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Science

Ageing Accelerates at Around Age 50 - Some Organs Faster Than Others (nature.com) 57

A new analysis of protein changes across human tissues has identified an aging acceleration point around age 50, with blood vessels showing the most dramatic deterioration. Researchers examined tissue samples from eight body systems in 76 people of Chinese ancestry aged 14 to 68 who died from accidental brain injury, finding age-related increases in 48 disease-associated proteins.

Between ages 45 and 55, the most significant shift occurred in the aorta, the body's main artery carrying oxygenated blood from the heart. The team identified one aortic protein that triggers accelerated aging signs when administered to mice. Early aging changes appeared around age 30 in the adrenal gland, which produces various hormones. The study, published in Cell, adds to mounting evidence that aging occurs in waves rather than following a steady progression.
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Ageing Accelerates at Around Age 50 - Some Organs Faster Than Others

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  • NRA: Idaho (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Monday July 28, 2025 @10:13AM (#65549948)

    "How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.

    "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly."

    • I do believe this. You don't just gradually and smoothly age all the time. Besides cell-level degradation (which I now learn is not constant either) you have a health setback, like an illness / chronic condition, or significant injury, and then never fully recover to whatever level of "youth" you had before.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 )
        From what I can tell...is that your warranty runs out at age 60 for the most part....wow, I mean I wish I'd bought the extended warranty....

        Lots of friends going well till early 60's and then BAM, everyone getting hit with health problems.

    • "How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.
      "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly."

      Don't forget to credit Ernest Hemingway for the quote (from The Sun Also Rises).

  • by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Monday July 28, 2025 @10:21AM (#65549968)

    Whatever comes out of this research will be too late to save most of us slashdotters.

    But then, Netcraft did confirm our death decades ago.

  • Why do I prefer death to using knowledge gained from torturing fellow mortals?

    • As soon as they say "Chinese" and "accidental" brain injury I wonder the same thing.
    • The issue is morally complex.

      We need the scientific knowledge to save human lives, in potentially very large numbers. If we sit on our hands and just let them die, then we commit a moral sin of inaction.

      But the only way to obtain the knowledge involves experimentation that brings suffering and death to a small number of animals. Imposing needless suffering and death on living beings is also a moral sin.

      Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't.

      The discriminating principle then becomes one of value. Human liv

      • "we commit a moral sin of inaction"

        What if everything we do medically is just placebo anyway so we can avoid all the animal torture? Is it possible you will keep coming up with excuses why we need to be violent, because you simply like violence?

        • As it turns out, most of what we do medically is not just placebo. In fact, the overwhelming majority of medical practice is not placebo, with elements of the placebo effect engaged only in very specific circumstances. This is for a few reasons, one being that the placebo effect isn't reliable as a form of medical treatment in most cases (even though it needs to be accounted-for in clinical testing). So, the animal testing is still needed to produce non-placebo treatments that are effective and reliable.

          • How come Jains have existed since before recorded history, practicing nonviolence?

            Are scientific treatments really more reliable as you claim? Why didn't chemotherapy do anything to stop my Dad's cancer, and why did the depression drugs my brother was prescribed fail to prevent his suicide?

            • I am very sad to hear about the deaths in your family. That kind of loss can cause terrible emotional trauma. If you have any support services available, like grief counseling or therapy, I hope that you can reach out. Sometimes we need help to heal from emotional wounds like that. Please don't face that pain alone if you don't have to.

              Chemotherapy is an "imperfect solution." It usually works against cancer, but not always. The type of cancer matters a lot, and also how early it is detected matters a

              • So do I still have the freedom to be suspicious of medicine and avoid doctors as much as possible because I don't trust them, and how much freedom of speech do I have to try to make you wary too? If I remain unconvinced by your defense of scientifc medicine because it all just seems like fad, when doctors tell us coffee is bad, then good, and prostate cancer iis an epidemic, then just natural (my Dad underwent prostate surgery then died of cancer just a few years later before any prostate problems would ha

                • Well I don't understand you now. I have no influence over your level of freedom. And whether or not you listen to reason is your choice.

                  Your individual experience does not negate the stats. Medicine gets good results for most people most of the time, in accordance with the details of their condition. And I said before that everyone is different and no principle of human behavior is universal, which is why video games never appealed to you.

                  You aren't presenting sound arguments against my positions. You

                  • Csn you see that every measurement and its interpretation is a social act, such that measurement was used to disprove heliocentricism and continental drift theory? Why do you trust that today's measurements won't be subject to radical revisions, and when that happens will you just happily shift with the consensus and sct as if you'd always been right, because feeling mood affiliated with whatever the consensus is saying these days is the real, emotional, goal you're after?

  • Life enjoyment (Score:2, Insightful)

    I just want to enjoy my life the best I can and take what comes.
  • It's OK (Score:3, Funny)

    by froggyjojodaddy ( 5025059 ) on Monday July 28, 2025 @10:41AM (#65550002)
    I self-identify as a perpetual 30 year old so I should be fine.
    • I self-identify as a perpetual 30 year old so I should be fine.

      Me too! I'm trans-age and age-fluid.

  • As if I needed the reminder.
  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday July 28, 2025 @10:53AM (#65550038)

    And yeah, for me, 48 years old was the big downslide. So many small things start going wrong at the same time. And the maddening thing is, you still feel young inside. It's just that you slowly give up on stuff because the body doesn't follow. It's like seeing opportunities disappear and doors closing. Not fun...

    • I'm 48 and holy crap I must agree. My back is hurting on and off, never used to. Foods I used to eat just fine now make me feel bleah and sick to my stomach. I've needed new eyeglass prescriptions four times in the last five years; before I went with the same prescription for a decade.

      It's perfectly normal but still scary. It's like suddenly your body goes "Okay I've had enough" and yells at you to take it easier.

      I hate it.

      • I'm edging close to 60, and I'm still setting personal records for cycling. I'm not gonna match any of my more youthful running times, though, even if my ankle weren't currently damaged. And, curiously, my eyesight is getter better. The last two years, my prescription has gone toward lesser strength lenses. My eye dr says it happens, but I wonder if at some point I won't need glasses at all. Shrug. I'm pretty sure I'm not Benjamin Button.
    • Thankfully, lifestyle can have a big impact on the age when this slide starts to occur. At 59, by eating (mostly) healthy and daily bike rides, I've been able to stay healthier than most 50-year-olds. Sure, I feel an occasional twinge of early arthritis, and I've had cataract surgery. But I'm *far* more healthy than my own younger brother. Some of that is genetics, but a lot comes down to how well you take care of yourself.

    • by Evtim ( 1022085 )

      Same here.

      However, fixing food, sleep and exercise has been tremendous! At the moment, at 52, the physiological clock is back in so many ways. Even eyesight improved a little bit.
      Energy levels, fat content, brain power, muscle strength, explosiveness and elasticity, heart, lungs, skin....I have that better now than when I was 40. Sure, there is no ultimate win against time, but the divergence between people as they age is so enormous as to be baffling to me for the longest time. I always thought genetics is

    • All of you in your 50's and believe that your still doing great, may have a big surprise soon. I was fine until my mid 50's then shit hit the fan. It does not take much to start the slide, for me it was a knee replacement, that led to forced retirement, not being able to train and work out as usual, which led to everything else going to hell, etc. Around and around we go. I'm now in my mid 60's and am not half the man I was just ten years ago. Now this is all just my experience and YMMV, but just don't

  • by MindPrison ( 864299 ) on Monday July 28, 2025 @11:15AM (#65550070) Journal

    ...for someone wearing C/pap with 80 breath stops an hour. Fun times ahead for me.

    Well - accelerated fun living it is then, live it up folks!

  • Slashdotters are old as dirt.

    Next story: How to build your digital gravestone with Free software.
  • The different organs see different conditions. One set of DNA has to perform functions in many different cell types. A multitool isn't as good as any one tool it replaces. How one set of DNA performs all function is pretty interesting. It is done through gene silencing and promoting, which can go wrong (frequently in cancer genes are hyper or hypo methylated which is one way that genes are prevented from being used or encouraged). For example there is only one hepatocyte, but due to the oxygen gradient of b
  • I think we've all experienced this. At 30-ish, suddenly you can't drink as much, your neck and back start to get tweaked more often, you're not as powerful an athlete as you used to be (though sometimes you get better in other ways).

    At 40 my eyesight started to go. I started wearing computer glasses. My aches and pains were worse, and I took so much longer to heal. I went on statins because even while I stayed athletic and ate pretty well, I just couldn't get my triglicerides any lower.

    I'm 48 now, and I'll

  • When you are in your teens and twenties you are in your physical prime and everything comes easy to you with little exercise. Later in life its more like the Red Queen, "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!".

    You are going to need to do some serious exercise as you get older in order to keep the health you used to get for free. And I don't mean taking leisurely walks either, it has to seriously work you

  • News articles like to talk about a single inflection point because it's easier for everyone to understand. However, the likely reality is that there is a distribution. The shape and width of that distribution is just as important, if not more important. Do some people see this effect at age 40 or age 70? Are there genetic or environmental effects? Or is this a threshold that is independent of genetics and environment?

    Unfortunately the article is paywalled.

  • At 53, I lost some weight, and felt and looked healthier than I had been in many years. Doctors were happy with my condition. As had been the case for all my life, in my photos, I looked far younger than I was.

    Just three years later, I now look my age, for the first time ever. My appearance aged many years in a short time. I now have to do "intermittent fasting", about 40 hours of no food, two or three times per week. Not because it's a fad, not because I'm trying to get thin, but just to fix my digesti

    • I would suggest the probiotic, Florastor. It saved my wife's life from a hospital acquired infection - and has improved her digestion considerably. I have absolutely no financial interest in it, but your comments reminded me much of where she was 7 years ago, and she's way healthier now.
      • by RickyRay ( 73033 ) *

        Thanks!

        I've tried some probiotics, with little effect, but knew there had to be one that would help. I'll get some Florastor soon, to see if it works for me.

        • The nice thing about this one, since it is yeast based, it is good to take with antibiotics, if you need to take them. My wife has long term digestive issues from celiac disease - she's been gluten free for more than 4 decades. This has also helped that - she still doesn't eat gluten, of course, since this doesn't change one's genetics, but she has fewer other issues. I take it too -- and I told a friend of mine who had pretty serious IBS and she told me that one capsule daily (they suggest to take 2) got
    • by kackle ( 910159 )
      In such cases, I wonder about disturbed gut microbiomes, like SIBO, SIFO and IMO, and all these other alphabet soups that they are just starting to learn about and consider in patients. I took antibiotics a long time ago and have been gastrointestinally messed up ever since.
      • by RickyRay ( 73033 ) *

        Agreed!

        Along that line, I suspect that in a few years we will find out that many mental conditions are caused or exacerbated by a lack of or excess of a vitamin or mineral. Our overprocessed diet has been making it far worse. Medicine needs to happen differently for each person, and diet needs to get back to fundamental, natural foods.

        • by kackle ( 910159 )
          This sounds like the perfect puzzle for "AI" (the permutations among symptoms and microbiota), but as a software guy I don't know how to even wrap my head around it. As confirmed by my gastroenterologist, the microbiome makeup varies from place to place along the intestines in the same individual!
  • I lost an organ the year I turned 50. Had to get a transplant.

    • by sgage ( 109086 )

      I was one of those who always looked much younger than my actual age. Then, when I was 53, my left internal carotid artery unraveled. Right out of the blue. Besides the obvious plumbing issue, there was collateral damage to the wiring, and there are neurological issues as well. I have no stamina (chronic fatigue), my eyes are all fracked up, and I have serious vertigo problems - like just falling down at random times. I call it 'tumbling the gyros'. Lord knows how many micro-strokes I had before it smoothly

  • I wonder how much of this is inherently physical and how much is social influence. Sure, the body resilience declines. Ideally, this would be the time to step up health management: eat better, exercise more, pay more attention. But I don't think this generally happens. People gain obligations so they spend _less_ time taking care of themselves right when they need to speed more.
  • by Travelsonic ( 870859 ) on Monday July 28, 2025 @07:03PM (#65551498) Journal
    How much of this is actually FROM aging, and how much is from a combination of diet, exercise and activity level or lack thereof, bad habits that IMO are perpetuated by our current work culture, etc?

    So many factors potentially involved - we need, IMO, answers based on complete questions that factor in as many variables as possible. Remember how so many people believed that your metabolism tanks after 30, and yet years later on it was found that in fact it stays relatively level until ~60?

Statistics means never having to say you're certain.

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