One of the phenomena associated with aging is the concept of biological age, and the fact that it can differ from the person's real age, or as it is also called, calendar age.
All people age differently. Someone begins to grow old faster than others, and someone, on the contrary, looks younger than his age and remains active even when his peers prefer to live out their years quietly. The reason behind that is usually the difference in biological age for people of the same calendar age.Calendar or chronological age shows how many years, months and days have passed since a person was born. This is the age that is indicated in all official documents.
Obviously, aging is directly associated with the person's calendar age. However, the pace of the aging process is not the same for different people, that is why the concept of biological age was introduced. This concept relates to the actual physical condition of the body, and what normal age it usually corresponds to.
The difference in the speed of aging is attributed to the specifics of this process. Over time, cell division in the body slows down, and the number of errors during division increases and accumulates. This results in the body getting frail, and various diseases taking over.
Accordingly, your biological age shows the actual stage of degradation of your body, and how much you have aged.
Biological age is determined by many different factors, the main of which are the person's real age, lifestyle, eating habits, as well as having any chronic diseases. Therefore, the more you take care of your body, the slower the aging process goes.
And of course much depends on your genetics. Scientists usually say that longevity is a genetic lottery, because it depends on how lucky you are to get the right genes at birth. In fact, DNA testing is one of the ways of assessing your biological age. It is done through measuring the rate of the DNA methylation (modification of DNA molecule), and assessing how it corresponds to the real age of a person.
Evidently, the lesser the biological age is compared to the real one, the better. However, in addition to biological and real ages, there is also a psychological age, which means how old you feel yourself. Usually people feel younger than they really are, and this is a good thing, because such positive mindset helps the body to slow down the biological aging.
The difference is that psychological age is determined by your own feelings, which can be subjective, while biological age shows the real state of your body. Therefore, if you want to stay young longer, you should pay attention to both taking care of your body and your mental health.