Alex Janin writes for the Wall Street Journal on how, before long, you might be able protect yourself from some serious health conditions by knowing the “age” of your organs. Would you want to know the “age” of your heart?
Did you know that while you might be 65 based on your birthday, your pancreas could be 70 and your heart 55? Apparently, researchers say that we can have an organ that is considerably older than our actual age. If so, that could increase our odds of getting certain diseases.
If you heart or artery or brain or pancreas are “older” than you are, you have a higher risk of dying sooner. So, if you knew your heart were older, theoretically you might be able to act in ways that reduce your chances of heart disease. Similarly, if your brain were older, theoretically you might be able to act in ways that reduce your chances of dementia.
To be clear, it’s still not possible to know the age of your various organs. It takes identifying the proteins in different organs and then using blood samples to determine the level of these proteins, which are different as you age. And, the science is not definitive at this point.
Moreover, even if it were possible to determine people’s organ ages, the next question becomes what to do about older organs. And, that’s not always clear. What we do know is that it’s not unusual for people to have organs that are “older” than their chronological age. About one in five people apparently do.
Here’s more from Just Care:
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