Living in extreme heat can grow old faster, find new study

With her sunny beaches and warm weather throughout the year, Florida has long been known as a well -known retirement place.

But if you worry about accelerating the rate at which you grow old, a new study can pause you to choose to live there in your twilight years.

Researchers found that extreme heat can speed up biological aging in older people.

While your chronological age is the number of years you have been alive, your biological age reflects how well your body has aged on genetics, lifestyle and overall health.

Research has shown that you have a biological era that is older than your chronological age is strongly linked to a higher risk of illness and mortality.

And a 2023 study found that your biological age may actually be more accurate in determining your overall health than chronological age.

For this new study, researchers analyzed data of more than 3,600 participants aged 56 and older throughout the US and compared their biological age changes with the history of their location heat and the number of extremely hot days over a six -year period.

What they found was that people living in areas that suffered more extreme heat – defined as temperatures above 90 degrees – showed greater increases in biological age.

The correlation also remained when checking for other factors, such as living habits such as smoking, alcohol consumption and fitness.

“Participants living in areas where heat days … Half a year occur, such as Phoenix, Arizona, have experienced up to 14 months of additional biological aging compared to those living in areas with less than 10 days of heat per year,” said co -author Eunyoung Choi, a post -democratal researcher at USC Leonard Davis school.

“Even after checking for some factors, we found this association. Just because you live in an area with more heat days, you are growing up biologically faster. “

Jennifer Ailshire, a professor of Gerontology in the USC and the main author of the study, stressed that extreme heat can be particularly dangerous for people who are older.

The National Institute for Aging points out that individuals aged 65 and older are more susceptible to heat -related diseases due to factors such as existing health problems, age changes in age and medication that affect the body’s ability to regulate temperature.

Moreover, the World Health Organization warns that heat extremities can worsen chronic conditions such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

Ailshire noted that the study took over moisture, rather than only temperature, and advised older adults to do so as well.

“Really really for the combination of heat and humidity, especially for older adults, because older adults do not sweat the same way. We begin to lose our ability to have the effect of cooling the skin that comes from it sweat evaporation,” she said.

“If you are in a country with high humidity, you don’t get so much cooling effect. You need to look at the temperature of your area and your moisture to really understand what your risk may be. “

The findings were published Wednesday in Science Avers magazine.