When people ask you how old you are, you usually tell them your chronological age. We should, however, figure out how old our bodies are, or what our biological age is. You might be surprised that most of the time, our body is not the same age we are.
Chronological Age vs Biological Age
Our bodies have two different ages: Chronological age and biological age. The chronological age refers to how long we’ve actually been alive, but our biological age refers to how old our bodies seem.
There are a few ways that scientists can discover a person’s biological age. One example is determining the length of a person’s telomeres, which are the protective ends of chromosomes. Telomeres work to keep chromosome ends from deteriorating or fusing with neighboring chromosome, affecting how quickly cells age and die.
Please take a look at my post dated January 9, 2015, “Eternal Youth, Can It Be For Real”, to get a bit more detail on telomeres.
I doubt that you are going to dash out and have your telomere length measured. There is a much simpler way to find out your biological age, and you can do it at home.
Test Your Biological Age
This is a simple flexibility test to see where your body lies relative to your chronological age. Start with a few jumping jacks to get the blood flowing and then do some light stretching to get your body ready.
Stand with your feet together, and bending at the hips, try to see how far you can reach down with your hands. If keeping your legs straight is too uncomfortable, allow a slight bend. Memorize how far you got and compare it to the test results.
If you could…
Touch the floor with your hands while keeping your legs straight, your muscles are relaxed, your body is as flexible as an average 20-25 year old person.
Touch the floor with your fingertips, either with straight legs or with a slight bend in you knees. If you feel little to no discomfort, your muscle flexibility is on-par with someone who is between 35-38 years old.
Touch your toes or just your feet in general with bent knees or straight legs. If you can only reach this far and your muscles are tense and starting to cause discomfort, your muscle flexibility is similar to that of someone who is 38-50 years old.
You can’t touch your feet, and if you were to try and reach farther, you would be really bending your knees. If trying to stretch a little farther makes your muscles scream and you stand up right away, your muscles have the flexibility of someone over 50.
Don’t be discouraged, your body’s flexibility is really up to you. With a daily light stretching routine you can build your flexibility and turn the clock back on your muscles.
There are many routines that you can start doing, but I suggest, the “Sun Salutation” routine, that I posted on January 20, 2017.
Take it very slow at the beginning, and you’ll be surprised how fast your flexibility returns.
Now, a one-week belated sweet potato recipe
My lovely wife, Pinky’s recipe has the following ingredients:
- 2 Medium sized sweet potatoes
- 1 egg
- 3 tablespoons flower
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 slice of fata chees (your preference)
- Some chopped scallions (your preference)
- 10 gm. of baking soda
- Salt, pepper, mint
Grate the potatoes, and mix all the ingredients listed above. The amount of fata cheese, chopped scallions and salt, pepper and mint is up to you.
Preheat the oven at 180 degrees centigrade, and bake the ingredients you have put into
a muffin tray until the tops are brown.
Bon appetito.
See you all next time.
