Original photo by shurkin_son/ Shutterstock
The concept of time has been described as many things: an arrow, a river, a march, anything that moves inextricably forward at a constant, unalterable rate. However, aging doesn’t flow at such a uniform speed. Instead, humans age in fits and starts. A 2024 Stanford University study shows that our bodies age faster around our mid-40s and early 60s than during other stages of life.
The study analyzed data from 108 people who donated blood and other biological samples over several years. By tracking 135,000 different molecules, creating 250 billion data points, scientists discovered that roughly 81% of the studied molecules showed age-related fluctuations, and those moments of rapid aging tended to coalesce around the ages of 44 and the early 60s. According to the scientists, the most surprising data point was rapid aging in the mid-40s. At first, they theorized that menopause or perimenopause could be playing a role in these changes, but they found the molecular changes impacted men just as much as women.
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It's a fibAlthough the Seychelles giant tortoise can live up to nearly 200 years, scientists in 2016 discovered a Greenland shark that was at least 270 years old (and possibly much older), making that species the longest-lived vertebrate on Earth.
The affected molecules also differed between those two aging periods. Both age groups reported changes in molecules related to cardiovascular disease, caffeine metabolism, and skin and muscle growth, but the mid-40s cohort also recorded increased alterations in alcohol metabolism, while people in their early 60s underwent changes to immune regulation and kidney function. Of course, a lifetime of healthy eating, exercise, and plentiful sleep can curtail some of the effects of these periods of aging, so it may be worth paying extra close attention to your health when those milestones arrive.
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Genomic regions at the end of chromosomes, known as ______, shorten as we age.
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Genomic regions at the end of chromosomes, known as telomeres, shorten as we age.
It’s a myth that ancient humans didn’t live to old age.
A well-known (and much appreciated) side effect of modern medicine is its ability to increase a human’s life expectancy, especially in developed countries. In the U.S., for example, life expectancy hovered around 47 years at the turn of the 20th century but skyrocketed to nearly 77 years a century later. Delve even further back into history, and it may seem like humans lived rather short, brutish lives compared to today. However, old age isn’t a modern phenomenon.
Ancient Greeks and Romans, for example, had a life expectancy of just 30 to 35 years, but in the early Roman Republic, for example, you couldn’t even be a senator until the age of 60. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for people all around the world to live to at least their 50s or 60s in ancient and medieval times. A 2013 study highlighted that between the years 900 CE to 1531 CE, most people who reached adulthood in the region of what is now Cholula, Mexico, lived until at least the age of 50.
The low historical averages we often see reported are largely due to the high infant mortality rates at the time, a once-widespread occurrence that modern medicine has greatly alleviated. While technology has helped more humans reach an older age than ever before, we may be surprised by how many of our ancestors led lengthy lives.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
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