Some fear old age because they’re afraid of losing their beauty.
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But others were not so fortunate. Most people’s biological age was within a few years of their chronological age.
“If we can identify why some people have more rapid biological aging, it may be possible to intervene and reduce the risks of complications and diseases related to aging”, said Leipzig, who was not involved in the study. “The overwhelming majority are biologically in their mid-40s or younger, but there are a handful of cases who are in pretty bad shape”, one of the study’s authors says, per the Guardian.
“The time is right for this kind of multi-factorial way of measuring the aging process, but the measures and methods will have to be refined to be “better, faster and cheaper”, said Dr Dan Belsky, an assistant research professor at Duke University’s Center for Aging”.
The University of Otago’s long-running Dunedin Multidisciplinary Study tracked more than 1000 people born in Dunedin in 1972-73 from birth to the present.
Although 30 members of the group died before the age of 38 – due to accidents, suicide, cancer or drug overdoses – and others dropped out or provided insufficient data, the remaining subjects provide a fascinating insight into the ageing process, along with evidence of the physical and mental fatigue this can cause.
Belsky asserted that the study establishes a clear relationship between looking older on the outside and aging faster on the inside.
The aging process isn’t all genetic. They also measured telomeres – the “caps” on the end of DNA strands that stop them unravelling which have been found to shorten with age.
You might have heard your parents or grandparents say something like, “Oh to be young again”, at some point in your life.
Advances in anti-ageing therapies and in estimating biological age raise big questions for society, both at an individual level and in the public and private sectors. The said study has been published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Belsky said that most people tend to think of aging as something that happens later on in life, but in this study, signs of aging were apparent in people from ages 26 to 38.
This study could change the way people see biological age. Biologically older participants were weaker, less coordinated, had lower IQs and felt and looked older than their biologically younger counterparts. And their faces seemed older, according to college students asked to rate their photos.
People aging more rapidly were less physically able, showed cognitive decline and brain aging, reported worse health and looked older.
The truth is we will all age, and while ageing products already created a multi-million dollar market that target mid 30s to 50s women, study reveals that ageing can start as early as mid 20s too. Combining the measurements allowed scientists to determine each individual’s pace of ageing. “We want a real-time barometer of how a peson is doing, and whether the therapy is really changing their rate of ageing”, he said.
General disease prevention slows down aging.
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As the global population gets older, the prevalence of age-related diseases also increases.
