Biological age is decisive for our health

Your biological age can be significantly different from your birth age and provides much more information about your fitness and health than your last birthday. In reality, we talk about biological age in reference to the real age of our cells and organs, sometimes several years behind our birth age.

This biological age is determined by many parameters, first of all our genetics, but also our lifestyle. It is obvious that a sedentary lifestyle, an uncontrolled and unbalanced diet, and excess stimulants or alcohol will negatively impact our biological age (we lose years of life) and therefore our health. Knowing your biological age is interesting because you can adapt your lifestyle a little.

Biological age: how to calculate it?

We can easily imagine that in-depth examinations can precisely determine the age of our arteries, our heart or our skeleton (its bone density in particular)…

But it is also possible to determine this “healthy” age without extensive examinations.

It is to Mayo Clinic researchersa key research and health establishment in the United States (and ranked as the best hospital in the world by Newsweek magazine) that we owe this simple little test to do at home in a few minutes.

What does it consist of? Simply balance on one leg for as long as possible. Researchers have in fact established that the time during which we are able to remain upright and balanced decreases as we age.

Our ability to remain in balance therefore decreases by 2.2 seconds every ten years when we let's keep the balance on our non-dominant leg and 1.7 seconds when we balance on our dominant leg. “This finding is important because this measurement does not require specialized expertise, advanced tools, or measurement and interpretation techniques”, explain Mayo Clinic researchers.

Take the test

Do you want to know where you stand? Balance on one leg e as long as possible by starting the timer.

If you hold for 15 seconds, you have the biological age of a person 50 ans. If you hold for less than 13 seconds, you have the biological age of a person 60 ans ! But rest assured: by increasing your muscle mass and flexibility while adopting a healthy lifestyle, you can improve and therefore… rejuvenate!