They say turning 44 brings ‘dramatic change’. I can’t wait

With a biologically significant birthday looming, it’s time to take stock – and get ready to embrace whatever comes next

Recently I’ve been going through old photographs. My parents are clearing out their loft and I’ve been forced, finally, to confront the boxes of A-level sketchbooks and towers of 90s magazines, and let it all go. The photographs, though, are interesting. It’s a cliché, I know, to look back at images of youth and tut at how lovely you were, and how blind to that loveliness you were at the time. But it still shocks me to look at a photo from my teens, covered in black eyeliner at a family seder night, or awkwardly leaning against the stairs in a 50s dress and 80s shoes, and feel that maternal tug towards my old self, and the memory of just how foolish and monstrous I believed myself to be.

This autumn I will turn 44, an age (new research suggests) of “dramatic change”. The study tracked thousands of molecules in people aged 25 to 75, and detected two major waves of age-related changes, first at 44 and then again at 60. When I read this, I got up from my seat and stood for a little while in front of the mirror. I looked at my jawline and thought about ageing.

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