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July 14, 2025—The body has its own age, and it has nothing to do with its number of birthdays. Plus, a deadly bacterium is moving northward, and Elon Musk launched xAI's Grok 4. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | We all count years to determine our age, but the body has its own biological age: cells, tissues and organs all have separate "clocks" that can tick at different speeds. Our health editor Lauren Young sat down with cardiologist and aging expert Eric Topol to talk about his new book Super Agers, in which he explores the development of biological aging tests, factors that might speed up or slow down aging, and what such tests might reveal about health. An excerpt of their conversation is below. LY: What can biological age tests tell us clinically? ET: We can detect in an individual if something's not right at different levels. For example, if your biological age is five years older than your real age, is there an organ that might be linked with that? Then you can use these clocks to see if lifestyle, prevention or treatment can slow down the pace of aging and get it into alignment with your actual age. LY: Why might someone biologically age "faster" or "slower" than their actual age?
ET: If you had to pick one mechanism behind why biological age and chronological age are misaligned, it would most likely be because there are some genes that are either protective or linked with accelerated aging—but that's such a small part of the story. Another root cause appears to be that our immune system gets weaker and less functional as we get older. It drops its level of protection, or it gets dysregulated—off track—and it can have an untoward, hyperactive response. Now when you have that happen, you start to see inflammation in the organs, such as in the arteries of the heart or the brain—it's what I call "inflammaging."
Obviously our lifestyle also has a big impact—eating a really healthy diet that's not proinflammatory and doesn't have a lot of ultraprocessed foods or red meat. Good sleep health helps reduce inflammation. There's only one thing that's been definitively shown to slow the epigenetic aging process, and that's exercise. LY: What environmental factors are also important to consider?
ET: We have all kinds of food deserts in the U.S. We have air pollution and unmitigated accumulation in the air and water of microplastics and nanoplastics, which get into every part of our body and induce inflammation. And we have forever chemicals as well that are pervasive. These all play a factor in lifestyle, health and aging.
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- Two identical bolts are placed together so that their helical grooves intermesh. If you move the bolts around each other as you would twiddle your thumbs, holding each bolt firmly by the head so that it does not rotate, will the heads move inward, move outward or remain the same distance from each other? The problem should, of course, be solved without resorting to an actual test. Click here for the solution.
| | - Since January the U.S. government has frozen billions of dollars in federal research funding to academic institutions. "Collectively, we're witnessing unprecedented attempts to bully academic institutions with the administration's ideological aims," write Matt Motta and Dominik Stecuła, both assistant professors of communication and political science. People must pressure their representatives to fight these cuts, they say. "U.S. academic research institutions are behind the country's global leadership in innovation, medicine and technological development. American universities host most of the world's top-ranked research programs, serve as engines of regional economic growth and train future leaders in fields such as medicine, public health and technology." | 6 min read
| | In the years I've spent reporting and editing health stories, one theme has emerged. Perhaps the best thing any person can do for their physical and mental health and longevity is exercise. A daily 30-minute walk at a comfortable pace can have a discernible effect on health markers like blood pressure, cognition, immune function, and lower overall risk of death in the near term. But even adding smaller increments of movement to your day can improve health. Humans evolved to move, and we thrive when we do. | | Welcome to a new week of scientific discovery. Let us know what you think of this newsletter by emailing: newsletters@sciam.com. See you tomorrow. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor
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