Carlos Solis
DNA tests that appeared around 2013 introduced a striking idea: you can estimate a person’s age from epigenetic markers. Researchers noticed that a person’s epigenetic age often differs from their chronological age, and a higher epigenetic age is associated with greater disease risk and earlier death.
Over the past decade, scientists have mapped many of the cellular and molecular processes behind aging, from protein damage to accumulated changes inside cells. Those shifts, often described as the hallmarks of aging, drive wrinkles, graying hair, frailty, memory problems, and age-linked illnesses like cancer, heart disease, and dementia.
Slow those processes down, and you can reduce the risk of many age-related problems.
How to Estimate Your Biological Age at Home
Don’t put all your trust in epigenetic tests: they cost a lot and different companies often give different results. Instead, try a few simple checks to get a rough sense of your physical state.
- Look in the mirror and judge whether you appear older or younger than your calendar age. A study of Danish twins found that people who look older get sicker more often and face a higher risk of death.
- Run or walk 10 meters and calculate your speed. For people under 50, average walking speed is about 1.4 m/s; in the 80-plus age group it drops below 1.0 m/s. Slower walking speed correlates with poorer overall health.
- Try standing on one leg. People under 40 typically manage around 45 seconds with eyes open and 15 seconds with eyes closed. At ages 60–69 those times fall to roughly 32 and 4 seconds, respectively. Shorter times can signal a need to work on muscle strength and balance.
Science-Backed Ways to Keep Your Biological Age in Check
1. Keep your muscles strong
Beyond walking and cardio, include . Strength work preserves bone mass and muscle, and muscle helps control blood sugar after meals—something that matters more as you get older.
After age 30 we lose about 5% of muscle mass and 10% of strength every 10 years. Strength training can slow or even partly reverse that loss. You don’t need a barbell: bodyweight moves like push-ups and squats or resistance bands work too. It’s never too late to start: in one study 90-year-olds nearly doubled their muscle strength after a two-month program.
2. Don’t fall for fad diets
You could spend years testing every trendy . The simplest, most likely beneficial rule is clear: eat less meat and more vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and whole grains. Large nutrition studies are mostly observational, so it’s hard to say exactly how much each change will affect your biological age.
Short-term, tightly controlled trials show improvements in health markers, but questions like when to eat and how much to cut calories remain open. Calorie restriction delivers clear effects in small organisms and mice; results in monkeys are mixed. Intermittent fasting can help with weight loss, but sometimes that loss includes muscle, which can be harmful at older ages.
3. Protect your teeth and gums
Healthy link to a lower risk of heart attacks and a longer life. At first that looked like a simple correlation, but evidence points to a role for chronic inflammation. Gum infections create a long-lasting low-grade inflammatory state that can speed aging across the body.
Brush regularly, floss, and visit the dentist. Those habits reduce mouth inflammation and can have downstream benefits for overall health.
4. Sleep enough—but not too much
Most people do best with about 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. Regularly sleeping more than nine hours is associated with a higher risk of death compared with even very short sleep, about 4 hours, but that link has multiple causes: chronic illness can make people sleep more, and long bedrest may reflect deeper biological changes.
During sleep the brain clears toxins, including amyloid proteins tied to Alzheimer’s disease. The brain performs this cleanup through the glymphatic system. Because toxic-protein buildup is one hallmark of aging, good sleep can slow brain aging.
5. Wear sunglasses more often
Protect your eyes from the sun as well as your skin. UV radiation damages the eye’s lens proteins, causing clouding and cataracts, and it harms the light-sensitive cells in the retina, which contributes to age-related macular degeneration. Both cataracts and macular degeneration raise the risk of , possibly by reducing visual stimulation to the brain.
Most eyeglasses and contact lenses block UV. For extra protection, choose wraparound sunglasses that block side light and wear wide-brimmed hats.
6. Always use sunscreen
The most powerful anti-aging cream is sunscreen. UV light breaks down collagen and other structural proteins in skin, causing and loss of elasticity. UV damage also causes mutations in skin cells: by age 50 almost every skin cell carries some UV-induced changes.
Use sunscreen with SPF 15 or higher. Apply it daily, even on cloudy days or when you’re sitting near a window. If regular sunscreen use lowers your vitamin D production, consider taking 10 mcg of per day.
7. Don’t drain your savings on extreme protocols
The loudest story in recent years involves Brian Johnson, an entrepreneur who spends up to $2 million a year from his roughly $400 million fortune to fight biological aging with numerous tests, hundreds of daily pills, and very strict diet and sleep regimes.
Most people don’t need to spend that much. Major benefits probably don’t come from exotic procedures: shifting toward plant-based foods, regular exercise, and steady sleep delivers big returns. Studies show many routine supplements don’t extend life, and some may even cause harm. Taking hundreds of pills a day is unlikely to lengthen your life.
8. Wash your hands
During the pandemic we heard about washing hands for 20 seconds. That habit does more than prevent short illnesses; it can influence long-term aging. Some infections in youth link to diseases later in life: human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cervical cancer, and cytomegalovirus (CMV) hides in the body after initial infection and, by some evidence, accelerates immune aging.
Reducing infection burden in childhood through better hygiene, vaccination, and antibiotics associates with healthier aging in adulthood, probably by lowering chronic inflammation. Simple infection-prevention measures can therefore have long-term benefits.
Based on material from BBC Science Focus
