HealthDay posts articles that I like to read. This one talks about the difference between your age on a regular calendar known as your Chronological age and your biological age which is the actual age of the parts of your body. Your body has no idea how old you are in terms of our calendar, but it does know what body functions you are using and which ones you don't need any longer. So if your not eating enough nutritional foods, the organs that need that nutrition will begin to fail. This is a very slow process that takes many years, because you are born with a stock pile of nutrition that your body will feed off of until your old enough to consume the nutrition you need. So the article explains how the lack of nutrition will cause organs to begin to fail and that's when disease will set in. This whole process of your body beginning to fail, we call the aging process. And because of the lack of nutrition at and early age, that process can start during a person's late 20's or early 30's.
At 38, the biology of some adults was 20 years older than their chronological age
WebMD News from HealthDay
By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter
Adults who look older than their years may be aging at an accelerated pace, new research suggests.
A study of 38-year-olds in New Zealand found their "biological age" -- the state of their organs, immune system, heart health and chromosomes -- ranged from as young as 30 to as old as 60.
And the older their biological age, the older they looked, the researchers added.
"We looked at key markers for the integrity and health of different organs in the bodies of relatively young adults, in order to detect how their bodies were actually aging."
"What we found is a clear relationship between looking older on the outside and aging faster on the inside, And also that it's possible to measure the kind of aging process in young people that we usually only look for in old people."
For most young adults, biological age proceeds in sync with chronological age, the international research team found. But genetic and environmental influences can cause your biology to rack up signs of age much faster -- or much slower -- than your birth date might predict.
The study authors noted that by 2050 the population of men and women aged 80 and older will hit 400 million globally, more than triple the current number.
That trend, the researchers said, highlights the importance of finding ways to spot signs of aging early in life, to fashion therapies that can prolong healthy living by preventing the onset of age-related disease.
The study team focused on roughly 1,000 men and women who had been participating in an ongoing New Zealand study since their birth in 1972-1973.
In 2011, the participants, then 38, underwent tests of kidney function, liver function, lung capacity and metabolic and immune system strength. Cholesterol, blood pressure, dental status, eye structure and heart health were also assessed, as was the length of chromosomal caps known as telomeres. Telomeres are known to shorten with age.
The researchers found a variance of up to 30 years in the different participants' biological age, although all were still free of any age-related disease.
The team conducted a secondary analysis, comparing biomarker information collected in 2011 with information gathered six and 12 years earlier.
That showed that between ages 26 and 38 most participants aged at an equal biological pace. But some were gaining three biological years for every one chronological year. Still others had essentially stopped getting older, as their biological age was essentially on "pause."
What's more, the older their biological age, the worse they fared on physical and mental acuity tests.
The fast-agers showed worse balance and poorer motor coordination, and reported having more trouble with tasks such as climbing stairs or carrying groceries.
"This showed that already early in life we can see symptoms of advanced age in young people, symptoms that correspond to declining physical and cognitive function, long before age-related disease actually develops," Belsky said.
Dr. Rosanne Leipzig, a professor of geriatric and palliative medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, described the investigation as a "landmark" effort to better understand the aging process.
"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.
Belsky said the findings might propel scientists in a new direction. "This can help us as we start to come around to the idea that instead of trying to prevent individual illnesses like heart disease or cancer," he said, "we need to try to find ways to treat the common cause of all these things: aging."
Okay, that said I want to add a few things. The aging process causes disease and this increase in the aging process can be due to a poor diet and lack of exercise. Proper exercise increases the blood flow that your organs need and good nutrition which you get from a good diet will keep your organs healthy. All the pills in the world will not take the place of fresh food.
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