Rewinding the Clock: Chronological vs. Biological Age and the Science of Longevity

yeah this week we are going to be starting with a question that might make you want to throw your birthday certificate or your birth certificate out the window does the number of candles on our cake actually matter

It matters for the fire department or if you're an older person trying to blow out your candles, but maybe not your cells.

We're talking about the massive shift in longevity science moving away from that chronological age and focusing on the biological age.

Exactly.

Chronological age is just how many times you've orbited the sun.

It's a measure of time and not quality.

But biological age, that's the wear and tear report.

It's how old our body actually is functioning.

Yeah, let's break it down, provide one of those analogies here.

So think of it like two 2015 luxury SUVs.

One was kept in a garage, serviced every 3,000 miles, got those oil changes, driven on smooth highways.

The other was used for off-roading, mudding as they like to call it around here.

Never had an oil change and is rusting out.

On paper, they're both 11 years old, but under the hood, it's not even close.

Exactly.

So getting into that science of the inner clock now, David, how do we actually peek under the hood? We can't just look in the mirror and guess.

Yeah, I know a little bit about this.

So the gold standard right now is epigenetics, which we've done an episode on in the past.

So if you want to learn complete details about epigenetics, go back on our list and check that out.

This is specifically something called DNA methylation, if I'm saying that correctly.

We'll go with that.

So can you explain that to us a little bit? Maybe use the instruction manual analogy that you were loving.

Yeah, I can do something like that.

So imagine your DNA is a massive instruction manual for your body.

As you get older, certain pages get stuck together with tags called that methyl groups.