Extreme heat in older people accelerate aging for more than two years, they show new research – climate change

As the air conditioning changes and more very long weather heat intervals, people will be increasingly exposed to increasing heat, to which our body will react faster aging, showing this research.

How are we getting old with heat?

Aging is a natural process, but the way the stress is varied from man to man. During our lives, we pass through different situations, we experience stress, shocks … For example, if we don't sleep enough for a long time, we'll take care of faster.

The heat is a two-blade sword. Sometimes it pleases us, but it can often lead to illness or even death. Long-lasting heat burdened our bodies and makes them less effective in performing a simple job. That is why it accelerates our biological aging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyhbbekap0a

During the lifes, our genes are not changed (except random mutations), but the way they are recognized. Cellular changes in DNA can lead to proteins to produce more or less, which in turn can influence physiological functions and our health status. This can be bad and good.

Heat stress can change that, which could in turn affect the speed of aging. Heavy heat stress, as they specify in the research, our cells remember and time can change their DNA forms. In laboratory tests, the effect is expressed in fish, chickens, guys and mice.

Many research so far about how heat affects epigenetics refer to animals and plants. Only a few studies that included people and they were limited. This void this new research was supposed to fill.

What did the study reveal?

Almost 3,700 people participated in the researcher study from the University of Southern California, an average age of 68 years.

« Heat affects more to older than younger people. Our ability to control body temperature is declining as we age and are less resistant to external stress and shocks. We also know that periods of extreme heat are caused by a wave of diseases and sometimes death, especially in older people, « transmits Science Alert.

The study aimed to better understand what was happening to human bodies at the biological level when it was exposed to intense heat in a short, medium and long time.

To do this, researchers took blood samples and measured epigenetic parameters per thousands of places across the genome, which were used to calculate three hours that measure biological age.

Then they looked at the levels of heat, which each participant was exposed in its geographical areas during the previous six years, from 2010. until 2016. years.

Long-term exposure to intensive heat increased biological age in 2.48 years during the six-year study period according to PC Pheno AGE parameter and 1.09 years towards Dunedin Pase.

During the research period, the effect was up to 2.48 years faster than normal aging, with one calendar year equal to one biological year of aging. That is, instead of their bodies grow old in six years over a period of six years, heat could make their bodies grow old for up to 8.48 years. It is important that biological clocks are quite different, and we do not know why.

The way these researchers conducted their studio gives us trust in their findings – a sample study was large and representative, and the use of heat index instead of air temperature is improvement in relation to previous studies.

However, the findings do not explain whether the participants had air conditioning in their homes or spent a lot of time outside.