Looking older than your age: does it say anything about your health?
How old you look is more than vanity. Doctors have long noted whether a patient looks “older than their age”, and researchers have started to measure it. Here's what the studies found, and where the limits are.
The twins who looked older
The best-known study followed Danish twins aged 70 and over. Nurses, young men and older women looked at their photos and guessed their age. Years later, those judged older than they really were were more likely to have died, even after accounting for their actual age and sex (Christensen and colleagues, BMJ 2009).
Within each pair of twins, the bigger the gap in how old they looked, the more likely the older-looking twin was to die first. Looking older also went with weaker physical and cognitive performance and with shorter telomeres, a marker of cellular ageing. In that study, perceived age was simply the average of what several people guessed from a photo.
Blood sugar shows on the face
In the Leiden Longevity Study, researchers compared perceived age with blood sugar in 602 people. Higher glucose levels were associated with looking older, after taking into account age, sex, smoking, weight and sun damage (Noordam and colleagues, 2013). One likely reason: over time, sugar binds to proteins such as collagen and makes skin less elastic.
Some of it is in your genes
A genetic study of 2,693 older Dutch people found that variants of the MC1R gene, best known for red hair and fair skin, made carriers look up to two years older, independently of skin colour and sun damage (Liu and colleagues, 2016). The effect was confirmed in two other groups of people.
The part you can change
Sun exposure and smoking are the habits most consistently linked to looking older, followed by sleep, weight changes and stress. We go through them in why some people look younger than their age. The encouraging part: a good share of how old you look reflects how you live, not only the year you were born.
What it doesn't mean
These are associations found in groups of people, mostly older adults, not a test for individuals. Light, a beard, makeup or a bad night can move a guess by years, and so can the person guessing. A stranger saying you look 45 says nothing about your health. If something worries you, ask a doctor, not a photo.
Find out what people see
AgeDart uses the same idea as the twins study, just for fun: strangers from all over the world guess your age from a selfie and you get the median, broken down by country, age group and gender. Find out how old you look.
Put your eye to the test
Guess the age of real people from all over the world, or post a selfie and find out how old the world thinks you are.
Play today's challenge on the web