If you’ve always thought your birthday was the best way to define how old you are, think again.
Your organs, it turns out, are aging on their own schedules.
A growing body of scientific research is shifting focus from chronological age to biological age, where your body’s roughly 30 trillion cells, tissues and organs each have their own “clocks” that can tick at different speeds.
According to a groundbreaking peer-reviewed study published last week in Nature Medicine, Stanford University researchers found that an organ that is substantially “older” than a person’s actual age is at greater risk of disease.
Researchers tracked this hidden timeline by analyzing thousands of proteins flowing through our blood.
“With this indicator, we can assess the age of an organ today and predict the odds of your getting a disease associated with that organ 10 years late,” Tony Wyss-Coray, a professor of neurology and neurological sciences at the university’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, said in a statement.
Take the brain, for example: an older one increases your risk of death by about 182 percent within the next 15 years, compared with people whose brains are aging normally, researchers found.
On the flip side, those with brains biologically younger than their chronological age are believed to live longer.
The study’s authors concluded that having an older brain increased the risk of dementia threefold, while those with youthful brains have just a quarter of the usual risk.
“The brain is the gatekeeper of longevity,” Wyss-Coray said. “If you’ve got an old brain, you have an increased likelihood of mortality.”
An older biological heart age was linked to a higher risk of atrial fibrillation and heart failure, while aging lungs signaled an increased likelihood of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
While your chronological age only goes up, the good news is that biological age can be slowed, paused or even reversed.
Forty-year-old soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo has an estimated biological age of just under 29, according to data from the health tech brand Whoop.
Kim Kardashian may be blowing out 44 candles on her next birthday but her biological age came in nearly a decade younger, according to results from an epigenetic clock test taken on The Kardashians last year.
Meanwhile, Bryan Johnson, 47, the anti-aging tech guru and “biohacker,” has documented his bizarre journey in an attempt to reverse his biological age to that of a teenager.
You don’t need to be into biohacking to change your organ’s age — they can shift depending on a variety of factors, including your genes, how much you move, what you eat, your sleep habits and how you manage stress.
Regular exercise, good nutrition and avoiding harmful habits like smoking all contribute to younger organ age and better health outcomes, according to Stanford University’s research.
