CHow old is your immune system really? If winter is synonymous with frequent colds and sore throats or you often suffer from cold sores, It may be that white blood cells and antibodies are aging too quickly and their biological age does not correspond to that written on the identity card. And it may well be that they are younger than the ovaries, but older than the brain: our body does not age in the same way everywhere, some organs age earlier and worse than others. Drawing a trajectory towards old age that is useful to know, to take the right countermeasures and stay (really) young and healthy for longer.
Aging: brain and heart the best equipped
That the biological age of our body can be different from our chronological age is no mystery, but now we are discovering that each organ and system fades at its own speed. The rapidity of decline of different organs is programmed in part by genetics: the brain and heart have the cells best equipped to last a long time, muscles, thyroid and adipose tissue a little less, organs such as the liver, kidney, lungs suffer more from the passage of time and others, such as the tissue that lines the uterus, age very rapidly, with the ovaries having such a rapid aging rate that they have already been defined as “geriatric” in their thirties.
Genetics matters, but so does lifestyle
However, as Nicola Montano, president of the Italian Society of Internal Medicine, specifies, «genetics matters, but the biggest impact on the aging of different organs is how we use and have used themin other words by our lifestyle. If I drink a lot of alcohol my liver and brain will tend to decay more quickly, if I eat too much and badly I can overload my heart and cardiovascular system, and so on.” A clear example? Someone who has spent a lifetime doing active outdoor work may, at seventy, have a heart, lungs and muscles in perfect shape, but skin that is wrinkled and old.
Geneticist Michael Snyder has identified several “aging types”, i.e. frailty profiles that explain why each of us faces age differently (Getty Images)
Aging is contagious, but there’s good news
The trouble is that aging is “contagious”: the failure of one organ extends to the others and so for example if you have “elderly” blood vessels it is easy to have high blood pressure, but this causes the kidneys and then the brain to age dramatically, increasing the risk of dementia. The good news is that taking into account which “piece” of the body is faster in taking the path of decline you could act to reduce the speed of the process in general: rather than trying to plug all the holes opened by the passing of time, it might be more effective to aim to keep young the parts of us destined to age more quickly and badly.
Aging: how to discover where we are most fragile
This is why understanding where we start to age matters, and a lot. The main directions on which we travel as the years pass would be fouror, according to the geneticist at the Californian University of Stanford Michael Snyder who has been studying the topic for some time: there are those whose immune systems suffer the blows of time more, who is more fragile in the liver, those who feel the advancing age especially in the kidneys And those who age earlier on a metabolic level. These four Achilles’ heels would identify the four main types of aging, or four “aging types”: the neologism was coined some time ago by Snyder, specifying that «we have 78 organs and there could be 78 aging types. It is likely that the main ones are around fifty, to be reduced to around twenty taking into account that many organs and systems are closely interconnected.”
What kind of “older person” are you?
The best defined ones to date are four: the immune aging type it is the one that has the least ability to manage inflammation and infections and is more likely to get sick from pathologies such as rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis; the metabolic aging type has altered blood sugar and cholesterol values more often, struggles to maintain weight and over time is more likely to develop cardiovascular diseases, obesity, type 2 diabetes; those who have a weak liver shows some difficulty in cleaning the body of waste, the main task of this organ, and more often enters old age with problems such as hepatic steatosis, the so-called fatty liver; the renal aging type on the other hand, it has greater difficulty maintaining an adequate water-salt balance and may suffer from disorders such as hypertension as well as renal failure. It can also be a mix of different types: an older immune type with a young metabolic profile, for example, will be a thin elderly person without diabetes problems, but more at risk from possible infections.
Something can be done, however
Unfortunately there is still no easy test with which to know how we will age: to be precise it is not enough to measure blood sugar, liver enzymes or white blood cells, a complex genetic, metabolic and molecular analysis would be needed. However, something can be doneas Dario Leosco, president of the Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics, explains: «When we start taking medicine for a chronic problem, it means that that is our Achilles’ heel and from there the decline begins: if there is an imbalance in a system, other deficits are added in a cascade. Any pathology can trigger the acceleration of agingfrom kidney stones to high blood sugar. Diagnosing and treating them well means maintaining the functionality of organs and tissues for as long as possible, aging yes, but slowly. And remembering that you can always do something to “rejuvenate”.”
Two elixirs of youth against aging
Snyder tested it on some volunteers on whom he had measured the aging type: by changing their habits, certain metabolic markers changed for the betterat least in the short term, so even if they haven’t turned into Benjamin Buttons and are still aging, they’re doing so more slowly. While waiting for it to become easier to evaluate the aging type and therefore the countermoves to take, e.gHowever, there are two elixirs of youth that work very well for everyone: one is physical exercise, which counts even more than diet for keeping the body healthy because it affects many aging types and for example is a panacea for the metabolism (more developed muscles consume more, even at rest), for the cardiovascular system, for the immune system.
The second elixir of youth is sociabilitywhich, despite having no direct effects on organs or systems, keeps us young because by connecting us to others it wards off loneliness, which It is harmful to all ages but especially to the elderly: those who are isolated have a greater risk of getting sick and dying sooner than they should because they eat worse, move less, perceive stimuli from the environment less, and let themselves go. Movement and a rich relationship life are two anti-aging remedies which, not by chance, concern body and mind. «For healthy longevity, parameters other than the aging of individual organs must also be considered: focusing only on individual systems could lead to losing sight of the organism as a whole» concludes Dario Leosco.