Sugar Blossom

Biomarkers of Tissue and Organ Aging Part 2

Breathe Easier. Your breathing capacity is an excellent measure of how strong your ventilatory muscles still are and how compliant your lungs remain. Two simple measures taken by your doctor can diagnose problems that can increase your rate of aging. The ? rst is the maximum amount of air you can breathe out quickly, which is known as your forced expiratory volume in one second, with the second measure being the total amount of air you can breathe in and out (your forced vital capacity). Diseases like emphysema can severely limit your breathing ability and increase your biological age. If you currently smoke, the best thing you can do to slow your lungs’ more rapid rate of aging is to stop smoking.

Stack Your Bones with Minerals. Changes in bone mineral den­sity (see Step 8), together with arthritis and osteophytes (bone spurs), have additionally been a good biomarker that can be deter­mined from a simple hand x-ray or dual-energy x-ray absorptiom­etry (DXA) bone mineral density scan. If your bone minerals are lower than expected for your age, you can positively affect them through dietary changes (such as more calcium, discussed in Step

1), exercise training (Step 2), and hormone therapies including estrogen replacement and vitamin D (Step 3).

Pinch Your Skin. Some of the remaining markers are either trickier to interpret or harder to measure. For example, to test your skin’s elasticity, pinch up the skin on the back of one hand between your thumb and fore? nger of your other hand. Let go and watch how quickly your skin returns to its normal shape. Compare your skin’s response to that of your kids or grandkids, and you’ll be able to see that they’re biologically younger—their skin snaps back into place faster than yours. Of course, this mea­sure is completely subjective and can be greatly affected by every­day things, such as how well hydrated you are. Dehydrated skin stays pinched longer than when it’s fully hydrated, regardless of your age.

Test Your Mental Function. How well you function mentally, your “cognitive performance,” can be measured with various tests, including ones to detect mild cognitive changes and demen­tia. But almost all of them must be administered to you by a men­tal health or other professional. The state of your mind is often re?ective of similar changes in the rest of your body; accordingly, exercising your body generally also improves the healthiness of your mental processes. In lieu of searching out whether you’re demented yet, we suggest that you better use your time by doing mental exercises (found in Step 4) that can improve your mental functioning and your memory, as well as keep your mind sharp for longer.

Be Less In? ammatory. You can ask your doctor to test your blood for various markers of systemic in?ammation. When certain compounds in blood are present, your blood vessels may function less effectively. Over time, such changes can result in permanent injury, plaque formation in arteries, and heart attacks or strokes. Scientists are learning more every day about what the various

markers do or indicate. At this point, it’s still an inexact science and not one that is worth spending your money on testing, since interpreting their various levels would be guesswork at best.

React More Quickly. Finally, your reaction time, which is a mea­sure of how quickly you respond to stimuli, can be measured with special testing equipment, but your doctor is unlikely to have it in his or her of?ce. Generally speaking, your ability to react quickly re?ects how well your nerves conduct their messages, and the faster they go, the younger you likely are, biologically speaking.

Other Predictors of Your Longevity and Current Biological Age

A study conducted in England concluded that your birth weight predicts your hand grip strength at seventy years of age, which suggests a greater longevity when it is higher. Of course, you have no control over something like your birth weight, which can be heavily affected by your mother’s behavior while she was pregnant with you. Whether she smoked, drank, or had regular prenatal checkups may play a role in determining your eventual longevity, but these are by no means the only factors. You can always work on improving your own grip strength and other strength measures with appropriate exercises .

Finally, although it’s admittedly dif?cult to get a ?rm ? x on your actual biological age, for fun, you can answer questions that ask about a hundred different health factors—including cholesterol levels, blood pressure, medications used, vitamins taken, daily nutrition, exercise habits, health history, social networks, daily stressors, and more—using a free online test available at realage. com. We can’t attest to the validity of their “Real Age Test,” but it does cover most of the factors that affect how young your body can remain. Taking their test may point out some additional places where you can improve your lifestyle to optimize your health and current biological age.