Optimal age is also relative to what you want to do—different mental abilities peak at wildly different ages. If you stabilize your body at age 25 and then live to be 67 (edited—was 53), will your verbal ability increase as much as if you let yourself age to 67?
Athletic abilities don’t all peak at the same time, either. Strength doesn’t peak at the same time as strength-to-weight ratio. Would you rather be a weightlifter or a gymnast? I believe coordination peaks late—how do you feel about dressage?
Optimal age is also relative to what you want to do—different mental abilities peak at wildly different ages. If you stabilize your body at age 25 and then live to be 53, will your verbal ability increase as much as if you let yourself age to 67?
Staying physically 25 doesn’t mean you have to stop learning or physically developing. Surely the development of abilities in adult life is the result of exercising body and mind over the years, not part and parcel of senscence?
Surely the development of abilities in adult life is the result of exercising body and mind over the years, not part and parcel of senscence?
I don’t think we know. I have no idea why verbal ability would peak so late, so I don’t know whether brain changes associated with aging are part of the process.
I’ve read that cell death overtakes cell division at around 35, so perhaps a body in some longer-term equilibrium condition would look 35?
(I suspect that putting a single age on is too crude though. The optimal age for a set of lungs may not be the same as that for a liver)
Optimal age is also relative to what you want to do—different mental abilities peak at wildly different ages. If you stabilize your body at age 25 and then live to be 67 (edited—was 53), will your verbal ability increase as much as if you let yourself age to 67?
Athletic abilities don’t all peak at the same time, either. Strength doesn’t peak at the same time as strength-to-weight ratio. Would you rather be a weightlifter or a gymnast? I believe coordination peaks late—how do you feel about dressage?
Staying physically 25 doesn’t mean you have to stop learning or physically developing. Surely the development of abilities in adult life is the result of exercising body and mind over the years, not part and parcel of senscence?
I don’t think we know. I have no idea why verbal ability would peak so late, so I don’t know whether brain changes associated with aging are part of the process.