Scientists discover six things that'll cause you to age faster than others

Let's face it, we're all getting older. In fact, we're constantly getting older. You're older now than you were when you first started reading this sentence.

But it's important to make a distinction between getting older, which we've already established everybody does, and ageing.

While ageing often refers to getting older, it can also be a reference to how our bodies and our minds actually handle getting older. And, interestingly, some people age a lot better than others.

But while it might feel like some people have simply won the genetic lottery when it comes to ageing, scientists have discovered six distinct pathways that can cause people to age unhealthily.

An international team from New University of Colorado Boulder have published a study in the Nature Genetics journal which explains why some people become frail and develop conditions like Alzheimer's, while others are still healthy at 90.

Ever wondered why some people are healthier at 90 than others are at 60? (Getty Stock Image)

The group looked at 400 genes associated with accelerated ageing across seven different sub-types and found that different groups of genes lead to disordered ageing or frailty, from mobility issues to mental decline.

"To be able to identify treatments to stop or reverse accelerated biological aging, you need to know what the underlying biology is. This is the largest study yet to use genetics to try to do that," wrote co-author Isabelle Foote, a postdoctoral researcher at CU's Institute for Behavioral Genetics.

The study looked at frailty, meaning 'multisystem physiological decline,' associated with ageing. It's thought that more than 40 percent of people over the age of 65 in the United States are considered frail.

To decide whether a person is considered frail, doctors will look at things such as their walking speed, grip strength, and the number of illnesses they've been diagnosed with. However, the score doesn't discriminate on physical or cognitive decline, meaning two people could have the same score but for completely different reasons.

Nearly half of over 65s in the US are considered 'frail' (Getty Stock Image)

Because of this, it's difficult for scientists to get to the bottom of the leading causes of frailty, making it impossible for doctors to make recommendations.

Dr Kenneth Rockwood, a leading expert in frailty, based at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, and another co-author on the study, explained: "Aging is not just one thing. There are many ways to be frail. The question then becomes: What genes are involved?"

In order to answer this question, the team analysed DNA and health information from hundreds of thousands of participants in the UK Biobank to get a view on which genes were linked to 30 frailty symptoms. They found 408 genes associated with increased poor ageing, a significantly higher number than he 37 which had already been identified.

There's a 30-point test to determine if someone is considered 'frail' (Getty Stock Image)

They found six distinct subtypes of unhealthy ageing: disability, poor cognition, metabolic problems, multiple diseases, a generally unhealthy lifestyle and limited social support.

Senior author of the study and assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at CU Boulder, Andrew Grotzinger, said: "What this paper does is not only identify sub-facets of disordered aging but also demonstrate that there is very different biology underlying them.

"The tangible next step is to figure out how to treat this underlying biology."

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