We Weren’t Supposed To Age

What the hell happened? And what are we doing about it?

Chances are good that Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z will have a smoother road to aging than the Boomers, leading to both smoother faces and stronger bones and joints. Their biggest liability to an ageless winter is their lack of vitamin D caused by a lack of exposure to sunlight. Because. Video games and internet.

My son is a Millennial who has been diagnosed with low vitamin D. How could he not be? The sport he plays is basketball, which is largely played indoors. In high school and college the majority of the rest of his time was spent studying indoors, or playing video games in a darkened room. His darker skin takes longer to soak up vitamin D than his lighter skinned counterparts. But his generation, and the one preceding and following, know to supplement the vitamins and minerals they are missing. Many of them are vegetarian or vegan, or at least eat healthy. They have been helicoptered into sports, dance, martial arts, etc. They have a head start.

My generation got plenty of vitamin D. What we didn’t get was the promised fountains of youth. Our women were going to be the second generation to be given Hormone Replacement Therapy or HRT (my mother took premarin), which would keep us looking and feeling young forever. Until one flawed study linked HRT to breast cancer. It was never…