1. It takes longer to recover from everything! You might need a whole week to bounce back after a night of heavy drinking.

2. You go to bed feeling fine, only to wake up with a pulled muscle somewhere that takes days to heal.

3. What the hell is going on with all that hair in my ears and nose? Why did it suddenly decide to start growing?

4. All your old injuries come back to haunt you. That knee you banged up during sports practice in school starts acting up! You can hurt your back just by lifting a bag of groceries. Your eyes are always red, not just after a late night at the computer.

5. My body really started to decline after age 45. It’s still healthy and functional, but I have to be more careful about diet, exercise, and things like that.

6. You have to use the bathroom more often.

7. I like to joke that when I turned 40, my «check engine» light came on. You get random aches and pains that come and go—and sometimes stick around for good. If you get injured, expect the healing time to be at least two or three times longer than it was in your school days. It’s the same with illnesses; you can’t shake off a cold as fast as you used to.

8. I hardly drink anymore—hangovers suck, but alcohol also makes my heart race. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding as if I were working out.

9. I broke my left wrist back in elementary school. Once the cast came off, everything was fine. I broke my right wrist about 40 years later, and I needed physical therapy after the cast came off just to get normal movement back in my hand. I asked if it was because of the fracture, and I was told no; the stiffness and soreness were because it had been in a cast for six weeks. I needed therapy for my arm simply because it had been immobilized. Stay active and keep your bodies moving, people.

10. Let’s be realistic. Sometimes you wake up feeling strangely tired, and it doesn't go away all day.

11. Your body is going to ache either way. But it’s up to you: do you want soreness from exercise or soreness from a lack of exercise?

12. I’ve noticed the skin on my hands has become much thinner and more sensitive than before. I feel like Cassandra from *Doctor Who*.

13. My body started deteriorating much more rapidly after age 45. I have to be careful to take proper care of myself, exercise, and so on. But now I look old, and people treat me differently because of it—and that’s sad.

14. As women get older, their breasts start to sag. If you don't do anything about it, your boobs can end up touching your knees when you sit down. But nobody warned us about that when we were young.

15. This year, I started waking up in the middle of the night—around 3 a.m. I go to the bathroom, and then I can't get back to sleep for an hour.

16. If you’re a woman, menopause starts around this age. You don't realize how much hormones affect your body's overall functioning until they start going haywire. Terrible, irregular periods, acne, hair loss, weight issues, extreme fatigue and muscle atrophy, wild mood swings, inability to concentrate. Fun times ahead.

17. My dick stopped getting hard. My hair started falling out. The eyes stopped seeing. The brain stopped remembering.