I’ll be 76 next month and I feel like I’m 60. How about you?
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Can’t access the whole article or link
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This should be a gift link.
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The concept didn’t arise in the article, but people who are physically inclined may choose to be tested for markers of biological age, such as telomere length. Biological age can be greater than, equal to, or less than chronological age.
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Until I look in a mirror, I’m 24. Damn mirrors.
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Every birthday after 38th is a 39th birthday. 
Funny thing… recently I took one of those online fitness age tests, and I tested to be 39 years old. 
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My blood test showed that my telomeres are that of a ten year old, however, when I look in the mirror, I distinctly see a 61 year old looking back at me. 
Actually, one study showed that having extremely long telomeres is not such a good thing. If you get certain types of cancer (pancreatic being one of them), it tends to be much more aggressive in that group, for some reason.
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I’m 64 and feel mentally the same as I did when I was 50. So that’s close to the 20%. A couple physical challenges change’s perspectives.
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When you compete in sports that have age divisions, you may look forward to 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 (or whatever ages the age divisions start).
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Perhaps a test such as this has limited validity without the availability of a baseline?
I have no idea, but I think the point of the test is to check the length of your telomeres and see if you should be doing something about it.
Most of the “do something about it” listed on that web page is the usual stuff about eating vegetables not ultra processed food, exercising, not smoking, avoiding obesity (particularly visceral body fat), and watching the usual blood work numbers.
Telomeres get used up when cells divide. So rapidly dividing cancer cells will use them up and stop unless they can rebuild their telomeres. But if they are longer to start, then the cancer may divide more before they run out.
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That is interesting. I had no idea why certain cancers would be more aggressive for people with long telomeres, but that makes sense. I wonder if they ever use telomere tests as an indicator to see if you have cancer, ie if a year later your telomeres are half the size as they were (and you hadn’t taken up smoking and other bad habits), maybe cancer is the cause.
If they happened to grab a sample of cells that were from the cancer. Other cells’ telomeres would not be affected by the cancer. Also, cancers can mutate to be able to rebuild their telomeres, which is why they can keep growing instead of always being self-limiting.
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I’m inching towards 66 and feel like early 50s most of the time.
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I’m 66 and OK to be my age but also sometimes feel younger. My husband is always amazed at how young my friends are—they’re my age and he’s 15 years older but thinks he’s my age too. Haha!
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I went to a lecture on this and the one thing I remember was taking cold showers or being in the cold is better for the telemeter length then not. Now I will read the article.
I am 63 but played pickle ball with 30 year Olds and younger today Does that count? 
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Age 61. Tomorrow I do a 5k fun run that I did 7 years ago (though I still needed walking breaks back then). Gonna try to be happy as long as I beat my prior time… and then I will be able to say that I feel 54.
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I haven’t been able to find any studies that show this. The only studies I could find that investigated the effect of cold on telomere length in mammals are in hibernating rodents and lemurs, but they found the opposite effect: the net effect of spending more time at cold temperatures was either no change, or shortened telomeres, though that can’t necessarily be extrapolated to humans. In the one primate study (lemurs), the authors state:
“Evidence of telomere shortening or “degradation” under environmentally harsh conditions and subsequent telomere elongation has also been documented in non-hibernating mammals and birds (Brown et al. 2022; Criscuolo et al. 2020) and it is consistent with the “metabolic telomere attrition” hypothesis that posits telomere attrition is greatest when individuals undergo harsh energetic constraints (Casagrande and Hau 2019; Power et al. 2023).”
The harsh energetic constraints are the cycling between cold and warm. I’d be interested to know your lecturer’s source of data.
This is a great article on the potential health effects (positive and negative) of cold water immersion (written by well-respected research physiologists), if you’d like to read up on it.
https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/EP086283
ETA: oh hang on I think I found the one the cold plunge gurus are talking about. It’s a study on fetal cord blood. A decrease in ambient temperature (of 1 degree C) was correlated with longer telomeres in the cord blood cells during the first half of gestation. That effect disappeared later in gestation. So this can’t be extrapolated to adult humans doing cold plunges.
I think the pickleball is your best bet!!
Let me find my notes. Maybe I am getting it mixed up. Yes, it was an animal study. I will pm you when I find it. Probably tomorrow
If I can’t, I can reach out to the lecturer.Regardless. I find this all very interesting and it’s relationship to cancer, aging, etc etc.
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