Obtaining an adequate amount of sleep every night, on the other hand, slows the onset of physical aging, improves mental health, and reduces the risk for chronic disease. According to studies compiled by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), sleep deprivation may age us quicker than we’d like to admit by speeding up biological aging, as proven by increased DNA damage in blood samples of sleep deprived individuals. Located at the ends of our DNA strands, telomeres’ length shortens as we age, which makes them a significant marker for biological age. Research from the University of California in San Francisco discovered that adhering to a plant-based diet for three months positively affected the degradation of telomeres - another aspect of DNA that is closely correlated with biological age.
A plant-based diet improves heart health and boosts the immune system. In fact, similar studies have been performed on multiple species, from rodents to primates, which all found that calorie restriction is a reliable way to extend longevity, partly because overconsumption, especially of processed foods, can lead to obesity, high-blood pressure, and inflammation which are linked to chronic and age-related diseases. The study found that calorie restriction improved all age-related risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. For example, a prominent study published in The Lancet evaluated the results from two years of calorie restriction in a group of non-obese men and women. Restricting calories and adhering to a healthy diet is one of the most widely proven ways to reduce biological age. The following are a few steps you can take to decrease your biological age: In fact, since lifestyle factors impact how your genes are ultimately expressed, your habits actually impact your biological age more than even your genes do. It turns out that reversing biological age doesn’t necessarily require a strict drug regimen like the aforementioned study, and can in fact be reached through relatively simple lifestyle changes. How can this be achieved? The lifestyle choices you make, such as diet, exercise, and the products you use, all have a cumulative effect on your healthspan and biological age. Keeping your biological age as young as possible will lend not just to a longer lifespan, but a longer healthspan too. For example, someone could live until they are 80 years old, making their lifespan 80, but they could have lived the last 20 years of their life experiencing chronic illness, making their healthspan only 60 years.Īs you may have guessed, healthspan - the number of years that you’re healthy - is intimately related to biological age.
FUNCTIONAL AGE VS CHRONOLOGICAL AGE FREE
This is why the term “healthspan” has become increasingly important in healthcare, as it describes the number of years that you are healthy and free from age-related diseases rather than just the number of years that you’re alive. As advancements in healthcare have led to increased lifespans, the importance of the quality of those extra years gained has become more apparent. However, chronological age and lifespan bear no indication on the health of your body during the years that you live and are therefore not informative for a person’s wellbeing. Historically, scientists used chronological age and lifespan as primary measures of a population’s health - the longer people lived chronologically, the higher the average lifespan, and the healthier that population was considered to be. The good news? Your biological age is totally up to you! In fact, you can, for the most part, control your biological age through your daily habits.
FUNCTIONAL AGE VS CHRONOLOGICAL AGE SKIN
For instance, someone who spends a lot of time in the sun, but also eats a plant-based diet could have skin with a high biological age (meaning their skin looks, feels, and acts older than it is) and a heart with a low biological age (meaning their heart has been well-maintained and acts younger than it actually is).Īs the field of longevity and aging research advances, biological age has become by and far the more important age to pay attention to, because as it turns out, our cells don’t regard our birthdays the same way we do. The rate of this reduction can be influenced by factors such as genetics and lifestyle habits and ultimately determine your biological age.Įach of your organs or tissues have their own biological age, the sum of which determines your overall biological age. Your cells, which make up your tissues and organs, experience aging as a reduction in their ability to function over time. Unlike chronological age, biological age is malleable and varies from person to person, depending on how healthy they are. Biological age describes the age that your body behaves and feels.