Increased amounts of methylation disrupt the normal function of the cell so that it can’t efficiently do the job it’s designed for.
#Chronological age and biological age code
Epigenetics is the study of the changes to your DNA and how this affects your body and health.Įpigenetics controls which parts of your DNA code are turned on or off.Įpigenetic changes can be triggered by many things, the majority of which are lifestyle factors (which we’ll talk about more in a moment).Įpigenetic modifications are chemical changes that occur to the DNA code contained within your cells as you age. Your DNA is your personalized string of code that produces all the cells in your body. To give you the more technical answer, we’ll need to zoom out a couple of steps, to understand how your genetics affect the age of your cells. What rust does to metal, methylation does to your cells. The simple answer is that methylation is like rust on a pipe. This is a core piece of information when I’m doing a blood assessment with clients. The goal of PhenoAge is to use a basic blood test to predict aging and methylation. Steven Horvath and his team based on the epigenetic clock theory of aging. The most well-researched is PhenoAge developed by Dr. There are several different aging calculators that have been developed using the results from a basic blood test. If your biological age is higher than your actual age, it may mean that there’s been a lot of damage to your cells and your body is aging more rapidly than someone of your actual age. If your biological age is less than your actual age, it means that your body is aging more slowly than what is typical for your age. If the numbers match, it means that your body is aging appropriately. Ideally, your biological age would end up being lower than your actual age (though it’s still a great sign if the two numbers just match). It might sound obvious, but aging is the leading risk factor for disease.Īnd while you can’t do anything about the number of years you’ve lived on this planet, you can improve your biological age (reduce the damage in your cells) over time by making changes to your diet and lifestyle. The biological age calculations are accurate predictors of your healthspan and lifespan. Your biological age indicates how much aging and damage has occurred inside your body over the course of your lifetime. The goal of calculating your biological age is to measure the speed at which your body is aging so that you can determine how your current diet and lifestyle choices are impacting healthy aging. We now have very effective ways to monitor the speed that our bodies age throughout our lives so that we can make changes to our diet and lifestyle that quite literally turn back the hands of time. When you increase your longevity, it’s also important to focus on ways to increase your healthspan, so that you maximize your quality of life. However, it defeats the purpose of living longer if those years are spent sick and in pain. Longevity simply means that you live to a nice old age.
Biological age: how old your cells appear to be based on their current condition.Chronological age: the number of years you have been alive.If you are interested in slowing down the effects of aging then you are likely interested in increasing your longevity, and to do that, it’s extremely helpful to understand the difference between your chronological age and your biological age.īefore we go any further, let’s quickly define a couple of key terms: If you tend to your health over time, you can reverse the signs of aging in your body and feel younger and more healthy than you ever did earlier in life. There are a few key areas that contribute to rapid aging and increased risk for chronic disease risk as you age. This is a question many of my clients ask me, particularly when we first get started working together.Īnd while being in pain is never normal, it is certainly common.įor many people, the concept of aging is synonymous with getting sick and being in pain.
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