What’s Your Biological Age?

Everyone ages. It’s a process that none of us can avoid despite how well we care for ourselves. There are two basic types of aging – chronological and biological. And while you experience both, one type of aging can happen faster than the other.

Chronological aging is what we think of when we think of aging. It’s the age on your driver’s license. Biological aging, however, is the amount of cellular and tissue damage that’s accumulated over time.

Scientists have used years of genetic information, advanced molecular biology testing and machine learning to establish biomarkers or “clocks” that define biological age. If a person is chronologically 60 years old but has biomarkers of a 50-year-old, their biological age may be closer to 50. And of course, a 60-year-old with biomarkers of a 70-year-old is considered biologically 70. This helps explain why people of the same age may look, move or just seem older or younger than their chronological age.

Biological aging is complicated – and so is the science behind it. Your doctor is your best resource for understanding how you’re aging and for guiding you on the steps to slow down your biological clock and improve your health. Make sure you talk to your doctor before making any major lifestyle changes. Your doctor knows your health history and can help you pursue healthier choices at an appropriate pace.

Your Body Ages at Different Rates

For example, new research indicates that our biological aging, unlike our chronological aging, isn’t linear. Stanford University researchers believe internal biological aging occurs at various rates, because our genes express themselves at different times during our life, according to a study published in Nature.

This means that your body doesn’t age at a steady rate. Instead, parts of your body, like organs, age on their own timeframe. This is probably why some people develop diseases earlier in life. The concept has led to a new area of research referred to as “organ aging,” which involves studying how quickly different parts of the body age and how it affects our overall health and longevity.

Despite all the research, the science behind biological aging is still pretty new – and testing, which can range from free online surveys to expensive DNA tests, may not produce accurate results.

How Biological Age Is Determined

For consumers, there are multiple tests available that gauge biological age. The most common – and cheapest — are online calculators, which are based on a lifestyle questionnaire and your health history. The most famous is the Real Age test, which is based on thousands of studies. You can take the Real Age test here, but it requires setting up an account.

Other online tests abound. They’re simple, affordable and provide some helpful information. But they’re based on your habits and medical history — not on what’s specifically going on in your body.

More sophisticated testing measures our bodies ages down to the DNA level. For example, the length of your telomeres can suggest biological age. In simplest terms, telomeres are the end caps of chromosomes, which are the long, thread-like structures that contain DNA (genetic information) found in the nucleus of cells.

Telomeres prevent chromosomes from fraying, like the plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces. Telomeres also have additional function and serve as markers for our biological age. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres shorten and eventually become too short to divide. Shorter telomeres are associated with age-related illnesses such as heart disease, dementia, cancer and diabetes.

Telomere testing exists for certain conditions. Your doctor may prescribe a telomere length test to help diagnose bone marrow failure, dyskeratosis congenita (a bone marrow failure syndrome) and pulmonary fibrosis. Or your doctor may order the lab test as a part of managing myelodysplastic syndromes (cancers involving blood-forming cells in the bone marrow), acute myeloid leukemia and liver failure.

If you’re curious about your biological age, you could go online to buy an over-the-counter qPCR telomere measurement kit. These tests involve a blood sample, and the price generally ranges between $100 and $400. Before you order one, however, consider that these tests are controversial. They have wide variability rates and may not give you an accurate picture of your biological age. For example, one study found no correlation between telomere length in older women and cognitive health. Additional studies have found links between longer telomere length AND shorter telomere length and Alzheimer’s disease.

Another test looks at your epigenetic age. Epigenetics is the study of how our lifestyle and environment affect our genes. Eating a poor diet, smoking, living a sedentary lifestyle, and being exposed to environmental chemicals can affect our DNA, change how our body works with our genetic code and interrupt cellular functions. This raises the risk for age-related chronic conditions.

Epigenetic changes are reversible, however, because they don’t damage the underlying DNA sequence.

For example, in human studies of identical twins, researchers have looked at the difference in lifespans of these genetically identical people. They speculate that when two twins have different biological ages, the difference is related to epigenetic drift due to lifestyle behaviors that aren’t identical.

To understand your epigenetic age, researchers developed techniques or epigenetic “clocks” to quantify how these changes translate to a biological age. An epigenetic age test uses a blood or saliva sample and often costs a few hundred dollars. Like the qPCR telomere length tests, however, the results may be better for researchers than for consumers.

All of these tests can help guide discussions about our health with our doctors. But they need to be combined with other, conventional medical tests to help us understand our biological ages.

Slowing the Biological Aging Process

The good news is we don’t need to know our biological age to slow down the biological aging process and even reverse it. In fact, you probably already know the things that you can improve to get to a younger biological age. Here are seven tips that can help.

Get plenty of exercise. Exercise keeps us young in a variety of ways. It promotes insulin sensitivity, which helps our bodies convert the nutrients we eat to power our cells. Exercise helps us manage our cholesterol levels and lower high blood pressure, which helps our hearts. It can even thin our blood, which may lessen the risk for blood clots. Even if our chronological ages are high, exercise can still positively impact our biological age.

Maintain a healthy weight. This can also extend our biological age. In fact, gaining weight as we age is associated with shorter telomere lengths. Being overweight also puts pressure on our heart, raises our risk for multiple chronic conditions including type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cancer and makes getting around harder.

Quit smoking. Nothing increases biological age quite as much as smoking. One study found that epigenic aging is directly linked to smoking. Exposure to cigarette smoke harms our DNA, ups our risk for cancer and damages our heart.

Our diet also profoundly impacts how we age biologically. Studies show that people who eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes and healthy proteins like fish live longer. Studies have also shown that what we eat has a positive relationship to biological aging.

Controlling our stress can also help reverse biological aging, at least in mice. Many studies have connected stress with shorter lifespans. If you have high levels of stress or anxiety, let your doctor know. They can help you manage it, and hopefully, slow your biological aging.

Like stress, not enough sleep is also linked with a higher biological age and a shorter lifespan. Lack of sleep can interfere with the body’s natural repair process, resulting in shorter telomeres. Too much sleep can have a negative effect, too, which is why doctors recommend you sleep between seven and nine hours a night.

Finally, it may be a buzzkill, but alcohol consumption is also linked to biological aging. Cutting back or eliminating alcohol altogether can cut years off your biological clock.

Biological aging is complicated – and so is the science behind it. Your doctor is your best resource for understanding how you’re aging and for helping you take the steps to slow down your biological clock and improve your health. Make sure you talk to your doctor before making any major lifestyle changes. Your doctor knows your health history and can help you make healthy choices at an appropriate pace.