When your best friend from grade school looks twenty years younger than you, it may feel like a dilemma – but the upside is new research that may explain why you are aging more quickly, and it may provide hope for slowing down the aging process. The study focuses on what happens in your body at the molecular level during the aging process. The work is still at the infancy level, yet it may provide more targeted intervention to avoid aging at a quicker pace than the average senior.
The Stanford University study tracked healthy adults and analyzed their blood and other biological samples to track molecular changes. People age differently, but this study showed that the aging process is more active in different parts of the body. The four ageotypes, a new term coined for the four biological aging pathways, are immune, kidney, liver, and metabolic. You may be more prone to type 2 diabetes as you age if you are a metabolic ager. With this information, you could focus on lifestyle changes to intervene in your specific aging ageotype.
It is too early to know if real-life intervention is impactful. Still, the research is promising, and new clinical trials are underway targeting fundamental aging processes of age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Follow this LINK to read more details about the study that Nature Medicine published to help explain why we age differently.