By Amy Dockser Marcus | Video and photographs by Cody O'Loughlin for WSJ

It took two people to make me feel like I was a woman in my 80s.

At the MIT AgeLab, which works on finding ways to improve life for the elderly, a pair of researchers helped me put on their age-simulation suit. They started with a 15-pound weighted vest, tightening the straps around my body. They added more weights around my ankles and wrists, to replicate the sensation of the loss of muscle mass that accompanies aging. They pulled a blue jumpsuit up over the weights, helping me lift each leg and step into the suit without falling.

They added a harness around my waist, and a bungee cord system that attached to different body parts including the back of the ankles and my wrists. The cords reduced my ability to reach up and shortened my stride. The get-up made it even more difficult to stand without a slouch. They put a padded neck collar on to limit my rotation and goggles to distort my vision. Foam-padded Crocs on my feet challenged my balance.

The MIT designers call the outfit the "Age Gain Now Empathy System," or Agnes for short. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw the name emblazoned on the jumpsuit and a different person, older by a couple of decades.

The original version of the MIT AgeLab suit was conceived as part of a training exercise for engineers, designers and marketers at a German automaker looking at what older customers might want in luxury cars. Over the years, the MIT team has made changes to improve the suit's accuracy in simulating aging. The suit has been worn by chief executives, designers, clinicians, the movie star Chris Hemsworth -- and now this reporter.

Agnes is envisioned as someone in their late 70s to early 80s struggling with several unmanaged conditions. The experience can include earplugs to simulate hearing loss, which some studies have linked to increased risk of dementia in the elderly, as well as social isolation. I decided not to wear them as I was already wary of the difficulty I would face getting through the day as Agnes.

Longevity is an area that has attracted billions of dollars in investment in recent years. With one in six people in the U.S. now 65 and over, longevity businesses are being built on science that is a still-emerging yet increasingly popular area of research. Longer lifespans mean many people live more years with chronic conditions such as diabetes and arthritis and with other physical issues associated with aging. That has brought a new focus on finding ways to slow down, or even reverse, aging.

My reporting on this topic has given me a unique perch from which to contemplate my own aging. A fall one evening on the cobblestones outside a restaurant during a moment of distraction gave me a scare, and I felt fortunate I didn't break anything. The incident propelled me to take up strength training in the hopes of improving my balance and preventing bone fractures in the future. I wondered if I should be doing even more.

Dr. Howard Luks, an orthopaedic surgeon and sports enthusiast, built a social-media presence and wrote a longevity book premised on the idea that simple strategies, such as staying active, can work. People assume they will decline as they age, he told me, and to some degree that is true. "However, the majority of the reason is because we don't practice. We no longer challenge ourselves," Luks said. "You maintain the abilities you train."

I appreciated the idea that I could change the course of my own aging through my actions. Dr. Julia Loewenthal, a geriatrician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, agreed, but reminded me that accidents, disease or random bad luck can set even the best-prepared person off course in old age. "It's not your fault," she tells her patients.

Spending a day in the age suit, I hoped, might bring me greater insight into what it is really like to age -- and what I could do to prepare. The day's activities posed a number of challenges.

During an excursion to the supermarket, I had trouble reaching products on the highest shelves because of the constricted movements of my arms. Standing on my toes helped me reach some of the items, a reminder of the importance of exercises to stretch my muscles and improve balance.

Gloves included with the suit made it more difficult for me to navigate a keypad. I selected the wrong price for the carrots I bought and could see the line getting longer at the self-checkout line while I made a correction. I felt uncomfortable knowing I was causing the holdup and vowed to be more patient when I saw someone needing extra time.

The goggles I wore mimicked the impaired vision that can accompany aging. Here is what my receipt at the supermarket looked like through the lens of the goggles.

Getting on the subway required concentration, especially in trying to avoid tripping on the gap between the platform and the train. I rode the subway after the morning rush hour. It would have been even more difficult during peak hours, when people are jostling to get on.

On the subway, I paid closer attention than usual to the conductor's announcements, as I wanted to give myself enough time to get up from the seat and position myself near the door to exit. In my anticipatory state, I got up too early and had to grab the pole to steady myself so I didn't fall when the subway lurched to a stop.

In the AgeLab kitchen, I made myself ramen soup. With the goggles, I had trouble reading the instructions on how much water to put in, and the result wasn't appetizing. I tried a different soup and struggled to remove the plastic lid. It made me think about a recommendation from Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research Translational Institute, author of a book about "super agers," to work on improving my hand strength and agility by squeezing a small gripper device.

Looking back on the day, some moments stood out. On my way to the supermarket, I hesitated to cross the street when I saw the walk sign flashing a countdown of how much time I had to get to the other side. Joseph Coughlin, the founder and director of the AgeLab, had been walking behind me observing how I experienced my turn as Agnes.

"You had 14 seconds, but you weren't going to try it," Coughlin said.

As Amy, I would have darted across the busy intersection without a further thought. Dressed in the Agnes gear, I felt encumbered and slow. When I looked to my left -- turning my whole body rather than just my neck due to the neck brace that simulated spinal compression -- I saw the heavy traffic. Cars were lined up waiting for the light to turn green, and I imagined drivers' impatience. Other pedestrians were pushing past me to make it across the street. I didn't want to take the chance.

"Everyone focuses on the physical load," Coughlin told me. "But there is a significant cognitive load here to making these types of decisions."

Later, when I told the story to Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, a neurologist and director of the neuromodulation research center at Hebrew SeniorLife's Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research in Boston, he pointed out that the cognitive load I experienced would have been even worse if I were elderly. "It's one thing to have the old-body experience with a younger brain. It's even more exhausting with an old brain," Pascual-Leone said. "When you age, it's not just your body changing but also your brain changing."

Pascual-Leone and his colleagues are studying interventions such as noninvasive brain stimulation to activate or modify brain circuits connected with moving the fingers or walking. Their research has shown that courses of targeted electrical currents could improve elderly people's movement, at least for some period of time.

Walking does become more of a cognitive task as people age, said Brad Manor, director of the mobility and falls research center at the Marcus Institute. The researchers found that people who practiced tai chi, a Chinese martial art, fell less and showed improved mobility. The majority of falls occur in older adults when they are walking and become distracted by mental tasks such as reading signs, talking or daydreaming, Manor said.

For patients who want to improve balance, activities that require the mind and the body to work together such as yoga, pickleball or ping pong are recommended, Manor said. Dance is another suggested pursuit, with the added benefit of social interaction in ballroom dancing or tango.

Ultimately, the problems represented by the Agnes experience partly reflect inactivity. "You can improve walking by walking more," Manor said.

Throughout my day as Agnes, I kept thinking about a conversation I had with Becca Levy, a professor of psychology at Yale University who studies how beliefs about aging influence people's health.

She has done studies of older people who are given memory tests. For 10 minutes before taking the tests, some of the people saw words flashed on their computer screens associated with positive images of old age, such as "wise" and "learned." Others were shown negative words such as "senile" or "confused." People primed with the positive words performed better on the memory tests than those who saw the negative ones, Levy said, an experiment described in her book, "Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Live."

Aging isn't just biological, she told me, but also a cultural and social experience that can be shaped by how someone thinks about being old.

Levy's research came to mind when I walked up the stairs to the AgeLab after the grocery shopping and the subway ride. I felt sweaty and tired.

But when I walked through the AgeLab, one of the people working there gave me a smile and called out, "Hello Agnes!"

I felt welcomed, ready to embrace my inner Agnes and try to become the best possible version of her that I could be. I smiled back and lifted my bungee-corded arm as high as I could, giving an enthusiastic wave.

(MORE TO FOLLOW) Dow Jones Newswires

September 03, 2025 20:00 ET (00:00 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.