Dr. Kat Cotter, a Chiropractor, Certified Anti-aging Practitioner and author of the book, Clock Stoppers: 365 Daily Health Hacks to Stop Aging, has a few tips for staying healthy and fit from your 20s into your 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond.

by Dr. Kat Cotter

Men, if you want to stay as young and healthy as possible and keep your edge whatever your age, start by being aware of the changes that occur as the average person ages.  Really look at some of the older individuals you know and study their bodies and movements. Very often you’ll see a loss of strength, posture, balance, flexibility, speed, vision, hearing and reaction time.  This will not happen to you if you start now because it’s never too early to cover those issues in your training sessions and workouts.

Let’s take reaction time. 

Researchers found that the brain’s response time begins to decline at just age 24, so your workouts should have a component addressing this.  When deciding what to incorporate into your routine, think about why this decline happens so you can address the causes.

Lowered reaction time has a few causes: age-related changes in the brain such as slower signals from the brain to nerves and muscles, less flexibility of joints and tendons, weaker muscles and less accurate awareness of their extremities’ position in space. 

Once you’ve identified the causes you can then address them in your workout.  For example, some exercises that increase reaction time are obstacle courses or simply running on a nature trail with varied terrain. Uneven footing and unpredictable obstacles create stimuli that your body will have to quickly react to. You should start by jogging at a slow speed until you begin to feel your reflexes improving over time. If you have a partner, play dodgeball or tennis. The goal of all these exercises is to force your brain to respond to a stimulus and send a message to your muscles more quickly. And when you vary what you do, you stimulate the brain/body connection even more.

Since another cause of lowered reaction time is less flexibility, yoga poses and stretching more after your workouts can address those components.  And to increase your awareness of your extremities’ position in space you’ll need to work on your proprioception.  Examples are standing on a balance board, standing on one leg with your eyes closed and the tree pose in yoga.

Another age-related issue is sarcopenia, which is the progressive loss of muscle mass, function, and strength as we age.

This loss of muscle mass often leads to diminished strength and can contribute to mobility issues, falls and fractures, frailty, and the loss of physical function and independence. It’s not rare. Approximately forty-five percent of older adults in the United States are affected by sarcopenia, a number that will continue to increase as the population ages. Between the ages of thirty and sixty, the average adult will gain one pound of weight and lose half a pound of muscle yearly. That’s a total gain of thirty pounds of fat and a loss of fifteen pounds of muscle! And after the age of seventy, muscle loss accelerates to fifteen percent per decade. Wow! 

To help prevent this, remember that the amino acids in protein are the building blocks of muscle and leucine is particularly good at helping your body in its muscle-building work. Look up the foods highest in leucine and remember that resistance training is also extremely important for building and keeping your muscle mass. Research shows that even a couple of short resistance workouts each week can improve muscle mass and strength. Vary your workouts by mixing up the exercises, number of reps, and the weight you use (heavy weights and fewer reps one day, lighter weights and more reps the next). This surprises your muscles, and they respond by getting stronger and more resilient.

Another way to keep your edge is to keep your prostate healthy.

Studies have shown that men who exercise regularly have a lower risk of all types of prostate problems. Physical activity can help prevent BPH (benign prostatic hypertrophy) which is very common in men over 50 and can reduce symptoms of chronic prostatitis (which is the most common prostate problem in men under 50).  And a 2024 study published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that over a five year period, men who had improved their fitness by at least 3% a year were 35% less likely to develop prostate cancer. 

And if you haven’t tried it, do the Sit-Stand Test.

You sit on the floor and get back up without the help of your hands or knees. You must first lower yourself to the floor, crisscross style, without bracing yourself with your hands, knees, arms, or sides of your legs. Then, if you can stand back up without the aid of those body parts, you’ve scored a perfect 10 (5 points for sitting and 5 points for standing). You lose a point for each body part you need to use in getting up or down. There are many videos online showing people doing it. If you need to use your knee or an arm to get up, should you plan for an early demise? No. Luckily many other variables apply to our longevity, but it is a good measure of your leg and core strength as well as your balance. 

To prevent arthritis, flexibility exercises should be included in your plan.  And check out “Super Slow” resistance training. Moving slowly reduces force on the body and helps lessen joint damage. It’s often used for those recovering from a previous injury because it strengthens the muscles that support the joints without causing additional wear and tear.

Certain supplements can also help.

Glucosamine Sulfate, Chondroitin Sulfate, and MSM are the most common joint-rebuilding supplements. They provide your body with the raw materials to help damaged cartilage repair itself. MSM also helps with the pain from joint inflammation and can be combined with other pain-relieving supplements like turmeric or Boswellia. These can also be combined with bone-building nutrients such as boron, calcium, Vitamin D3, and magnesium. There are several good products that include all or most of these in one formula.

Many injuries to your tendons and ligaments can be the result of an actual injury or may be caused by overdoing exercise (such as using too much weight or a repetitive-stress injury). A tendon or ligament injury can really throw a wrench into your training or fitness program because it often takes weeks and sometimes months depending on the severity of the strain/sprain and the older you are, the longer it can take to heal. Three peptides, BPC-157, TB-500 and CJC-1295, work wonders in healing connective tissue injuries and can really help speed up the process. Another interesting thing about peptides is that if you had, for example, a sprained ankle or Achilles tendinitis, peptides signal your body to focus its repair efforts specifically on that joint. Peptides are big news now so check them out.

You can get lots more tips in the book, Clock Stoppers: 365 Daily Health Hacks to Stop Aging available on Amazon. 

It’s a daily handbook that covers 52 weeks of the year and there’s a different project each week with 7 daily health hacks in that project. At the end of one year, you might be a year older chronologically but you just might be 5 or 10 years younger biologically. The name of the book is Clock Stoppers because you may just stop the clock- and keep your edge indefinitely!