Men biologically ‘four years older’ than women by time they’re 50: Study
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Women may mature faster than men but according to a new study, men age faster than women.
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Researchers out of Finland found that men in their 50s are biologically older than their female counterparts — by four years.
The gap already exists in 20-somethings, according to the first-of-its-kind study, published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A.
They used an epigenetic clock, a biochemical test that can be used to measure age.
Scientists compared the chronological age of 2,240 twins, who were split into two separate groups depending on their age — those between 21 and 42 years of age and those between 50 and 76.
They then measured how many birthdays they’ve had against their biological ones.
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The research used four different epigenetic clocks to get the most accurate prediction of biological age possible.
They also measured participants’ years in full-time education, body mass index, and levels of smoking, drinking and physical activity to see which factors may affect the speed of their aging.
They found that men were older than women in all the groups when using all the clocks, and the difference increased as they aged.
“We found men are biologically older than women of the same chronological age, and the difference is considerably larger in older participants,” Anna Kankaanpaa, the lead author of the study, said.
“We observed a sex difference in aging pace, which was not explained by lifestyle-related factors,” she detailed, adding that they also compared the aging pace between twins of the opposite sex.
“The male sibling was about one year biologically older than his female co-twin,” she explained. “’The difference may be explained, for example, by sex differences in genetic factors and the beneficial effects of the female sex hormone oestrogen on health.”
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