Spare a thought for the 36-year-olds. Not yet gifted the year of parties that accompany your friends turning 40, still dusting ourselves off after falling from the fertility cliff and officially – according to some definitions, shared with me by my sister – in midlife.
So far, so unremarkable. So when the age was splashed across newspapers this week, I was pleased to see it enjoying a moment in the April sun. Only, it wasn’t quite the good-news story I was hoping for.
‘Why 36 is the age your health problems begin,’ WH’s health editor reported, while The Times declared, ‘Party lifestyle takes its toll on health from age 36.’ ‘Unhealthy habits hit hard after we’re 36,’ said another, before posing the question my friends and I have been asking ourselves, too: ‘is it too late for you?’
The source eliciting this existential dread was a study by researchers from Finland – and they put in the hours. Across five decades, they tracked the health of 326 participants – collecting physical and mental health data at 27, 36, 42, 50 and 61.
Alongside the kind of health metrics you probably track on your own smartwatch, the researchers assessed the participants for their risky habits (more, heavy drinking and a laissez-faire approach to exercise; less, an appetite for base jumping).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, practising riskier health habits was associated with poorer mental wellbeing, feeling generally less well and a higher number of metabolic risk factors. What gave the researchers pause for thought was that this decline kicks off while you’re still attending your friend’s weddings.
Reading the research as a freshly-minted 37-year-old, I can’t say I’m surprised. I celebrated my 36th lap around the sun from the karaoke room of an east London pub – and the margaritas that lubricated my rendition of ‘Jolene’ would be the last I’d drink.
I wasn’t an alcoholic. Nor was I exceeding the 14-units-a-week-guidelines – I’d been moderating for months already. But the anxiety-stricken hours that followed three, two, sometimes a single drink had become wearing; the energy that previous periods of sobriety reliably delivered, addictive.
A week after my birthday, at a colleague’s leaving do, I cracked a can of gin-in-a-tin, took one sip, and decided I was done with drinking. It wasn’t a rock-bottom, just the earned-with-age instinct of knowing what was right for my body – and what was right for my body no longer included alcohol.
My decision raised some eyebrows. I had my fair share of fun in my twenties and continued living what The Times might call ‘a party lifestyle’ into my early thirties, albeit with increasingly early bedtimes. But if I was the only one swerving the ouzo at my friend’s Greek island wedding that September, I wouldn’t be for long.
By Christmas, two friends were also trying sobriety on for size, many more were cutting back – and those who weren’t walking away from alcohol were taking tennis lessons, running marathons and dipping their toes, then the rest of their bodies, into cold-water swimming. The common feature connecting their newly-acquired health habits? Turning 36.
That a specific ageing alchemy takes place while you’re still replying to your birthday WhatsApps seems far-fetched. More likely than reaching a certain age is that we’ve reached a certain stage; jobs and bigger, care duties more consuming and the vigour we once took for granted is beginning to feel like our most valuable asset.
But if it’s true that the body keeps the score, it’s also true that a 36-year-old body keeps track of every fag, lunge and unit with an efficiency most smartwatches would kill for. And it isn’t afraid to let you know when, frankly, you’re taking the piss – sometimes loudly, often painfully.
Almost 18 months on from that sad gin-in-the-tin (to think my final drink was warm…) I’ve found a health habit that works for me. And while some still try to tempt me back, my friends aren’t among them (no mum, I don’t fancy breaking 18 months of sobriety with the Pizza Express House White to ‘keep you company’).
The Finnish study was observational, meaning the findings can’t speak to causation (you feel depressed in your thirties and you drank heavily in your twenties, not because you drank heavily in your twenties). But to exist in any body is to undertake an observational experiment of your own. I get anxious after I drink; I feel ecstatic after I run; yoga is magic masquerading as movement. So while 36 might be the age at which your lifestyle catches up with you, the best time to start any new health habit, is now.
Nikki Osman is Editor at Women’s Health. A journalist for 15 years, she’s written, commissioned and edited thousands of words on contemporary wellness culture and how to engage with it in a way that works for your health, rather than against it. Passionate about social health, she’s worked on campaigns designed to help people lead more connected lives, as well as initiatives which aim to deliver more equitable access to health.
