The science of why your body takes longer to bounce back after 40

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Feel like it takes longer to recover from everything these days—whether it’s an injury or poor sleep? That’s the reality of what time is doing to our bodies. Researchers call our ability to bounce back from health stress “biological resilience." Evidence suggests that it declines with age, driven by biological and other factors, including parenting, work stress, changes in exercise habits and menopause.

Often, these stresses pile up from early life and can reach a tipping point in our 30s and 40s. “There are these moments where the whole system seems to undergo like a vibe shift," says Dr. Heather Whitson, a geriatrician and clinical investigator who directs the Duke University Aging Center.

These midlife declines in resilience parallel emerging science suggesting that aging itself doesn’t happen in a linear way, doctors and researchers say. A small study out of Stanford that looked at biomolecular shifts in the body found two aging “waves" appear to occur around ages 44 and 60. While the Stanford study’s findings are difficult to generalize to the broader adult population, family-medicine doctors report seeing similar age-related changes in their patients.

The first shift often happens for patients in their late 30s and early 40s, says Dr. Benjamin Missick, family medicine doctor at Novant Health in North Carolina. That’s when they begin to question why their cholesterol is suddenly rising, why controlling their blood pressure requires more medication, and why they’re gaining weight despite maintaining their diet.