Can you trick your ageing body into feeling younger? | Hacker News Reader

Can you trick your ageing body into feeling younger?

bbc.co.uk

33 pointsdrinian21 comments

Unfortunately they didn't setup a control case to test if it was actually returning them to their 1970s lives or if it were forcing them to live in a "more challenging" environment. There's no way for them, as researchers, to disambiguate the effects of "time travel" from just making them do more things for themselves.

Agreed. But does it matter? Live a more challenging life and shape the world around you is the takeaway.

Yeah, it does matter. The way this was set up, it was impossible to tell whether the admittedly cool premise of pretending it was 30 years ago had any effect at all. That would have been an interesting thesis, and now we still have no idea whether it's true.

I mean, how much of feeling old is just feeling that the world is moving on without you?

The biggest indicator of "oldness" is no longer making big plans, no longer looking forward to things, but instead spending increasing time with some form of nostalgia, or focused on the mundane.

People like Frank Lloyd Wright and Georgia O'Keefe just keep working and making plans like they were going to live forever. They had the right idea.

Possibly so. But, ironically, this article is about making people feel younger by giving them what amounts to an intense nostalgia trip.

It's a little annoying that they're passing off a human interest story as research. It doesn't tell us why the people felt younger (Because of increased exertion? Because they expected to? Because they were good at acting? Because they were part of an experiment?) or how long the effect lasted, or whether there were any undesirable side-effects.

True, the article sends a pleasant message, and there's probably not much harm in it, aside from a possible increase in elderly tripping over bell-bottoms and shag carpet. :)

Dylan Thomas said it best:

"Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Time for me to get on red zip-up pajamas with the white padded feet; watch shows like G.I Joe, Voltron, Thundercats, The People's Court, Highway to Heaven, Airwolf; wear white tube socks with the color stripes on top and Reebok Pump hightop sneakers; replace my iHome with a Sony Dream Machine alarm clock; and use Print Shop on my Commodore PC XXIII and print out my radical flyers with my dot matrix printer.

Ahhhh I feel younger just thinking about it and writing it out (no, seriously). Although that would take me back to my single digit aged days, just a little too far back.

A spin on an 'Ol Dirty Bastard line: "I'ma rub your ass In the moonshine / Let's take it back to '89"

Sounds like a number of bars in Bushwick...

But this wasn't like the 70s at all - back then there were far more smokers, for example, and I bet they didn't say, smoke as much as you really did back then, eat what you ate back then, etc. It was merely forcing them to exercise more.

Independence is very important. It is always amazing to meet someone in their 90's that live without any outside help; they are always healthy (relatively).

I think that we are at an interesting point of human ageing. Improved health via diet, exercise, awareness, etc. has lead to a point in which 70 year olds are no longer marginalised and, if competent, can perform roles just as well as anyone half their age.

> Independence is very important. It is always amazing to meet someone in their 90's that live without any outside help; they are always healthy (relatively).

I think causation might run the other way, there.

Or both ways. Somebody with a strong spirit of independence will insist on walking on their own, thus keeping them fit and independent.

this is why I do squats almost every day. If I don't die in my car or get cancer, my fam hx says I'll live to be 95. I want to be able to go to the bathroom by myself when I'm that old.

Cool story, but not practical for me. Not going back to a 386 anytime soon - although maybe replaying some classic Sierra RPG's might do the trick?

"Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present." --Jean de la Bruyere

Life is shaped by our mind. We become what we think. (c) some smart guy around 2500 years ago.

The longer explanation - everything is connected not because it is predestined, but because by a cause and effect. So processes in the mind are affecting bodily processes, and opposite, of course, is true at the exactly same time.

The same guy, btw, taught that the cause of suffering is ignorance - not knowing your own nature.

Sounds a lot like Plato. Good guess?

edit: my fault. They were here almost at the same time. ^_^

Do you mean "recent?"

Ah! figured it out. He's Buddha. I knew I should have Googled that. When you wrote 'guy,' I read 'Greek,' and spent a while trying to ascertain which Greek believed exactly that. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com