Do I look younger or older than my age? The study of aging markers shows that this is not an idle question: for some of us, the biological age is significantly different from the calendar.
Scientists studied 18 physiological markers (blood pressure, liver and kidney function, metabolism, cholesterol levels, the state of the cardiovascular system, the length of telomeres – the end sections of chromosomes) to assess the biological age of the experiment participants at the age of 26, 32 and, finally, 38 years. .
For the analysis, data from a long-term study were used, in which scientists recorded the dynamics of life and health of 871 people born in 1972-1973 from Dunedin, New Zealand. Thirty of them died before the age of 38 due to severe illness, accidents, suicide or drug overdose.
In some people, the body was younger than the real age, as if the last 12 years had not affected it at all. Others were not so lucky. For most 38-year-olds, the biological age was forty-odd, sometimes it went off scale for fifty, and in one case it was 61 years: this means that over 12 years of observation, the body of this person aged three times faster than usual.
Physiological signs of aging usually appear earlier than age-related diseases. “Biologically old” people performed worse on tests of balance and coordination, as well as solving unfamiliar tasks. They reported that they had more difficulty than others with daily tasks such as climbing stairs. Students who were allowed to look at their photographs thought they looked older than their age.
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“It is becoming clear that the aging process is the cause of many diseases and disabilities. But so far, researchers have studied these processes mainly in older people who already suffer from a host of age-related diseases. We wanted to understand what happens at a younger age. Now it is clear that even people younger than average age can age faster than normal, which affects their health, appearance and mental abilities, ”says Daniel Belsky, one of the authors of the study, from the Duke University School of Medicine in North Carolina (USA).
1 D.W. Belsky et al. «Quantification of biological aging in young adults», готовится к публикации в Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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