What to Expect from Your Nervous System After 65 and How to Care for It

Think of your body as a city. Streets, lights, buildings, energy sources, all connected. Now imagine the nervous system as the city’s ultimate Wi-Fi network, transmitting billions of signals every second, faster than the speed of a sports car on the highway. It’s everywhere at once, invisible but decisive.

What does it actually do?

• It’s the control center: your brain sends commands through it like texts that reach your muscles and organs.
• It’s the translator of reality: every taste, sound, and touch you feel is decoded by this system.
• It’s the emotional DJ: from joy to stress, your mood has its roots in how your nervous system balances neurotransmitters.
• It’s also the memory vault: storing experiences, skills, and instincts so you don’t have to relearn how to walk or ride a bike.

Why should we pay attention? 

Because unlike your phone, there’s no charger you can plug it into overnight. Your nervous system is plastic (meaning it can adapt), but it’s also delicate. Stress, lack of sleep, poor diet, or even emotional overload can jam the signal. When that happens, your reactions slow, your focus wavers, and your creativity gets foggy.

Curious facts most people overlook 

• Your brain has about 86 billion neurons but what really matters are the connections between them (up to 1,000 trillion synapses!).
• A single nerve impulse can travel at more than 250 miles per hour, faster than a Formula 1 car.
• Most of your serotonin (the “happiness” chemical) isn’t in your brain, but in your gut linked to the nervous system through the vagus nerve.
• Every time you learn something new, your brain physically changes shape, like adding a new shortcut in Google Maps.
• Sleep isn’t just rest, it’s when the nervous system does “night cleaning,” flushing out toxins from the brain.

👉 In short: your nervous system is the operating system of being human. The better you care for it through movement, good sleep, creativity, and mindful stress management, the more bandwidth you’ll have for what matters: learning faster, feeling sharper, and staying curious.