At What Age Do You Peak? — Transcript

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1. 0:01What would happen if Usain  Bolt raced against himself?
2. 0:05This is 21 year old Usain Bolt
3. 0:08He’s competing against 31 year old Usain Bolt
4. 0:11And other Usain Bolts in between
5. 0:13Who wins?
6. 0:36Bolt was 23 years old when he set the  current world record at 9.58 seconds.
7. 0:41He was never able to match that time again.
8. 0:44If we look at the other best sprinters in history,
9. 0:46we see some peaked in their twenties  and a few in their early thirties.
10. 0:51The typical peak of a 100 meter  sprinter is at around age 25 to 27.
11. 0:56But what about our other  physical and mental peaks?
12. 0:59Do we just peak in the 20s?
13. 1:01You might be thinking this is going to be a
14. 1:03depressing video showing that your  life only gets worse from now on.
15. 1:06But as a 30 year old man who gets back pain from  coughing too hard, I was happy to find out there
16. 1:11are still several peaks in life ahead of me. I looked at scientific papers and gathered
17. 1:15data on the physical and mental peaks  across different stages of our lives.
18. 1:19I also asked my subscribers to fill a survey  with their age and these are the results.
19. 1:23And good news, there should be some life  peaks ahead of all of you in this chart
20. 1:27I’m going to start by breaking  your life into 4 stages.
21. 1:34Stage 1: your childhood.
22. 1:41It seems that you can run around forever,  even when adults around you get tired.
23. 1:46It’s at this age that you get your peak in  fatigue resistance and speed of recovery.
24. 1:53You keep getting into accidents, but that’s ok  because it’s like your body is made out of rubber.
25. 1:57Your flexibility peaks around early adolescence.
26. 2:00The skills you have now are built  on the neural circuits that were
27. 2:03shaped during certain critical  periods of your young life.
28. 2:06For learning a second language, it seems  that the critical period is until age 7.
29. 2:11If you start learning a second language  after that age you can still become
30. 2:14proficient but achieving a near-native  fluency becomes more challenging.
31. 2:18And research suggests there are also critical  periods in childhood for musical abilities.
32. 2:23But things are still getting better.
33. 2:29Enter your 20s.
34. 2:32Life’s good. You feel invincible.
35. 2:36Your reflexes are faster than ever. Your reaction times tend to peak in your 20s.
36. 2:43This study measured the reaction  times of players in a video game
37. 2:45and found that the peak was at age 24.
38. 2:48It’s also in your 20s that athletes  peak for most explosive sports.
39. 2:53That’s the case of the 100m  meter sprint, as we’ve seen.
40. 2:56In Olympic weightlifting, the  age peak is around 26 years old.
41. 3:00It’s a bit harder to measure performance  objectively for team sports, but the studies
42. 3:04I found for basketball and football  also place the peak age in the 20s.
43. 3:09Even though in the 20s you don’t learn languages  as effectively as a kid, you’re sharper than ever.
44. 3:14Your visual working memory,
45. 3:15the ability to temporarily remember and  use visual details, peaks at age 20.
46. 3:20And in the early 20s, you also  peak in fluid intelligence,
47. 3:23the ability to solve new problems without  relying on pre-existing knowledge.
48. 3:27You’re smart, but you’re  still figuring things out.
49. 3:30You quit your job and you book  a trip to Bali to find yourself.
50. 3:34You see, your brain still hasn’t  accumulated a lot of knowledge and
51. 3:36your peak in wisdom will come much later in life.
52. 3:41Enter the 30s.
53. 3:44Your hangovers now last 2 days. You don’t
54. 3:47understand how you could party  so often when you were younger.
55. 3:50It’s getting harder to keep a flat belly.
56. 3:53Half of your friends can’t shut  up about their new air fryers.
57. 3:56The other half are running half marathons.
58. 3:58You’re not sure which one of the  two you want to be associated with.
59. 4:03In endurance sports  several peaks happen in the 30s
60. 4:07Marathon runners peak around age 30.
61. 4:09And there’s an interesting trend. It seems  that the longer the duration of the event,
62. 4:14the later the age peak tends to be at.
63. 4:16100 km ultra marathon runners peak around age 35.
64. 4:20And 100 mile ultra marathon runners  peak at around age 37 or 39.
65. 4:25Most people also hit their top strength around  this age, with powerlifters peaking around age 35.
66. 4:31Cognitively, although some capabilities start to
67. 4:33decline after the 20s, some  hit their peak in the 30s
68. 4:36For example, the ability to remember  new faces tends to peak past age 30.
69. 4:40So the notion that you peak in  your 20s is not necessarily true.
70. 4:44There are several peaks in the  30s, and still a few more to come.
71. 4:48Enter the second half of your life.
72. 4:51You feel tired and you’re not young anymore.
73. 4:54You’re trying to avoid the  infamous midlife crisis.
74. 4:56What other peaks could there be left?
75. 4:59Although your brain no longer has the  neuroplasticity nor the fluid intelligence
76. 5:02of younger times, you have a greater  ability to use accumulated knowledge,
77. 5:06also known as crystallized intelligence. In careers where the years of accumulated
78. 5:10knowledge are crucial, age peaks  can occur in the middle age.
79. 5:13For example, the average age of a  successful startup founder is 45,
80. 5:17contrary to the stereotype of young founders.
81. 5:20And to my surprise, some research indicates that  the peak in happiness actually happens in old age.
82. 5:25There’s a theory that suggests  that happiness has a U shape:
83. 5:28the hypothesis is that your happiness  dips during midlife and peaks in old age.
84. 5:33This U-shape theory is still  debated by researchers,
85. 5:36but I found it interesting so I looked into  a study that tried to measure this curve.
86. 5:39They looked at the data from  the European Social Survey,
87. 5:42a survey that measures things  like happiness, income and health.
88. 5:45They found that the self-reported  level of happiness was higher for
89. 5:48people with higher income overall,  suggesting that money does contribute
90. 5:51to happiness. But they also found  that it was lower for older people.
91. 5:55Does that mean the U shape theory is wrong?
92. 5:57Well, firstly, they found that people in the lower  and middle income groups did have a mid-life dip.
93. 6:03And secondly, they found that if we adjust the  data to include factors like being healthy,
94. 6:07having children and living together with someone,
95. 6:10you do get a U-curve with the peak at an  old age, regardless of the income level.
96. 6:14In other words, old Europeans who don’t fall  into certain factors like being unhealthy or
97. 6:19living alone are actually likely to report a  higher level of happiness than younger people.
98. 6:24The data is open source so I  decided to explore it myself.
99. 6:27If we plot the age on the x-axis,
100. 6:29income on the y-axis, and the self-reported level  of happiness on the z-axis, we get this picture.
101. 6:37As the age increases, the spread  in happiness between the different
102. 6:40income groups increases as well, suggesting  that income matters less when you’re young.
103. 6:45And we can see the mid-life happiness dip  for people of lower and middle incomes.
104. 6:49Even though the happiness  U-shape theory is still debated,
105. 6:51I personally think it’s uplifting  to see that there’s at least a few
106. 6:55people that hit their peak in happiness  at such an advanced stage of their lives.
107. 6:58There’s more research related to your life peaks  that I didn’t include to keep the video short.
108. 7:02But in summary, these are some  of the peaks in your life.
109. 7:05Does that mean you can’t learn new languages  when you’re 30, or be strong when you’re 50?
110. 7:10Fortunately, you can. That’s the  good news, for most of these things
111. 7:14you can maintain good form and even  improve if you take care of yourself.
112. 7:18Many athletes can maintain good  form throughout life with training.
113. 7:22Bernard Hopkins, a professional boxer, won the IBF  light heavyweight title when he was 49 years old.
114. 7:28And the same principle applies to your brain.
115. 7:30Although there is some neural  deterioration that occurs with age,
116. 7:33your brain can still adapt and improve  its performance with mental training
117. 7:36There are a few things you can do to make  sure you age well mentally and physically:
118. 7:40Take care of your physical health. That means  staying active, eating healthy and sleeping well
119. 7:45Take care of your mental health: Do social  activities and hobbies and manage your stress
120. 7:50And finally, engage in mentally stimulating
121. 7:52activities throughout your life And no matter how old you are,
122. 7:56I personally think it’s never too late  to start climbing towards a new peak.
123. 8:00And if you want to make sure you stay sharp and
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