Incognitively, human beings have with time adapted to the fact that aging is an unavoidable problem that one has to face at some point in life. The body begins to develop since conception, and the process continues up to maturity.
After the body cells have matured, the rate of cell death progressively exceeds the rate of cell division and formation in the body. The progressive rate of cell death results into a phenomenon called aging, up to the point where one dies.
The process of aging is a phenomenon that continues to intrigue man, and there are numerous researchers trying to seek answers on how aging can be stopped. The following is an analytical approach to understanding the two types of aging, chronological aging and biological aging.
Definition of Terms
Biological Age
Biological age is the development of a person, in relative comparison to biomarkers (2). Biomarker is an event in the cells or body molecule that has been recorded to occur after some time. This age focuses on the individual and does not consider the day of their birth.
Chronological Age
This is the amount of time that a person has been actually alive. Whether the person has a healthy lifestyle or not, the chronological age remains to be the length in time that a person has been alive (1).
Comparative analysis between Chronological and Biological Age
Aging is beyond your control and it is directed by genetics. Research has however shown that aging can be slowed by certain external factors such as nutrition and body exercises (2). It can also be influenced by negative habits such as smoking and stress.
Though differences for the two can be cited, it is impossible to assume that both subjects have a common toll and that is aging.
Also at the same time, both types of aging lead to the deterioration of the skin and other body functions in the long run.
Differences
It is believed that human beings have two distinct markers of age. That is the biological appearance and the actual time frame of life that one lives (2). The chronological age is the actual number of years that a person is bound to live and the biological age is how old someone seems to be. While the chronological age has only one feature of time (1), there are many other factors that affect the biological age.
Chronological age is the age calculated by the length of time that a person has lived (1). On the other hand, biological age is how old one looks.
While chronological aging is determined by the number of years that a person lives, the following factors influence the biological age of a person:
- Type and Quality of food eaten- it is known that reliance on indigenous foods can result to delayed aging.
- Lifestyle-
- A healthy lifestyle which involves activities such as exercising and meditating generally delays aging.
- An unhealthy lifestyle which involves poor feeding habits, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and living in polluted environments, will result to accelerated aging.
Biological aging has no defined timeline for it to set in. On the other hand, chronological aging begins at a known age.
For biological aging, one can affect how they age, by the lifestyle they live, and things such as food, exercises and smoking (2). On the other hand, a chronological aging cannot be determined by the lifestyle that a person lives.
Summary
In conclusion, biological aging is a factor that results from how you live. The more you practice better living habits, the slower the rate of biological aging. For chronological aging, human beings will always be vulnerable to the effect that time causes in our lives, up to the time that life will come to an end.
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