What is biological age and what does it say about your health?

When talking about age, usually the first thing that comes to mind is the amount of time a person has left to live..

However, Although there are people of the same age, some of them tend to appear older or younger than others..

This phenomenon related to what scientists called “biological age”.

Simply put, This concept refers to health cellular telephonenot how many years they lived.

National University of Singapore Center for Healthy Longevity co-director Andrea Britta Mayer gave a more precise definition to the New York Times, saying: It is “the accumulation of damage that we can measure in our body.”.

Such damage occurs when aging

are natural and vary depending on the behavior of each person and his environment..

For example, Habits such as excessive drinking or smoking can speed up these processes.According to Harvard Medical School academic Jesse Poganik.

For decades, the scientific community did not know how to measure biological age. However, in 2013, UCLA professor Steve Horvath suggested that “clock” based on the field of epigenetics.

Besides, analyzed data on genetic changes from thousands of subjects and developed an algorithm that allows correlation.

In this direction, subsequent studies have shown that Biological age is related to aspects such as life expectancy and health..

However, Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, warned the Times that still “is biology What are we trying to discover?.

Currently you can find companies offering tests to determine your biological age

.

According to the above-mentioned media, in most cases They only ask for blood or saliva samples and must pay a sum of approximately $300, which is about $265,000. Chilean Peso at current exchange rates.

This may seem attractive to those interested in longevity, but There are a number of considerations that need to be taken into account. before requesting these tests.

First of all, experts warned that Epigenetic clocks are designed to test large groups of people, not individuals, so they cannot provide accurate information about someone’s health. specific.

That’s why the results These commercial tests often lack reliability..

This was suggested by Horvath who stated that knew the case of a man who took two different tests and in which he received two different results 10 years apart Between both.

This was reported by Columbia University specialist Daniel Belsky. “We can say that the best (tests) are not completely useless.”.

“They are not yet proven clinical tools, so they are more for the curious.”

– he emphasized.

Despite this, experts working in this field They hope that in the future, effective methods, tested by the scientific community, will be found to reverse biological age..

For now, experiments are still missing think about treatments applicable to patients.