We need to talk about ageing
ELLE’S NO-BS GUIDE TO GETTING OLDER
...and why it’s not such a dirty word.
If, like 40 million people globally, you’ve downloaded Faceapp, uploaded your selfie and hit the “old” button, your artificially enhanced glimpse into the future probably involved sagging eyelids, grey hairs and wrinkling skin. Chances are you laughed heartedly at your aged self, shared the image, then discarded it before vaguely reminding yourself to moisturise before bed. If only ageing, the IRL kind, was so easily switched on and off, right? Well, the experts say it can be. We spoke to the best of them and found the issue of ageing is anything but skin-deep
When we were 16, we all looked 16, give or take our orthodontic situation and level of access to Rimmel eyeliner. Once we’re older, let’s say 38, our age gets to be anyone’s guess. The range in appearance of women homing in on 40 is vast and sometimes astonishing. There are scientific studies to prove it, or you can just spend five minutes scrolling through a “Class of ’97” Facebook reunion page. Look there and it seems like some women are ageing at halfspeed, and others at hyper-lapse.
Because they are. A landmark study measured the “biological age” of nearly 1,000 New Zealanders who were all, technically speaking, aged 38 and born within a year of each other. By using 18 specific physiological markers – including metabolism, problemsolving and how well they could take a flight of stairs – some of those ’70s babies turned out to have a biological age of just 28, while others were already 40, effectively ageing 1.2 years for every actual year that passed. When strangers were then asked to estimate the candidates’ ages based only on a photograph, their best guesses aligned more closely with biological age than actual DOB.
Why though? While it’s tempting to blame simple genetics (or in lay terms, our mothers), an individual’s pace of ageing is determined far more by lifestyle and environmental factors. Yes, that tissue-thin skin under your eyes, the kind super-prone to darkening and making you look prematurely sad and tired, is partly thanks to your mother. But the fact you’re 20-a-day on the Marlboro Lights is a far greater part of it.
Some of the most significant research into the relationship between lifestyle and accelerated ageing comes from the Nobel prize-winning Australian researcher Dr Elizabeth Blackburn and her study of “telomeres” – protective matter at the ends of chromosomes that serve a similar purpose, she explains, to those little plastic bits on the ends of shoelaces. When the telomeres wear out, our DNA starts to wear out, too. Cell renewal slows down and soon after, we wake up looking and feeling like Big Edie from Grey Gardens.
Here’s an abbreviated list of things, abstract and concrete, that have been shown to fray our telomeres: chronic stress, too much sitting down and smoking (of course), divorce, poor nutrition, habitual negative thinking and self-criticism, too much exposure to domestic chemicals, inadequate exposure to nature, social isolation and sleep deprivation. The list is overwhelming, until you consider how many of those factors are entirely within our control, and therefore how possible it is to, as they say, flip it and reverse it. Within just a few months, the impact of lifestyle changes targeted at restoring inner health will start to register.
“We age from the inside out,” says Dr Michael Elstein, an anti-ageing specialist based in Sydney. “But external signs of ageing are the ones that tend to concern us most. So women may, for example, turn to Botox to improve the appearance of their skin, but they would be better to optimise nutrition, have their hormone levels and adrenal function tested, get zinc levels checked and really look into all those invisible markers that are the reason why ageing may be accelerated in the first place.”
And call their mothers. Turns out it’s not entirely her fault after all.
“SO MANY WOMEN TURN TO BOTOX, BUT IT WOULD BE BETTER TO LOOK INTO WHY AGEING IS ACCELERATED IN THE FIRST PLACE”