As one lives older and older, “staying young” in your body and mind is more crucial than ever. Focus on the excesses that cause premature aging.
In general, from 30 to 45 years old, we are in possession of all our physical and cognitive means. But we still have many years to live: according to INSEE figures from March 2021, in France, life expectancy now exceeds 85 years for women and 79 years for men. Hence the need to maintain the “youth” of our body and our mind as long as possible. This, not only to remain “beautiful” and “strong”, but also to stay in good health, age increasing the risk of cancer and chronic diseases: diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative disorders (Alzheimer’s disease … ), etc.
We can play on the physiological age
Impossible, of course, to reverse the hourglass of “chronological age”, written on our identity card. On the other hand, underlines Dr. Christophe de Jaeger, physiologist, “it is different with” physiological age “, linked to the degree of real wear and tear of our internal organs”.
In a study published in 2015 in the American scientific journal Pnas, which analyzed the organs of 954 New Zealanders, it appeared that if all were the same chronological age (38 years), the physiological age of some were less than 30 years old while, for others, it was over 45! However, compared to the first, the second “were less physically fit, presented a cognitive decline, declared themselves in poorer health and appeared older” specify the authors.
Food, tobacco, alcohol: excesses to avoid
Of course, there is a certain genetic injustice, some of which are naturally more resistant to the passage of time. But “also and above all counts the lifestyle in adulthood”, assures Pr Karl-Heinz Krause, specialist in aging. Food, tobacco, alcohol, physical activity, sleep: all these everyday factors weigh heavily in the balance and can, as a result, slow down aging or, on the contrary, accelerate it.
The explanation? Physiological age depends in particular on the length of our telomeres, these repeated sequences of DNA at the end of chromosomes, which preserve the integrity of our genome, and whose size gradually decreases with age: “the shorter our telomeres are , the more we risk altering the function of our cells and tissues “explains Eric Gilson, professor of cell biology. However, “the lifestyle factors mentioned above all contribute to accelerating the erosion of telomeres.”
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