A recent study showed that stress can cause people and mice to age more quickly, but the good news is that it’s reversible.
The study found that different types of stress, such as big surgeries, pregnancy, or severe illness, can rapidly increase a person or mouse’s biological age, which is the age of a person based on biological markers.
Still, this increase mostly goes away after they recover.
Biological age is how old your body is on the inside, rather than how old you are in years.
Although it is generally thought that biological age only goes up over time, the researchers discovered that it can also go up or down based on various health factors like illness or lifestyle choices.
James White, co-senior author of the study and professor at Duke University School of Medicine, said: “This finding of fluid, fluctuating, malleable age challenges the longstanding conception of a unidirectional upward trajectory of biological age over the life course.”
The study indicates that severe stress may increase mortality by increasing biological age. Reducing biological age may decrease mortality, and the ability to recover from stress likely plays a role in determining successful aging and longevity.
Although the study has some limitations, such as reliance on DNA methylation clocks to infer biological age in human studies, the most potent aging biomarkers presently available, future research could explore the connections between short-term fluctuations in physical age and lifelong biological aging trajectories.