KNOW YOUR TRUE AGE
A technique for determining the age of tissues shows that different parts of our bodies are growing older at vastly different rates
WORDS AMIT KATWALA
You’re only as old as you feel, the saying goes, but what if different parts of your body aged at different speeds? It turns out they do. A system for studying the age of our bodies has been developed, and it shows that different tissues inside us are effectively different ages. Scientists have used several systems before, such as the levels of hormones in our bodies, to study biological age. But in 2012 Professor Steve Horvath at the University of California, Los Angeles, looked at something new – DNA methylation, a naturally occurring process in which DNA is chemically changed over time.