Longevity Biomarkers: Key Indicators of Healthy Ageing in Your 30s and 40s

Everyone wants to live longer, but no one wants the vagaries of old age. Both physical declines, such as muscle loss and joint disease, and cognitive declines, including memory loss and dementia, can severely impair quality of life in old age, resulting in loss of mobility and independence. While we all know that ageing is inevitable, longevity research suggests that age-related diseases and declines may be avoidable. Some of these studies have focused on longevity biomarkers, as well as the link between telomere length and ageing.

While longevity research is still in its infancy, there’s a lot we can do based on current evidence. Our knowledge and understanding of longevity biomarkers can help us adopt proactive anti-ageing strategies, also enabling more targeted interventions to prevent and manage age-related ailments.

What are longevity biomarkers?

Longevity biomarkers can include a variety of physiological and molecular indicators that reflect changes in the body that occur as we grow older. These biological changes include structural or functional degeneration that affects our organs, musculoskeletal structures, skin, and every part of the body at the cellular and subcellular levels. This could include biomarkers of metabolic dysfunction, organ damage and failure, osteoporosis or bone loss, sarcopenia or muscle loss, mitochondrial dysfunction, tissue inflammation, memory impairment, cognitive decline, and other changes implicated in ageing.

By testing these biomarkers from your 30s and 40s, we can establish an individual’s biological age, which is far more useful than mere chronological age. It gives us early warning and guides effective interventions to prevent or delay age-related diseases. This proactive approach with regular testing and monitoring of biomarkers for longevity is the key to improving not just life expectancy, but also quality of life.

Top biomarkers for longevity

Although there is no universally accepted categorisation of longevity biomarkers, studies have helped identify some of the most important biomarkers in ageing. Rather than using a narrow focus on just five or ten top biomarkers for longevity, it helps to measure them across different domains. These include longevity tests to measure:

• Indicators of metabolic health, such as lipid levels and HbA1c.
• Indicators of cardiac health, including Hs-CRP and BNP.
• Inflammatory markers, including CRP and interleukin-6.
• Biomarkers for cellular ageing, such as telomere length and DNA methylation analysis.
• Markers of oxidative stress, such as MDA and 8-OHdG.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, as screening tests to detect age-related declines should also include pulmonary function tests, dexterity and mobility tests, and cognitive function tests, among others. Longevity tests may also include other biomarkers such as those related to hormone levels and immune function.

Telomere length and ageing: The cellular clock

Telomeres are molecular structures that are present at the ends of chromosomes. They comprise repetitive DNA sequences that serve to protect the chromosomes, which are otherwise open-ended. This can pose a problem as the ends may combine with other loose DNA ends or get cut off, which could cause genomic instability, increasing the risk of DNA damage and cell dysfunction. The telomeres work like protective caps on the ends, preventing such fraying or fusing of the chromosomes.

Telomere length tells us a lot about ageing at the cellular level, as they become shorter over a period of time. Telomere shortening is therefore widely recognised as a hallmark of cellular and organismal ageing. This shortening occurs as a result of cell division, which is an essential feature of multicellular organisms such as humans – cells divide to reproduce and repair, creating new healthy cells. Each cycle of cell division results in telomeres becoming shorter until eventually they cannot shorten any further, thereby limiting the number of cell divisions. This contributes to cellular ageing and eventual cellular death.

While telomere shortening is an unavoidable feature of ageing, an accelerated rate of telomere attrition is a warning sign of early ageing and age-related diseases, making it one of the most important longevity biomarkers.

Longevity tests: How they measure health at a cellular level

Aside from telomeres, longevity tests also measure ageing and health at a cellular level by analysing other biomarkers that change as you grow older. This includes epigenetic clocks, which look at DNA methylation patterns that change over time. DNA methylation refers to a process in which a methyl group is added to a DNA molecule to regulate gene expression through the course of life. Examining these patterns of methylation can reveal biological age accurately, as opposed to chronological age. Abnormal methylation patterns are associated with reduced longevity and age-related diseases.

Longevity tests also assess cellular health by examining other biomarkers that change with ageing or age-related diseases, affecting glucose homeostasis, lipid metabolism, mitochondrial function, and inflammation.

Lifestyle factors that influence longevity biomarkers

Considering that most longevity biomarkers reflect the condition of major organ systems, they are influenced by common lifestyle factors. These include:

• Balanced nutrition with a focus on eating a wide variety of whole foods, especially fresh fruits and veggies, while restricting caloric intake can reduce cellular stress and improve longevity.
  
  
• Physical activity that includes strength training and aerobic exercise is important to maintain cellular health and lower the risk of age-related health conditions, from heart attacks to cognitive decline.
  
  
• Poor sleep quality with inadequate, disturbed, or irregular sleep hours can severely impact longevity as it accelerates cellular ageing by causing DNA damage and telomere shortening.
  
  
• Quit smoking as it is strongly linked with reduced longevity since it produces toxins that cause DNA damage, oxidative stress, and chronic inflammation.
  
  
• Stress levels, exposure to a clean natural environment versus high levels of pollution, and social connections also influence ageing and longevity biomarkers.

Using biomarkers to guide healthy ageing

While there is no way to stop the ageing process, we can use longevity biomarkers to guide preventive healthcare, so that our focus shifts towards better quality of life, rather than disease management. As many of the biological hallmarks of ageing begin during your 30s and 40s, this is when it becomes crucial to adopt healthy lifestyle measures and regular screening to ensure better cardiovascular, metabolic, and cellular health. These biomarkers also give us important clues that allow for precise evidence-based care as soon as signs of age-related diseases begin to develop, so that their progression can be halted or delayed to give you healthier and more fulfilling years as you age.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are longevity biomarkers?

Longevity biomarkers are measurable indicators in the body that reflect your biological age and overall health. They help predict healthy ageing and the risk of age-related diseases.

2. What does telomere length indicate about ageing?

Telomere length reflects cellular ageing because telomeres shorten with each cell division, and accelerated shortening is a warning sign of early ageing and age-related disease.

3. When should I start testing longevity biomarkers?

Testing from your 30s and 40s can help measure biological or cellular ageing, providing an early warning to prevent or manage early-onset age-related diseases.