Here are the ways to tell
The years signalled by your birthday card don’t necessarily line up with your biological age. Chronological age is simply how long you’ve been alive. But it tells you nothing about the health of your cells or organs.
It’s quite possible for twins to be 50 years old chronologically, yet one has a biological age of 62 and the other with a biological age of 42. They may not even look much like each other.
People with a younger biological age than their chronological age normally have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, cancer, cognitive decline like Alzheimer’s, and live longer.
We now know that biological aging is not a fixed, linear, process. You can directly influence it by how you live, your nutrition, your activity levels, sleep and stress management.
In the last decade or so scientists have been developing what are termed ‘biomarkers of ageing’. These have led to ‘epigenetic clocks’. These are designed to measure your cellular health and whether your rate of aging is normal, faster or slower than average.
These tests can help you live better for longer, because if you take action to slow ageing, you are very much more likely to delay age-related illness. However, there are also some simple, no cost tests that you can do for yourself at home.
But first the new, fast evolving, science of ageing.
Your Biological Age
Biological age is assessed through various biomarkers — generally agreed indicators of a person’s cellular and physical condition. They include:
Epigenetic clocks. These ‘clocks’ measure chemical modifications of DNA that also accumulate over time. They change based on your diet, quality of nutritional intake, activity levels, and stress.
These chemical modifications are called methylation patterns or tags. They don’t change your DNA – that is fixed at conception. But they change how and when genes are turned on or off – scientists say ‘expressed’. This, in turn, can result in how healthy you are, and how fast – or slow – you are ageing.
The illustration below compares DNA without methylation (left) with a section of DNA that has been methylated.
The result of methylation is that a gene has changed its function. For example, there are oncogenes that transform a cell into a cancer cell. You’ll definitely want them to be switched off! And tumour suppressor genes – you want those to be switched on.
Methylation patterns are how a biological clock calculates your ‘health age’. They have advanced to the point where you can not only measure your overall biological age, but memory age, heart age, metabolic age, responsiveness to certain nutrients, and more.
These epigenetic test kits typically cost between £350 - £500. They use either a finger prick sample or a saliva sample done at home and then sent off to a laboratory. They can measure around 900,000 DNA methylation markers. But remember they are only a snapshot in time, useful to guide action.
Your doctor can tell you other biomarkers via a blood test. Two of the most important being C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6). These measure the chronic inflammation that accelerates aging and age-related diseases. These tests are usually free. However, there are more sophisticated tests available on-line offering around 50 biomarkers.
You can find facial age tests on-line. They use AI to estimate how old you look based on a photo of your face. The AI has been trained on hundreds of thousands of faces and assess characteristics that change with age. These include skin texture, fine lines, wrinkles, facial contours, and overall structure. Many of these tests are free and results are accurate within a few years.
Finally, there are physiological markers used in clinical research like Wellman and Wellwoman tests. They typically include blood tests, urine analysis, cardiovascular checks, hormone profiling, glucose, cholesterol and metabolic status, with assessments for diabetes, prostate health, liver and kidney function. Typical cost is about £400.
VO2 Max: Assessing your cardiovascular fitness is also a shorthand way of measuring your biological age. VO2 max is the maximum volume of oxygen your body can consume when exercising all-out. In a lab it’s an exhausting test! But many smartwatches can estimate your VO2 max if you wear them while walking or running.
VO2 max is a good predictor of future health: a study in 2018 found that people in the bottom 33 per cent of the population for VO2 max were almost twice as likely to die as people in the top third.
Fortunately, there are also zero cost ways of checking your health status. This link to the main article in this series explains the best researched four such tests: Four simple ways to check your likely health span.
For most people getting a measure of biological age is interesting – and ideally will motivate you to take action. But far more important is what you can do to reduce your rate of ageing!
Can You Change Your Biological Age?
Yes. Your diet, exercise, sleep, some supplements, and stress management have been shown to support cellular repair, reduce inflammation and to slow biological ageing as measured by epigenetic clocks.
The series of articles in the Longevity Library is designed to help your lower your biological age. That’s why we include articles about:
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The Mediterranean diet – the best way to eat to stay well, maintain a healthy gut and slow aging
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Maintaining healthy activity levels and some strength exercises. Cardiovascular activity improves circulation and delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the body and brain. In parallel resistance training preserves muscle mass, bone strength, immune function and brain health
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Metabolic health – which directly determines so many other aspects of health
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Stress management – because chronic stress raises cortisol levels, which increases inflammation and damages cells over time. Stress also affects your sleep, your digestion, and your cardiovascular health. We outline some relaxation practices that help defend you against accelerated ageing.
Our objective is health span rather than simply lifespan. Health span is the number of years you live in good health, free from significant disease or frailty. Lifespan alone ignores quality of life.
The Hallmarks of Ageing
If you are interested in delving more deeply into the science of ageing, then the much cited 12 Hallmarks of Aging is the key document4.
The hallmarks of aging are twelve inter-connected biological processes, which combine to drive age-related decline and disease. They lead to ageing itself, thence to neuro-degeneration, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic syndrome.
The point to remember, as you read this summary, is that the causes of ageing (hallmarks) may sound complicated, and indeed they are! But it’s not necessary to understand them in detail.
The important thing is to prevent or slow them. The advice we have collected in this series will help counteract ALL 12 Hallmarks of Ageing.
Here is a summary of the 12 hallmarks of ageing:
The first 4 are the root causes of cellular aging, and are linked to accumulated cellular damage:
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Genomic instability: Key here is DNA damage from replication errors, oxidative stress (free radical damage), and environmental factors like pollution, all of which increase the risk of cancer and cells malfunctioning
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Telomere attrition: The ends of chromosomes become shorter and shorter creating senescent cells – so called zombie cells which have not been cleaned up by the immune system. These zombie cells pour out chemicals that cause inflammation in tissues and therefore organs, including the brain.
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Epigenetic alterations: Changes in DNA methylation, which disrupt gene regulation. This in turn indirectly causes mal-formed proteins – a factor in Alzheimer’s for example.
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Loss of proteostasis: Proteins run your body and when they fold incorrectly or clump together cells cannot function normally
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Deregulated nutrient sensing: a metabolic problem involving pathways like insulin, IGF-1, mTOR, AMPK, and sirtuins. As a result, cell repair mechanisms and metabolism are weakened
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Mitochondrial dysfunction: Your mitochondria are where your energy is produced. When they become less efficient, energy production is reduced and increased free radical damage contributes to cellular malfunction.
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Cellular senescence: Your body has a well-established system for clearing cells that have reached the end of their life and can no longer divide to create new cells, (it’s called autophagy meaning ‘self-eating’). But as you get older, that system becomes less efficient and ‘Zombie cells’ begin to accumulate. Accumulation of these senescent cells builds and they secret highly pro-inflammatory compounds that disrupt tissue function.
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Stem cell exhaustion: Stem cells are needed to create new cells needed to replace dysfunctional ones. Decline in this regenerative capacity boosts the rate of ageing.
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Altered intercellular communication: Disrupted signalling between cells impairs the way tissues work. This is an issue in cognitive decline.
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Chronic inflammation: Your immune system creates temporary inflammation as healing chemicals are directed to a wound or insect bite. Which is why a bite site is warm. But when inflammation becomes persistent and chronic tissue damage accelerates.
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Dysbiosis: When the balance between beneficial and pathogenic microbes in the microbiome becomes imbalanced metabolism and immune function are impaired, and aging accelerates.
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Disabled Macro-Autophagy: As we have seen your body has a ‘waste disposal’ system for cells. When this falters debris from old proteins accumulates, disrupting cellular function and inflammation increases
The original researchers also recently added:
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The extracellular matrix (ECM) deteriorates: The extra cellular matrix is a three-dimensional network that surrounds and supports body cells. (Think a sort of mesh). This ECM has a fundamental role in maintaining the structure and function of the body. When the ECM loses its elasticity and integrity tissues lose structure - which becomes visible on the skin. But the same problems occur within organs.
Following a Mediterranean style diet, continuing to exercise and boosting your nutrient intake, including plant nutrients, helps neutralise or reduce all these ageing threats.
Part of a Series
This article is part of series on staying healthy as you get older and improving your quality of life.
It’s not only a goal almost everyone shares, but has huge implications on national healthcare spending, productivity and economic resilience.
It strongly recommends the Mediterranean diet as the best way of eating but recognises that maintaining strength and aerobic fitness is also a critical part of a healthy ageing lifestyle.
It also suggests a supplement to help reach the increased plant nutrient levels that you need as you get older.
DailyColours® contains 161 plant nutrients – nutrients that are missing from an ordinary vitamin and mineral pill. Clinical trials show that it offers Mediterranean diet benefits in a daily supplement. You can see it here.
Note: The content on this site is intended for general wellness and informational purposes only. It is not personalized medical advice. Consult a healthcare professional before making any changes to your diet, exercise, or lifestyle routines.
Author: Colin Rose
Colin Rose BSc is a health and longevity researcher and author with more than 30 years of experience researching healthy ageing, nutrition, and longevity. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Senior Associate of the Royal Society of Medicine.