According to scientists, some people simply age faster than others
A healthy lifestyle that includes proper nutrition and physical activity can significantly extend the life of most people. However, about one in twenty people is doomed to grow old and die much earlier than the rest, despite all efforts. This is the conclusion reached by experts from the University of California at Los Angeles. While the study itself is not encouraging, it could be the first step towards tackling premature aging, scientists say.
Scientists studied 13 databases containing information on more than 13 thousand people in seven different countries. Experts estimated the so-called biological age of these people and compared it with the real age. As it turned out, in about five percent of people, these indicators were significantly different from each other, and the reason for this was the malfunction of the so-called "epigenetic clock" - as experts sometimes call the set of mechanisms that allow DNA to "control" the aging of the body.
According to experts, the likelihood of early death for people whose "biological" age is significantly ahead of the real, increases very significantly. Scientists give the following example: let's say we are dealing with two 50-year-old men, each of whom smokes and is often stressed, but otherwise follows the canons of a "healthy lifestyle." At the same time, for one of them, the "epigenetic clock" works too fast, and for the second, it is within average values. In this case, the chances of the first man to live for more than ten more years are only 25 percent, while the second has a much more solid 40 percent. It is the first "variant" of the epigenetic clock that approximately every twentieth person possesses.
However, experts note that, in general, epigenetics determines the life expectancy of a person to a much lesser extent than such generally known factors as smoking, blood pressure, diabetes, and so on. Nevertheless, experts consider the information they received is significant and hope that on the basis of their data in the future it will be possible to better study the problem of premature aging and, to some extent, learn how to deal with it.
The work, written on the basis of the research, scientists published in the journal Aging.
Dmitry Istrov