If you have passed, say, your mid-twenties, you will be more than aware that your body is ageing in real time. For me, one of my favourite signs of my body ageing is that my right knee really aches when the weather starts to get cooler or a storm is coming.
However, new research from scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found that at a certain point in our lives, ageing ‘accelerates’ and, honestly, it’s a little sooner than I thought it would be.
The researchers are keen to impress, though, that this is good news. eville Sanjana, associate professor of biology, neuroscience and physiology at New York University and a faculty member at the New York Genome Center says: “This kind of data generation is so powerful for folks who want to do things like bioengineering and creating new kinds of therapies to restore healthy ageing.”
When you can expect ageing to speed up
Researchers looked at tissues taken from organs including the heart, liver, pancreas, spleen, lungs, skin and muscles and determined that ageing starts to accelerate between the ages of 45 and 55.
Additionally, they found that organs age at different rates. The spleen, aorta (the body’s main artery) and adrenal gland start showing signs of ageing around age 30. The aorta also saw the biggest changes in protein levels between 45 and 55.
How to improve how you age
If this has you a little nervous about your own ageing body, Dr. Thomas Blackwell, associate dean for graduate medical education and professor of medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch urges that the study also shows that patients still have the chance to change their aging trajectory later in life – “but the window is short.”
He adds that the best ways to add healthy years to your life are to maintain a healthy level of blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol, don’t smoke and drink “very little.”