What is the difference between chronological and biological age ?

Reminiscent of a scene," the whiteboard in researcher  office is covered in a series of letters and numbers. She clicks the red cap back onto the dry erase marker and steps back to admire her work. 

In front of her, the equation stretches across multiple lines, taking up much of the surface. This algorithm represents a new way of thinking about age. 

"In my lab, we work on a lot of different types of aging measures," she said. "One of the most recent ones is based on blood measures you get at your normal doctor's appointment. We basically take those and combine them using different algorithms to get what we call someone's phenotypic age or biological age."

Essentially, everyone has two ages: a chronological age, how old the calendar says you are, and a phenotypic or biological age, basically the age at which your body functions as it compares to average fitness or health levels.

"People of the same chronological age aren't all at the same risk for developing cardiovascular disease or cancer or even dying,"she said. "What [the biological age] does is actually give us a better idea of where someone stands for their age."

"Chronological age isn't how old we really are. It's a superficial number," said a professor . "We all age biologically at different rates according to our genes, what we eat, how much we exercise and what environmental toxins we are exposed to. Biological age is what determines our health and ultimately our lifespan. Biological age is number of candles we really should be blowing out. In the future, with advances in our ability to control biological age, we may have even fewer candles on our cake than the previous one."

The researchers identified nine biomarkers taken in a simple blood test that seemed to be the most influential on lifespan. The biomarkers include blood sugar, kidney and liver measures, and immune and inflammatory measures. 

She plugs those numbers into the computer, and the algorithm does the rest.

People with a biological age lower than their chronological age have a lower mortality risk, while those aging older from a biological standpoint have a higher mortality risk and are potentially more prone to developing the diseases associated with the higher age range. 

But perhaps what's most important here -- unlike results from genetic testing -- is that these are measures that can be changed. Doctors can take this information and empower patients to make changes to lifestyle, diet, exercise and sleep habits, and hopefully take steps to lower the risk and improve their biological age.

"I think the most exciting thing about this research is that these things aren't set in stone," Levine said. 

"We actually know a lot about how to change some of these markers. I think we are given the information much earlier in the process, hopefully before someone ever develops disease, and then they can really take steps to improve their health before its too late."

The researcher who has been fascinated with aging ever since she was a young girl, even entered her own numbers into the algorithm. She was surprised by the results.

"I always considered myself a very healthy person," she said. "I'm physically active; I eat what I consider to a fairly healthy diet. I did not find my results to be as good as I had hope they would be."

She now tries to get more sleep and changed her diet and exercise routine. "It was a wake-up call," she said.

She is working with a group to provide access to the algorithm online so that anyone can calculate their biological age, identify potential risks and take the steps to help their own health in the long run.

"No one wants to live an extremely long life when they are in very poor health and have a lot of chronic disease," she said. By delaying the onset of diseases and cognitive and physical functioning problems, "people can still be engaged in society," she said. "I think that is the ideal we should be striving for."

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Simple urine test can tell how much our body has aged

Scientists have identified a promising new marker of ageing in urine that may help predict the risk of developing age-related diseases and even death. Researchers found that a substance indicating oxidative damage increases in urine as people get older. The study, also describes a way to easily measure the levels of this marker in human urine samples. The new marker potentially provides a method to measure how much our body has aged - our biological rather than chronological age, researchers said. This could help predict our risk of developing age-related disease, and even the likely time-frame for our death, they said. While everyone born in the same year has the same chronological age, the bodies of different people age at different rates. This means that, although the risk of many diseases increases with age, the link between our age in years and our health and lifespan is relatively loose. Many people enjoy long lives, relatively free of disease, while others suffer chronic illness and premature death. Some researchers consider normal ageing to be a disease, where our cells accumulate damage over time.The rate of this cellular damage can vary from person to person, and may be dictated by genetics, lifestyle and the environment we live in. This cellular damage may be a more accurate indication of our biological age than the number of years since we were born. We need to be able to measure biological age to know whether treatments to slow ageing - which may be possible in the future - are effective, researchers said. One mechanism thought to underlie biological ageing involves a molecule vital to our survival - oxygen - in what is called the free radical theory of ageing. "Oxygen by-products produced during normal metabolism can cause oxidative damage to biomolecules in cells, such as DNA and RNA," said a Dr. "As we age, we suffer increasing oxidative damage, and so the levels of oxidative markers increase in our body," the Dr. said. One such marker called 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanosine or 8-oxoGsn results from oxidation of a crucial molecule in our cells called RNA. The researchers measured 8-oxoGsn in urine samples from 1,228 Chinese residents aged 2-90 years old, using a rapid analysis technique called ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography. "We found an age-dependent increase in urinary 8-oxoGsn in participants 21 years old and older," said the Dr. "Therefore, urinary 8-oxoGsn is promising as a new marker of ageing," he said. Interestingly, levels of 8-oxoGsn were roughly the same between men and women, except in post-menopausal women, who showed higher levels. This may have been caused by the decrease in oestrogen levels that happens during menopause, as oestrogen is known to have anti-oxidant effects. 

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.    

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