Reducing Our Biological Age. Don’t Act Your Age, Act Younger..

As we age, our body breaks down. This is just a fact. We hate to face that fact, but each day our elderly relatives remind us about ageing.

A popular saying I heard growing up was this. ‘There is no cure for birth or death, save to enjoy the interval.’

If it’s all about the interval between two states as in birth and death, then it has to be the quality of that interval between birth and death that we look to prolong and improve.

Our bodies are amazing and if we don’t suffer some genetic disease or chronic illness, then we have a body that protects us with the magic of our immune system.

Healthy eating and exercising are crucial, but did you know there is also a meter, like a speedometer running inside us? It gives us our biological age. This is a complex meter that measures several aspects of our biology.

This meter measures specific points of our DNA and it can tell whether our DNA is responding to genes being suppressed or expressed, which tells us how we are ageing.

Our DNA is wound into tightly bound structures called chromosomes. When we look at our chromosomes, particularly the ends of our chromosomes, we can see what our biological age is.

How on earth do we tell from looking at our chromosomes what our biological age is? Well, we have these end caps on our chromosomes that are like the plastic ends on shoelaces, for want of a better description, and they protect our chromosomes. They prevent fusion and mutation, and we know mutations and fusions have been linked to diseases and genetic problems.

Back to the chromosomes: the longer these end caps are, the younger we are biologically. Biological ageing is one of the chief causes of chronic disease, so it is in our best interests to reduce our biological age as much as possible.

The rate at which your DNA works and the processes it directs is key to your biological age. The production of tissues and proteins, amongst others, is all crucial for life, but there is a delicate balance.

Our DNA, and the processes linked to the central nervous system, are crucial in diagnosing and treating brain and psychiatric disorders.

Our bodies have an incredible information system within each cell. Each cell carries the code for life that is billions of letters long, complex and specific to each of us. Any change in the sequence of this code can be harmful or beneficial, but most of the time, it is harmful. So those factors that influence DNA sequencing are very important.

Have you ever met someone who is chronologically 75 years old but looks like they are around 55 years old? This is biological age reduction in action. The opposite can happen too. You meet someone you think is forty something and find out they are just over twenty-five.

DNA methylation is a process that regulates how genes are expressed and is the key to determining our biological age. The environment and our lifestyle affect how our genes are expressed and thus DNA methylation. Stress and our nervous system also has an effect on DNA methylation.

DNA methylation is like a secret code that tells us the secret of our biological age and just how susceptible we are to certain conditions. There are various markers in our DNA that, when measured, show whether we are ageing faster than our chronological age.

One way of reducing our biological age is by ‘removing the dead wood.’ Removing the dead wood is an expression for reinvigorating and revitalising a corporation. In Australia we call it ‘getting rid of ‘the bludgers.’ We define a bludger as ‘an idle or lazy person.’

Our body has bludgers too. These are cells that are way past their sell by date, and they are still causing health problems by releasing chemicals that cause inflammation.

There is a need for a bit of snap, crackle and pop, with an emphasis on the ‘pop’ as in apoptosis, a process that kills off the dead cells, also called senescent cells. Apoptosis takes out the trash, like a bouncer in a nightclub.

Quercetin, a compound found in berries, onions, grapes, tomatoes and red wine, amongst other fruits and vegetables, has the effect of cleaning out the bad or senescent cells.

Reducing our biological age

So once we have ensured we eat healthily, making sure we eat senolytic foods, such as tomatoes and red wine and strawberries, to help bring forth apoptosis to get rid of the dead wood, we exercise and ensure we avoid chemicals. We sleep well and reduce our stress levels. After doing all that, how do we know if we have reduced our biological age?

This is where biological age assessments come in. There are biological age diagnostic companies that can assess your biological age and they use complex algorithms. Don’t you just love how everything is now run on algorithms? Yeah, I don’t.

The algorithms take thousands of your biomarkers into account and come up with a ratio. If your ratio is greater than one; you are ageing faster than your chronological age, so this is one test where the lower your marks, the better.

A ratio of less than one means you are ageing slower than your chronological age. That’s what we want to achieve. It’s like golf: the lower your score, the better.

In a follow-up article I will write about what I discovered as a two-step process to reduce ageing, but for now, keep moving and eating healthy and watch your stress levels, sleep well and try to reduce environmental pollution levels.

Thanks for reading.