You probably already know your chronological age or how many years you’ve been alive.
But researchers are increasingly interested in our so-called “biological age,” which shows the wear and tear present in your organs and tissues at the cellular level.
Lower biological age has been associated with lower risk of cancers, cardiovascular disease, depression, anxiety, all-cause mortality, diabetes, and cognitive impairment.
So it’s a good thing that researchers have published a paper on what might actually help keep our cells “younger” and what might be a waste of time.
Which anti-aging strategies seem most and least useful to you?
New research published in Nature Medicine used DNA-based blood tests to determine which lifestyle and drug interventions actually seemed to slow “biological aging.”
Scientists combined data from 51 anti-aging studies with biological information from more than 110 DNA biomarkers. These included 16 “epigenetic clocks,” which estimate people’s biological ages by looking at certain editable “tags” on their DNA.
Next, the study authors looked at participants’ biological ages before and after four general interventions:
- Drugs,
- Supplements,
- Lifestyle changes, and
- Medical procedures.
“We already know that certain things can extend health and lifespan. There is data from retrospective analyzes as well as animal models,” said study author Dr. Raghav Sehgal of Yale University.
“We took all of this knowledge along with the actual clinical studies to identify which interventions in humans slowed aging across the board through these known biomarkers.”
Some of the factors that appeared to lower biological age were:
- A combination of healthy eating and exercise (like the Mediterranean diet),
- Prescribed weight loss medications such as semaglutide,
- Blood control medications like metformin,
- Anti-TNF therapies, which suppress inflammation in your immune system and are used for conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and IBD, and
- Prescription drugs “used for metabolic control and weight management,”
appeared to slow biological aging in those who needed it. Anti-TNF therapies have been shown to be particularly protective against biological aging.
Appropriate pharmacological interventions generally seemed more effective here.
- Over-the-counter supplements and
- Certain medical procedures
don’t seem to make much of a difference, which isn’t to say they’re “useless” – just that they weren’t strongly linked to lower biological age.
Does this mean that prescribed medications permanently lower biological age?
No. First, in this study, people with existing diseases tended to see larger reversals in their biological age than healthy participants.
This suggests that getting rid of or fixing a current problem might make more difference than slightly improving an already good baseline.
Second, this study did not prove exactly What leads to results.
“We have developed a rigorous and systematic approach to evaluate and compare how biomarkers evolve across a wide variety of interventions, and this is a crucial step in the right direction,” said lead author Professor Albert Higgins-Chen of the Yale School of Medicine.
“However, the true meaning This change needs to be fully understood… And more importantly: what does this change mean for our long-term risk of age-related diseases and functional decline?
Gn Health
