Latest news with #TonyWyssCoray
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Your organs have their own age – and it may predict health risks better than your birthday
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. The body's cells, tissues and organs all have different 'clocks' ticking at different speeds (Getty Images) '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. Bryan Johnson has documented his journey to reverse his biological age to that of a teenager (Dustin Giallanza) 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.
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
'Old' brains increase risk of death, Alzheimer's, study says
July 10 (UPI) -- They say age is all in your mind -- and that might literally be true, a new study reveals. People with "young" brains -- brains aging more slowly than their actual age -- are much less likely to die or develop Alzheimer's disease than those with "old" brains suffering from accelerated aging, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Nature Medicine. Results show that having an extremely aged brain nearly triples a person's risk of dying during a roughly 15-year period. At the same time, people with extremely youthful brains had a 40% lower risk of early death, researchers found. In other words, the biological age of the brain plays an outsized role in determining how long a person has left to live, said senior researcher Tony Wyss-Coray, director of the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience at Stanford Medicine. "The brain is the gatekeeper of longevity," he said. "If you've got an old brain, you have an increased likelihood of mortality. If you've got a young brain, you're probably going to live longer." Previous research has shown that a person's body can age from wear-and-tear more rapidly that what is reflected by their birth date. Essentially, a person's biological age can be older than their calendar age. For this study, researchers analyzed blood samples from nearly 44,500 people 40 to 70 participating in the UK Biobank, a large-scale health research project in the United Kingdom. Researchers used proteins found in the blood samples to estimate the biological age of 11 distinct organs or organ systems for each person, including the brain. About 6% to 7% of participants had "extremely youthful" brains, and a similar proportion had "extremely aged" brains. Overall, researchers found that any organ's biological age increased its likelihood of disease. For example, an extremely aged heart increased risk of abnormal heart rhythm or heart failure, and aged lungs increased COPD risk. But the association between an aged brain and Alzheimer's was particularly powerful - more than three times that of a person with a normally aging brain, researchers said. On the other hand, people with youthful brains had a quarter of the Alzheimer's risk linked to brains that were aging normally, the study found. In other words, someone with a biologically old brain is about 12 times as likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's as a person the same age with a biologically young brain, researchers concluded. These results could open the door to new medical screenings that could determine people's risk for various diseases based on the biological age of their organs, Wyss-Coray said. Future research also could figure out whether existing approved drugs might restore organ youth before people develop a disease based on that aging organ, he added. "This is, ideally, the future of medicine," Wyss-Coray said. "Today, you go to the doctor because something aches, and they take a look to see what's broken. We're trying to shift from sick care to health care and intervene before people get organ-specific disease." Wyss-Coray plans to commercialize the blood sample test, working with companies to get it on the market within a few years. "The cost will come down as we focus on fewer key organs, such as the brain, heart and immune system, to get more resolution and stronger links to specific diseases," he said. More information The Mayo Clinic has more on biological versus chronological age. Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
