How old are you?

We are often asked this question in one form or other and we habitually give an answer which is the difference between the current year and the year we were born without further pondering about the aptness of the answer we gave as if that is without doubt THE answer.
But there are times we do expressed double about such answers such as when we exclaimed “you don’t even look 50!” when someone gave 60 as his/her age.
There are also times when we comment that someone is not acting his/her age. An 18 year old may try to act as if he/she is 30 or a 50 year old may talk like a 17 years old student.
All these point to a fact that there are different kinds of ages though we may not always realize it.
The commonly given age is the chronological age which is the calendar age. This age is fixed and easily determined but is not reliable. A person who is 60 years old chronologically may look youthful and healthy. Another person who is also 60 years old chronologically may look old and sick. The chronological age, in this sense, does not really tell how old we are in so far as our physical functions and vigor are concerned.
The age generally based on physical look may be labeled the Biological/physiological age whereas the age based on how old a person feels/thinks may be labeled the psychological age.
The biological age, I was given to understand, is determined by how our critical organs function. These organs age in accordance with how we treat them. Each organ of a person may age according to different time-table. My heart may be 50 years old but my bones could be 60 and my muscles 40. The tissues or cells that made up an organ may also age differently. As such, determining our biological age is a very complex matter.
Our body, as I learned, is at its prime when we are about 20 years old when our critical organs have fully developed. Everyone this age looks and functions much the same. After 30, our critical organs start to deteriorate at rates depending on how we treat them. As of this era, they deteriorate at about 1% a year for a normal person. It will take 70 years to deteriorate down to 30% maximum capacity beyond which the organs may breakdown. By then we would have been 100 years old. But some serious diseases are likely to crop up and disrupt our live along the way and most of us are more likely to die of disease rather than of old age.
Unlike Chronological age, Biological age is changeable; it can go forward fast, slowly, or even reverse, depending on how we treat ourselves. Our life style has different effects on our different organs. Our sleeping, eating and drinking patterns and habits, our postures, and the way we walk…constitute part of our life style and they all have some effects, positive and /or negative, on our various organs and determine how effective they function at any given time.
Biological age is also affected by psychological age, which is something even more flexible, fast changing and personal. Psychological age can switch forward and backward at any chronological age.
So, how old are you? It is difficult to assign a single figure. Your chronological age is a poor measurement of how old you are. Your biological age is a better indicator but as we have learned, it is difficult to determine as each of your critical organs may function at different efficiencies at any given time after age 30. Your psychological age nearly can change from moment to moment and affect your biological age.

Feb 2008 Hiew