A descriptive example of someone younger than his age is 93-year-old Richard Morgan from Ireland, who became enthusiastic about rowing every day in the gym at the age of 73. According to his own words, he started “from scratch” without any background in sports. Now he is the indoor rowing world champion of his age group.
Morgan’s heart, muscles and lungs were “half younger” compared to his calendar age. Morgan personifies a burning research topic: biological aging.
From the calendar, we read our lifespan in years, while the biological age tells how old the body’s cells really are. In this way, people can be decades younger or older than their age. So how do you keep your body young?
Better resistance
The first thing to do is turn off your body’s frenzy. There is a fire burning in the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Finns, which is neither visible nor crackling. It is about silent inflammation, i.e. chronic low-grade inflammation. It is linked to individual factors such as overweight and long-term illnesses.
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Low-grade inflammation is more common in middle-aged people. The fuel for the nation’s fire is several antibiotic treatments and a diet rich in fat, sugar and fast carbohydrates, environmental toxins, tobacco, heavy alcohol consumption and chronic stress.
When there is constant fire in the body, it is more difficult for the immune system to perform routine tasks, such as eliminating cancer cells and pathogens. The more mass there is in the body, the more material that is susceptible to inflammation. Fat in the abdominal area incites inflammation particularly strongly – also a concern of people over middle age.
There are many other ways to strengthen the body and immunity than taming silent inflammation.
Read the whole story in issue 1/2025 of Hyvä tervey magazine!
As a subscriber, you can read all issues free of charge digilehdet.fi– service.
Source: www.hyvaterveys.fi
