Blood test reveals how old your body really is

‘With this knowledge, it may be easier to motivate medical treatments or get a patient to change lifestyle and monitor the effect,’ says Ulf Gyllensten, Faculty and Platform Scientific Director at SciLifeLab, and of the authors of the article.

With time the body and the different organs age. Lifestyle factors such as smoking or stress affects molecular processes and thus how quickly we age.

Now researchers at SciLifeLab/Uppsala University have found that a simple blood test can reveal how your lifestyle affects the body’s age. They analysed a number of proteins in blood samples from 1000 people.

‘By analysing proteins in the blood one can estimate a person’s biological age, as well as weight, height and hip circumference. The protein profile is influenced by a number of lifestyle choices and certain factors accelerate the body’s biological aging, while others slow it down,’ says Ulf Gyllensten.