says dermatologist Dr Abigail Waldman. Here’s how to wake your skin up again.
To build more resilient skin: stress it out
The primary method for restoring skin’s natural resilience is to injure it. Hear us out. Two approaches – using retinoids and processes like microneedling – boost resilience by stressing skin and instigating cell turnover.
Retinoids, typically used in facial creams, essentially reawaken your cell-turnover machinery, which can then strengthen the skin’s protective function, limit moisture loss, and protect collagen. That can result in smoother, clearer skin that can bounce back from an injury more quickly. Plus, the ingredient will refresh hands, knees, and feet too, Dr Waldman says.
Products with higher percentages of retinoids will revive the skin’s machinery faster, but the lower percentages (such as 1%) found in over-the-counter retinols will work too. You just might need to wait a year or so to see noticeable results. That’s okay, Dr Waldman says, if you view it as part of a rest-of-your-life routine, not a fix-it-fast process.
Meanwhile, procedures like chemical peels, microneedling, and microdermabrasion lead to nanoinjuries in the outer layers of the skin, creating more collagen and elastin. It’s like exercise, Dr Waldman says: “To build muscle strength, you’re creating tiny injuries your body will fix and make stronger.” A dermatologist can help you find the right treatment and number of sessions.
Make your heart stronger
This muscle requires a constant oxygen supply from blood vessels, which act like a small highway system, says cardiovascular researcher Adam Chicco. Lifestyle factors (such as smoking) and normal ageing can damage those highways, making blood’s travel more arduous.
Clogged “roads” can eventually lead you to the emergency room if blood and oxygen no longer arrive where they are needed, resulting in a heart attack. Also, heart muscle becomes stiffer and less efficient as we age, requiring more oxygen to do the same work. But researchers have found that age-related deterioration can be curtailed with the right lifestyle choices.
Upping your heart’s resilience can help you prevent a heart attack and recover faster afterward if you have one. The secret: improve your heart’s highway system by widening its roads and building new ones to improve the supply of blood and oxygen. It’s not as Frankenstein-like as it sounds. A heart-pounding workout builds up those vessels at any age.
This improved highway system ensures that life-sustaining traffic can get through and help maintain and repair your heart muscle so your heart can continue functioning as an efficient pump. “We may not be able to prevent the ageing process, but we can make it safer,” Chicco says.
To build a more resilient heart: get sweaty with cardio
Physical exercise may lessen or even partially reverse age-related heart changes, according to a small study from the University of Texas. For previously inactive individuals over 65, just one year of slowly increasing vigorous exercise “remodeled” the heart’s left ventricle and improved arterial function and aerobic exercise capacity.
Various exercise recommendations exist (for instance, at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week or a combo, as suggested by the American Heart Association), but all the advice comes down to this: get your heart pumping. What does that mean, though? The simple answer: Trust your instinct: do you feel your heart thumping? Is it a little bit hard to talk? Then you’re getting the benefits of heart-pumping exercise.
The math-filled answer: subtract your age from 220 to determine your maximum heart rate. (For a 50-year-old, that number is 170.) Multiply that by 0.64 to learn what your lowest heart rate would be for “moderate” exercise (in our example, around 109). Multiply by 0.77 for the minimum number for “vigorous” exercise (around 131 for our imaginary 50-year-old). You can use a smartwatch to track your numbers, but always talk to your doctor before trying to hit a specific number.
Keep your bones, muscles, and joints from feeling old
Whether you’re walking, cooking, or trying a Tiktok dance, your bones, muscles, joints, and cartilage move your body as an integrated system.
But this system starts to fall apart in our third and fourth decades, says muscle physiology researcher Marco Brotto. Bones break more easily because of calcium loss, while muscles lose mass and strength because of age-related loss called sarcopenia. By age 35 to 40, 1% to 2% of muscle mass is lost yearly, with more rapid deterioration after age 65 for women and 70 for men. Because of a negative feedback loop, feeble muscles lead to frailer joints, cartilage tears, and weaker bones. As a result, 30% of adults over 65 have trouble with everyday movement such as walking.
To reverse course and build more resilience, take action now, Brotto says. Doing so can help you maintain mobility and improve your coordination and strength so you will be less likely to endure a sprain, fracture, or break – and if you do, you’ll recover more quickly.
To build a more resilient musculoskeletal system: stretch and strength-train
Try body-weight moves or a whole-body resistance band workout. Not sure where to start? Begin with squats, says Brotto. “Squats are among the most wonderful exercises because they engage the largest muscles in the body,” he says.
Aim to get 15 minutes of strength training every day or 30 minutes every other day. Here's how to get started.
In addition, you can increase flexibility, range, and balance through daily stretching and balance work if possible, whether you do yoga, Pilates, tai chi, or simple stretching. “The most effective intervention for prevention of falls of all tested to date is tai chi,” Brotto says.
You can also increase joint mobility through stretching, which limbers up the soft tissues (tendon, muscle, skin, fat, and fascia) connecting and surrounding bone and internal organs.
“The most important thing is to stay as active as possible for as long as you can. Do not underestimate the power of your own body, and make sure to reach out to a friend or consider joining a gym or a club or doing volunteering that will require you to stay active. Aim to live longer, but also stronger,” he says.
National Institute on Aging research has shown promise for the building of bone resilience via an interesting method. One pilot study found that participants wearing weighted vests in a weight-loss program had slower loss of hip bone density compared with a group not wearing the vests. You can try the method at home using a regular backpack or one designed for this type of exercise such.
Whether or not you strap on a heavy backpack, you have options for building your resilience. We may not yet be able to online-order a personalised fountain of youth, but science is revealing ways we can improve our innate healing abilities that aren’t just science fiction. So tap into your inner resources and keep your body bouncing back: Resilience is one of your superpowers!
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