Some people are actually about 20 years older on the inside. Are you?
Sometimes your chronological age doesn’t match your health. For example, in a study done on 38-year-olds at UCLA, participants’ biological clocks were found to range from 30 years old all the way up to almost 60 years old. It might sound alarming, but it’s the truth, and likely a result of our lazy modern lifestyle, (although I admit I don’t have solid proof, in this particular case).
What makes your insides tick that much faster than real time? Being obese, not exercising regularly, eating a bad diet over a long period of time, smoking, living in a stressful or harmful environment, you name it-all these negative factors can make you age faster.
So, how do scientist measure your biological clock? They test a number of things. They look at how well your organs function.
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Your kidneys, liver and lungs are reviewed. In addition to this, the quality of your immune system, your metabolic rate, and the length of your telomeres is examined. (These are the protective caps that sit on the end of your chromosomes, and they shorten with age).
Finally, your dental health is taken into consideration, as are the condition of the tiny blood vessels at the back of your eyes, which are kind of a window into your brain health.
The good news in all this is that, according to an article on the Telegraph.co.uk, most of our speedy aging comes from environmental factors. So, you can stop it and actually even reverse it.
Only about 20% of your biological is thought by scientists to be based on your genetics. So, the force really IS with you, when all is said and done. Not too shabby.
