There’s a bit of good news and a bit of bad news for aging adults when it comes to mental work. Let’s start with the bad. After your 30s, your ability to process information usually declines. So does your capacity to remember things. Maybe there’s some truth to the old saying that “the first thing to go is your memory.” Your brain also becomes more “set” as you age, particularly after age 70, making it harder to produce novel ideas. If all of this seems depressing, keep in mind that for a healthy adult, these changes are small on average.

There is an upside to aging, however, when it comes to your brain. Older people get better and better at a variety of tasks that psychologists lump into a category called crystallized intelligence. Crystallized intelligence refers to the accumulation of knowledge, skills, and abilities that have been practiced again and again. Your vocabulary resists decline, and continues to improve at least through middle age. Other well-practiced skills such as arithmetic improve through middle age as well, and are also unlikely to decline as you grow older.

Psychologists once assumed that after a certain age, our personalities are more or less fixed in place. But more recent research is turning that old idea on its head, showing that people tend to become more conscientious and agreeable over time.

The study, which observed data from over 130,000 adults ages 21-60, found that beginning in your 30s, you are likely to become more conscientious as you age. Conscientiousness in this case is associated with becoming more disciplined and organized. Similarly, people tend to become more agreeable—that is, more generous, warm, and helpful—as they enter their twilight years.

Think the flames of desire dampen as you age? Studies show the opposite is true. As people’s attitudes toward sex have relaxed over the course of the last century, reports of sexual satisfaction among seniors have increased. Back in the 1970s, only four 70-year-old women out of 10 said they had high sexual satisfaction, and only 58% of men at age 70. More recently six women in 10 and 7 men in 10 say they have highly satisfying sex lives at 70.

That’s true for adults in their 80s as well, with half reporting sexual satisfaction “always” or “almost always.” Why the change? Partly it’s that more permissive attitudes contribute more freedom and sexual confidence. But also older people are living more comfortably thanks to advances in modern medicine. Erectile dysfunction has medical cures, and seniors are more likely than ever to seek medical treatment for all the aches and pains of daily life.

The way you taste your food can change as you age. Why? It could be medications. Another culprit is illness. Respiratory diseases, allergies, and gum disease can affect your sense of taste and that other sense so crucial to the way food tastes—smell. So as the way food tastes changes for you, you may find yourself changing your diet accordingly.

This can be good news if you choose to flavor your food with more herbs and spices. But it could also be a problem if you find yourself reaching for the salt shaker time after time. High sodium has been linked with a greater risk of cardiovascular problems, so finding healthier ways to intensify the flavors you enjoy could improve your health.

Aging means finding hairs in new places around your body. This happens to both men and women, but it impacts both genders differently. This is because the changes are largely affected by hormones.

For men, nose and ear hair start to become more sensitive to testosterone. These follicles are already there, but testosterone causes these hairs to become longer and more coarse. So while they may have been more or less invisible before, at a certain age you will likely find them standing out in ways they never had before. To the disappointment of many men, the same isn’t true of the hair on the scalp, which tend to get smaller and grow less frequently, which explains male pattern baldness.

Hormonal changes in women can sometimes lead to a growth in facial hair. As women near menopause, their bodies produce less estrogen. That means testosterone holds greater sway. And it’s this new balance of hormones that can cause the hair on your face to grow coarser and darker.