THE NEW OLD AGE. Part 3

CHRONOLOGICAL AGE VS BIOLOGICAL AGE -

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? WHICH ONE IS MORE IMPORTANT?

Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret.

Chronological age simply means how old a person is according to his/her date of birth. But it doesn’t say anything about that person’s physical and mental health, predilection to certain diseases or life span.

Biological age tries to do all that by examining that person’s genetic makeup, cells, tissues, and organs physiologic and metabolic functions through genetic sequencing and by checking certain biomarkers in the blood, urine and bodily secretions.

Much of aging and how we age is genetically determined and is beyond our control. However, aging is also significantly affected by many secondary factors in life such as lifestyle, bad habits (like smoking, drinking, substance abuse, over-eating), sedentary living, poor diet and nutrition, lack of physical, mental and social activities, environmental pollution or immunologic status.

Research has shown that all these factors influence aging at cellular level by causing mutations or epigenetic alteration in the DNA of the cells. As we all know, cells are independent building blocks of life.

Biological age, sometimes called physiological or metabolic age, is not so easy to determine as chronological age. As I see it, to get greater insight to a person’s biological age, genomic data and biomarkers data must be combined with the findings obtained from a complete history, physical examination and lab studies to correctly estimate one’s biological age, life span and health span.

Since one’s physical and mental health is much more important than the number of years a person has lived, then the biological age is much more important than chronological age to make age related decisions. Therefore, I believe all age-related decisions such as employment, retirement, running for a political office should be made according to biological age, more than chronological age.

Actually, there are many private wellness companies in the marketplace now offering Biological Epigenetic Test Kit to estimate our biological age, life and health span.