Scientists Show Human Aging Rates Vary Widely

HughPickens.com writes: Ever notice at your high school reunions how some classmates look ten years older than everybody else — and some look ten years younger. Now BBC reports that a study of people born within a year of each other has uncovered a huge gulf in the speed at which human bodies bodies age. The report tracked traits such as weight, kidney function and gum health and found that some of the 38-year-olds in the study were aging so badly that their "biological age" was on the cusp of retirement. "They look rough, they look lacking in vitality," says Prof Terrie Moffitt. The study says some people had almost stopped aging during the period of the study, while others were gaining nearly three years of biological age for every twelve months that passed. "Any area of life where we currently use chronological age is faulty, if we knew more about biological age we could be more fair and egalitarian," says Moffitt. The researchers studied aging in 954 young humans, the Dunedin Study birth cohort, tracking multiple biomarkers across three time points spanning their third and fourth decades of life. They developed and validated two methods by which aging can be measured in young adults, one cross-sectional and one longitudinal. According to Moffit the science of healthspan extension may be focused on the wrong end of the lifespan; rather than only studying old humans, geroscience should also study the young. "Eventually if we really want to slow the process of ageing to prevent the onset of disease we're going to have to intervene with young people."

Comments

Hurrah for health redistributuion

[mi]

if we knew more about biological age we could be more fair and egalitarian

What? Is this another thing, where the bigoted and parochial society unfairly targets the less successful?

Is the responsibility for maintaining one's own body no longer with the individual? I guess, if one can blame "the system" for being poor, one can also blame it for being sick — "the Man" made me drink beer and smoke all sorts of plants since age 14!

I can see the new Statist argument in the making — that the government should take yet another heavy burden upon its tired shoulders and redistribute health — in addition to wealth! That it is grossly unfair, for example, that Michael Phelps' body won him 10 gold medals for swimming... Just wait for some way to be found to tax one's health to help "the less fortunate". The voluntary blood-donations of today will be ridiculed by Statists in the same manner, they already ridicule the idea of private charities...

Troll my tail — just what is it, that we, supposedly, "didn't know"? We've known for thousands of years, that some people remain much healthier and more capable with age than others — that we've now gotten around to quantifying it does not really change anything...