Not all aging happens in the same way, and not everyone ages at the same rate; I’ve been shocked that people who look a decade my senior are actually much younger, and vice versa. As scientists learn more about how the human body ages, we’re able to better anticipate their effects on us, taking precautions against aging surges, for instance.
In a paper published this month in the journal Cell, a group of researchers examined, as they describe it, “516 samples from 13 human tissues spanning five decades.” Among their findings were the existence of “an aging inflection around age 50” — and that blood vessels are a part of the body that’s especially vulnerable to the effects of aging.
As Heidi Ledford explains in an article for Nature, these researchers’ findings are in keeping with other recent studies that have explored the specifics of how the human body ages. Ledford writes that the findings published in Cell indicate that the adrenal gland experiences “early changes at around 30.” Changes in the aorta take place between 15 and 25 years after that, which can cause the body’s aging process to speed up.
The findings in the Cell paper are not the last word on the subject. Instead, the paper’s authors note that their research is designed to spark additional research in the ways that proteins within the body help shape the way that we age.
The Late-30s Aging Surge: Why It Happens and What to Do
You can’t stop aging, but you can slow it down. Here’s a five-step protocol — for your heart, muscles, skin, cells and brain — that actually works.More broadly, this is a subject that scientists all over the world are looking into. Last year, researchers at Oxford Population Health published the results of a study in Nature Medicine that explored that very subject. They found that using the proteins in a given person’s blood sample resulted in a surprisingly accurate measure of their biological age.
“Developing robust protein-based ageing clocks that predict future risk of many diseases and generalise to diverse population groups is a key step in developing effective preventative health strategies that can be used to monitor risk of age-related diseases,” said the 2024 paper’s lead author, Dr Austin Argentieri. As more evidence accumulates connecting proteins to aging, it remains to be seen how this might play into efforts to slow or stop the debilitating aspects of growing older.
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