7 Signs You’re Ageing Faster Than You Should Be
7 Signs You’re Ageing Faster Than You Should Be
And What to Do About It
Something I see a lot with the founders and executives I work with: they’re succeeding on paper, but struggling inside. Energy is down. Sleep is broken. The body feels like it’s running behind schedule.
The good news? Most of this is not inevitable. It’s not just ‘getting older.’ It’s your biology sending you a message — and if you know what to look for, you can do something about it.
I recently picked up a feature in a national newspaper by Dr Florence Comite (author of Invincible: Defy Your Genetic Destiny and Live Better, Longer) that laid out seven of the most common patterns of premature ageing she sees in clinical practice. What struck me wasn’t just the list — it was how closely it maps to what the research is increasingly confirming: that the way we live in midlife has a profound and measurable effect on how fast we age.
Here are those seven signs, what the science actually says about each one, and — crucially — the levers you can pull.
1. You’re Gaining Weight Around the Middle
A few pounds around the waist might feel like a cosmetic problem, but visceral fat — the deep abdominal fat that accumulates around your organs — is one of the most metabolically active (and dangerous) substances in the body. It releases inflammatory chemicals, disrupts blood sugar regulation, and is linked to heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and dementia.
Here’s what makes it particularly relevant for high performers: visceral fat doesn’t just affect the body. It affects the brain.
A landmark study by RSNA researchers found that higher visceral fat was directly associated with older biological brain age, while muscle mass offered a protective effect — meaning the ratio between the two matters as much as any individual number (source: RSNA, November 2025).
Separately, research published in RSNA 2024 linked visceral fat in midlife adults to Alzheimer’s-associated proteins in the brain — up to 20 years before symptoms appear (source: RSNA, December 2024).
What helps:
•Prioritise protein at every meal to preserve and build muscle mass (target 1.5–2g per kg of body weight daily).
•Reduce refined carbohydrates and prioritise blood-sugar-steady eating — protein first, vegetables before starch, and avoid late-night carbohydrates.
•Strength training two to three times per week is one of the most effective interventions for reducing visceral fat specifically.
•Address sleep and stress — both are significant but underestimated drivers of abdominal fat accumulation.
2. You’re Constantly Out of Breath
Heart disease is often described as a silent killer — the warning signs develop years before a cardiac event, and many of them don’t look like what we expect. Shortness of breath during everyday activities, swollen legs and ankles, or feeling exhausted after light exertion can all be indicators that your cardiovascular system is under strain.
A Mediterranean dietary approach — rich in vegetables, whole grains, oily fish, nuts, and olive oil — has consistent, robust evidence for reducing cardiovascular risk, lowering inflammation, and protecting blood vessels.
What helps:
•Get a baseline health check: blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar are the starting point.
•Add short bursts of higher-intensity movement into your week — even 20–30 seconds of walking faster or sprinting during a walk has meaningful cardiovascular benefit.
•Walk after meals where possible to help regulate blood sugar and reduce cardiovascular strain.
•Anti-inflammatory supplements worth discussing with your doctor: omega-3 fatty acids, turmeric with black pepper, green tea extract, and vitamin D.
3. You Have Dry Skin and Thinning Hair
Often attributed to ‘just getting older’ or hormonal changes, persistent dry skin, brittle hair and unexplained weight gain can point to an underactive thyroid. Hypothyroidism is significantly more common in women, particularly from perimenopause onwards, and is frequently missed because standard thyroid tests only capture part of the picture.
Beyond thyroid function, blood sugar instability is also a major driver of skin and hair changes — through a process called glycation, where sugar molecules bind to proteins in the skin and accelerate cellular ageing. A 2024 meta-analysis in Experimental Dermatology confirmed that dietary advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) actively accumulate in the skin, disrupting cellular function and accelerating visible ageing.
What helps:
•Ask your GP for a full thyroid panel including TSH, free T4, and free T3.
•Stabilise blood sugar: reduce processed foods and refined sugar, and eat in a way that keeps glucose steady throughout the day.
•Iodine supports thyroid hormone production — good dietary sources include milk, Greek yogurt, cod, shellfish, and seaweed.
4. You Can’t Do 10 Push-Ups
Muscle mass is what Dr Comite calls “the organ of longevity” — and she’s right. Muscle does far more than keep us strong. It regulates blood pressure, burns fat, protects against age-related disease including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and dementia, and releases anti-inflammatory signalling proteins called myokines that communicate directly with the brain.
From our 50s onwards, muscle loss accelerates significantly — a process called sarcopenia — and unless we actively counteract it, we can lose four to six pounds of muscle per decade. The consequences go well beyond physical function.
A landmark 2024 study of 33,709 UK Biobank participants found that sarcopenic traits were associated with structural brain changes and poorer cognitive performance — particularly memory and processing speed (source: Brain Communications, Oxford, 2024).
A 2024 Mendelian randomisation study published in PLOS ONE confirmed a causal relationship between muscle mass, walking speed, and cognitive performance (source: PLOS ONE, September 2024). In other words, your grip strength isn’t just a fitness metric. It’s a window into your brain health.
What helps:
•Strength training is non-negotiable from midlife onwards — aim for two to three sessions per week including compound movements like squats, rows, and presses.
•Increase protein intake, particularly leucine-rich sources such as eggs, fish, dairy, and lean meat.
•Grip strength and walking pace are two of the strongest markers of longevity you can track and improve.
5. Changes in Female Sex Drive
This is one of the most commonly experienced and least commonly discussed signs of hormonal change in midlife. A shift in libido, vaginal dryness, disrupted mood, or discomfort during intimacy during perimenopause and menopause can significantly affect quality of life — and is rarely about the relationship itself.
These changes also affect far wider hormonal health needs, influencing bone density, muscle strength, heart health, cognitive function, and, critically for our clients, sleep quality. Hormonal disruption and poor sleep are deeply connected.
What helps:
•Speak to your GP or a menopause specialist. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is transformative for many women and there is no automatic need to stop at age 60.
•Address sleep proactively — disrupted sleep worsens hormonal dysregulation, and hormonal dysregulation worsens sleep. This feedback loop is one of the most important things to interrupt.
•Testosterone also plays a role in female libido and energy; ask about whether testing is appropriate for you.
6. Erectile Dysfunction
Erectile dysfunction is frequently the first visible sign of cardiovascular risk in men. The blood vessels supplying the penis are among the smallest in the body, and when blood flow is compromised by narrowing arteries, raised cholesterol, high blood sugar, or insulin resistance, this is often where problems first show up. It should always be taken seriously as a systemic signal, not just a localised one.
Low testosterone is also a significant factor and affects far more than sexual function: it impacts energy, mood, cognitive sharpness, muscle mass, and metabolic health.
What helps:
•Start with a full health check: blood pressure, cholesterol, fasting blood sugar, and testosterone levels.
•Cardiovascular lifestyle changes — particularly diet and exercise — have a direct and meaningful impact.
If testosterone is low, tailored hormone therapy can help restore energy, mental sharpness, and sexual vitality. This is a conversation worth having with a specialist.
7. Brain Fog
This is perhaps the symptom I hear about most from the founders and executives I work with. Forgetting names, losing words mid-sentence, feeling like the brain is running through treacle. It’s normalised to a degree that it shouldn’t be, because in most cases it’s not inevitable — it’s addressable.
Brain fog has multiple drivers: blood sugar instability, poor sleep, insulin resistance, high cortisol, thyroid issues, and cardiovascular compromise all contribute. Sleep is particularly significant.
A major 2025 study from Karolinska Institutet, covering 27,500 participants from the UK Biobank, found that poor sleep quality significantly accelerates biological brain ageing and increases dementia risk (source: ScienceDaily / Karolinska Institutet, October 2025).
A review published in The Lancet’s eBioMedicine found that across large-scale cohorts, poor sleep independently predicted one to three additional years of MRI-derived brain age acceleration — even after adjusting for vascular and metabolic factors (source: eBioMedicine / The Lancet, 2025).
UCLA research also found that even a single night of partial sleep deprivation activates genes associated with biological ageing in older adults — suggesting that the effects are not just cumulative but immediate (source: Population Reference Bureau).
What helps:
•Keep blood sugar steady — the 3am waking pattern is often a blood sugar crash in disguise, not a sleep problem per se.
•Aerobic exercise is one of the most powerful tools for sharpening memory and concentration. Running or cycling increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that supports new neural connections.
•B vitamins support brain function, particularly if levels are low. Check with your GP.
•If brain fog persists, ask for thyroid function and hormone status checks.
The Thread That Runs Through All Seven
Every single one of these patterns is modifiable. And every single one is influenced — significantly — by sleep.
This is the part most health guidance skips over. We talk about visceral fat, muscle loss, cardiovascular risk, and hormonal health as separate silos. But underneath all of them, the quality and architecture of your sleep is either accelerating or decelerating the whole process.
Sleep is where your body repairs. It’s where cortisol resets, growth hormone is released, insulin sensitivity is restored, the brain clears metabolic waste, and the immune system recalibrates. When sleep is chronically disrupted — even subtly — every other system in the body is running with one hand tied behind its back.
This is why, when I work with clients on sleep, we’re never just working on sleep. We’re working on energy, cognitive performance, body composition, hormonal health, cardiovascular resilience, and longevity. It all connects.
Your Next Step
If you recognise yourself in two or more of these patterns, that’s not a reason to panic — it’s a reason to pay attention.
The question isn’t whether these things are happening. At some level, they’re happening to all of us in midlife. The question is whether you’re building the foundation that slows the process down — or whether the grind is quietly accelerating it.
I run a free on-demand webinar called Sleep Like a CEO that’s specifically designed for founders and senior leaders who know sleep matters but can’t figure out why theirs is broken — or what to actually do about it. It’s practical, evidence-based, and about an hour of your time.
You can access it here:
Or if you’d rather start with a conversation about where you currently stand, you’re welcome to reach out directly.
Your biology is giving you information. The question is what you do with it. Reset. Rise. Resilience.
Carol Standing
Founder, Still Standing Health | Sleep & Performance Coach for Senior Leaders
