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If you’re in your 30s, longevity may be low on your priority list. Chances are, your brainspace is filled with more immediate concerns, like growing your career or family, or both. You’re also young enough not to get wrapped up in your own mortality.
“You still have a lot of innate resilience,” Eve Henry, MD, internist and chief medical officer at integrated health platform Hundred Health, tells SELF. But even if your daily habits don’t seem to have much sway over how you feel now, they can seriously influence how you age in the future, she says, for better or worse.
That’s because aging happens gradually, as does the development of chronic diseases. Consider the buildup of plaque inside arteries that can amass for decades before it manifests as heart disease (the top killer of women in the US) or stroke. Alzheimer’s disease, which affects twice as many women as men in this country, is also a slow burn. It’s the reason doctors have stressed focusing on health at a young age since well before longevity got buzzy.
And your 30s is an especially apt time to develop healthy habits. After age 30, people lose, on average, 3 to 5% of their muscle mass each decade, which is an especially risky trajectory for women, Rachele Pojednic, PhD, EdM, FACSM, a nutrition and exercise researcher, and director of education at Stanford Lifestyle Medicine, tells SELF. Weak muscles put less load on bones, which hinders bone maintenance and decreases bone density, she explains. That’s a fast track to osteoporosis—and women are at baseline higher risk than men, just by having less bone mass to start with, and because of the drop in estrogen that occurs with menopause.
It’s better to “build a big stockpile of biological resilience” while you’re at peak bone density and your hormones are still largely intact in your 30s “versus trying to play catch-up forever,” Vonda Wright, MD, an orthopedic surgeon, longevity researcher, and author of Unbreakable: A Woman’s Guide to Aging with Power, tells SELF. Below, experts share the behaviors to invest in during your 30s for the biggest return down the line.
1. Pick up a form of strength training you don’t dread.
For women, in particular, consistent muscle-pumping is key to avoiding the downward spiral of weak muscles, brittle bones, and falls that happens all too often with age. Dr. Wright points out that 70% of people who have a hip fracture are women, and half of people who break their hip never return to their home after seeking treatment. 22% of hip-breakers die within the year, generally from complications of being immobilized in the hospital, like pneumonia.
Weightlifting is great here, but any form of exercise that puts enough strain on your muscles can count, Dr. Pojednic says. Just choose something you enjoy (or don’t hate), she says, so you stick with it.
That means Pilates, barre, and the like are fair game, so long as they’re fatiguing your muscles up to the verge of failure, Dr. Pojednic says (that’s the feeling that you can barely keep up with the exercise for one second longer).
2. Do a brief walk outside most days.
Popping outside for a stroll is one of the simplest, most-studied ways to take stress down a notch—which is essential in a decade often filled with unavoidable stressors, Elissa Epel, PhD, director of the Aging, Metabolism, and Emotions Center at University of California, San Francisco, and author of The Stress Prescription, tells SELF.
Stewing in stress soup may wear down telomeres, or the caps that shield DNA from damage, which, as Dr. Epel points out, may speed up cell aging and shuttle us more quickly toward age-related illnesses such as heart disease and dementia. Stress also raises blood pressure, hinders digestion, interferes with sleep, and frazzles the immune system, Dr. Henry says, all of which may shorten your lifespan too.
Even if you live in a city, you can still reap the benefits of some nature exposure. Looking at trees lining a street, or the sky at dusk, or even squirrels or birds can offer a stress-softening perspective, according to Dr. Epel, by making your worries seem smaller in the scheme of things.
3. Eat more whole foods instead of processed ones.
Science is just beginning to uncover how ingredients unique to processed foods, like preservatives, may be tied to poor health. But we already know these foods are typically higher in sugar, salt, and saturated fat—a combo long proven to up your risk for several chronic diseases. And they often contain little, if any, fiber and vitamins. These are reasons enough to reach for whole foods instead.
In particular, research shows that plant-forward diets such as the Mediterranean diet provide the most benefit to the brain and heart. “I tell my patients to just focus on adding more fruits, vegetables, legumes, beans, and whole grains, wherever possible,” Danielle Belardo, MD, a Los Angeles-based preventive cardiologist, tells SELF.
4. Ramp up your protein intake.
The hubbub around protein these days has arguably blown its importance out of proportion—but when it comes to women in their 30s (and beyond), it’s not all hype. To age well, women generally require more protein than the recommended daily allowance (RDA), which, for reference, translates to roughly 0.36 grams per pound of body weight, meaning 72 grams daily for a 200-pound person. Dr. Pojednic suggests women actually aim for 80 to 100 grams daily as they age, to combat the muscle shrinkage that starts after 30.
It’s the reason she recommends incorporating some animal proteins into your diet, particularly lean ones like poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy—they’re considered complete proteins because they contain all nine essential amino acids. But you can also get a significant amount of protein from plant-based sources, Dr. Pojednic says, like beans, lentils, and oats. It’s just important to eat a wide variety of them in substantial quantities to ensure your bases are covered.
And if you’re coming up short and have a busy schedule, it’s wise to supplement with a ready-made or DIY protein shake, or bar—so long as whole foods still comprise the bulk of your diet. Dr. Pojednic suggests looking for options containing whey, which is a complete protein, or plant proteins like soy or pea if you’re vegan or have a dairy allergy.
5. Add a few hops, skips, or jumps into your daily routine.
It turns out, that morning jumping trend isn’t just a way to boost your mood and feel more awake and alive. Bopping around can tune up your fast-twitch muscle fibers, the kind that diminish first with age, and the ones that grant us the ability to quickly catch ourselves when we slip or trip, Dr. Wright says. That kind of agility can be the difference between a little stumble and a bone-breaking, life-shortening fall, she points out.
Plus, jumping may help maintain bone density, which we begin to shed as early as our late 20s. The repeated impact can stave off some of that loss, particularly in the hip bones, which makes it so that if you do sustain a big fall, your bones are less likely to snap.
Dr. Wright suggests women do 20 jumps a day or make jumping around a lighthearted ritual: You can put small obstacles on the floor and bound over them, play hopscotch with your kids, or do skater hops from side-to-side. Fittingly, she adds, it’s this kind of simple child’s play—fun, free-wheeling movement—that keeps us musculoskeletally young.
6. Tend to your pelvic floor.
Age, stress, and childbirth can do a number on your pelvic floor in your 30s and beyond, Dr. Wright notes, commonly leading to urinary incontinence (UI), or a leaky bladder. Even if you can hold your pee just fine now, if you don’t actively work to keep this sheet of muscle strong and supple, you could run into problems at perimenopause, when dipping estrogen levels contribute to muscle laxity. While roughly half of adult women have UI, as many as 75% of women over 65 report dealing with the condition.
And it’s not just a nuisance. Losing bladder control can raise your risk for urinary tract infections (UTIs) and is a major reason for admission to a nursing home among women, Dr. Wright points out. It’s linked to immobility and social isolation later in life, both of which can speed up aging processes, including cognitive decline.
Learning to do Kegels correctly and fitting a handful into your daily routine can go a long way toward strengthening your pelvic floor muscles, Dr. Wright says.
7. Establish a relationship with a primary care doctor.
If you haven’t seen a doctor consistently since your pediatrician, or you’ve just gone to your ob-gyn and called it a day, it’s time to get a yearly cadence going with a PCP, Dr. Belardo says. This is a doctor who can get a bird’s-eye view of your health based on your personal and family history and do screenings to assess your risk for various conditions. They’ll likely take a look at your blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and run a comprehensive metabolic panel to check your blood sugar, and kidney and liver function.
Getting a sense of your numbers when you’re still young—before perimenopause —can help you figure out when things may be off-kilter later on, Dr. Henry points out. It also allows your doctor to identify anything abnormal that might warrant additional screening or even “starting down the path to treating something before you begin to develop the disease process later on,” Dr. Belardo says.
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Originally Appeared on Self