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How You Can Reverse Your Biological Age in Days

Some people may fear the strain of everyday life is ageing them prematurely. But for those wanting to turn back the hands of time, becoming less stressed can reduce your biological age in just a few days, a study suggests.

While chronological age is the number of years you’ve been alive, biological age refers to how old your cells and tissues are based on their current condition. If you’re especially healthy and fit, your biological age may well be lower than your chronological age.

But if you’re sedentary, chronically ill or in poor physical condition, your biological age may be higher — meaning you’re more likely to be at higher risk of disease and live a shorter life. It has already been documented that our biological age rapidly increases in response to stress.

But new research indicates this damage can be reversed over just a few days or months of feeling more relaxed. Dr Vadim Gladyshev, from Harvard Medical School, is part of a team that wanted to investigate how biological age can be changed. His team, along with scientists from Duke University School of Medicine, measured changes in biological age in humans and mice in response to various stressful situations.

Real-life scenarios that could cause this kind of stress include major surgery, pregnancy or severe illness. While the biological age rose relatively quickly in response to stress, it also lowered back to baseline following recovery from the stressful event.

A separate study recently showed that cutting calories can help reduce the pace at which people age biologically. People who cut their calorie intake by 25 per cent over two years aged two to three per cent more slowly than people who continued to eat normally. This is linked to a 10 to 15 per cent lower risk of early death, the researchers said – around the same amount seen in studies where people gave up smoking.

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Daily Mail
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