Yesterday’s 10K felt easy. Today, your knees complain, and your energy levels are unreliable. You didn’t get old overnight, but you may have hit a rapid burst of ageing: brief, measurable accelerations that hit at certain points over a lifetime. Recent research has shown that biological ageing is not linear, and instead occurs in clusters in our mid-40s and again around 601.
The good news? These biological setbacks are measurable and manageable. In this article, we’ll go through the ways you can track and understand your biological age, and set out a roadmap to pre-empt and manage rapid bursts of ageing.
Ageing Is Nonlinear - Why That Changes Your Playbook
If your energy, recovery, or vital signs feel stable for years and then suddenly sag, you’re not imagining it. Only a small percentage of age-related molecular changes occur steadily with age; most change in bursts. This is particularly apparent in our mid-40s and around 60, where cardio-metabolic, immune, and kidney-related signals all fluctuate1. You can treat these windows like “service intervals” for deeper checks and tune-ups.
.png)
Understanding and Measuring Signs of Ageing
Understanding how your body is changing is essential for planning how to combat potential impacts on your health and fitness. We’ll walk through some of the essential measureables: glucose stability, heart rate variability (HRV), sleep health and epigenetic age.
Glucose: The Everyday Signal of Metabolic Stability
Postprandial glucose levels, the levels of glucose in your blood after a meal, are important predictors of a range of issues, including heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Two people can eat identical meals and have very different glucose curves2. Post-meal glucose spikes reflect how well your body handles stressors like sleep loss, inactivity, ultra-processed foods, and time of day. Keeping spikes modest is protective.
Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) can help us understand changes in blood glucose throughout the day and see trends evolving over weeks, months, and years. CGMs are now available as wearable biosensors that relay information to your smartphone. Research has shown that a personalised diet can modify postprandial glucose3, so CGM can help identify the right diet for you, as well as appropriate meal timings and frequency.
Know Your Pace: DNA Methylation & DunedinPACE
If chronological age records your mileage, your pace of ageing is the speedometer. If you want an objective snapshot, consider assessing your epigenetic age. Epigenetics determines which of your genes are expressed at any given time, and your epigenome plays a crucial role in controlling your health and fitness4. Research shows that DNA methylation, one type of epigenetic control mechanism, can act as an “epigenetic clock” to understand biological age5.
A variety of kits to test your epigenetic age are available. For example, DunedinPACE is a DNA methylation marker that has been shown to act as a marker for the pace of ageing in the blood. You should use tests of epigenetic age as a high-level gauge of changes, rather than micromanaging week-to-week fluctuations.
MRI for Tracking Organ-Level Ageing
MRI is radiation-free and allows us to see structure and function. Brain MRI can quantify grey and white matter volumes and spot microvascular injuries6. Cardiac MRI tracks ventricular size and function, aortic stiffness and strain on the heart7. A full-body MRI, which images multiple organs at once, can estimate visceral vs subcutaneous fat, fat around the organs such as the liver and pancreas, and help measure skeletal muscle8.
Whole-body MRI can also pick up early signs of age-related disease, such as cancer. You can explore Ezra’s full-body MRI to understand your risk of age-related diseases.
.png)
A Roadmap to Tracking Setbacks: Understand Your Biological Age & Tackle Setbacks
Taking into account the measurables that help us understand our biological age, here is a roadmap for tracking and tackling biological setbacks.
- Baseline - Understand your core vital signs. This can include heart rate, blood pressure, grip strength, simple fitness tests, and lab tests.
- Map glucose - Use CGM under “normal” conditions - learn how different meals trigger glucose spikes, and the impact of your sleep patterns and daily stressors. You can complement CGM with sleep tracking and other fitness tracking outputs.
- Informed personalisation - Use your newfound knowledge of your metabolism to start to introduce changes in your diet and lifestyle. Confirm the impact of changes with CGM and fitness tracking. Your decisions should be backed up by the data.
- Setback radar - Watch for trend breaks: rising resting HR, worse sleep, familiar meals now spiking, triglycerides drifting up. When clusters appear, run a mini-reset and, if persistent, re-check labs.
- Major services - Conduct a deeper review at yearly intervals, with particular attention paid in your early 40s and 60s. This can include lab tests, as well as epigenetic ageing, and a full-body MRI.
Smart Supplements
Food, muscle, sleep, and light are all vital contributors to your health and wellness, and you can use supplements to support them. Always check how supplements interact with other medications and conditions with your doctor.
- Berberine - Can lower post-meal glucose spikes and regulate appetite9,10.
- Nicotinamide riboside (NR) - Regulates blood NAD⁺, which has been shown to have beneficial effects on calorie restriction and health ageing11.
- Urolithin A - Helps support muscle endurance and mitochondrial health in older adults12.
- Spermidine - Promotes healthy ageing, and suppresses the occurrence and severity of age-related diseases13.
- Magnesium L-threonate - Improves sleep quality, a key factor in ageing and a determinant of daily functioning14.
Summary: From Panic to Plan
Treat setbacks as signals, not verdicts. You can use the nonlinearity of ageing to your advantage by increasing monitoring during known transition windows. You should aim to slow the pace, not chase perfection. Make sure you work closely with healthcare professionals, and don’t make drastic changes to your diet without consulting a doctor. Take control of your healthcare journey by being proactive about your health and help combat rapid bursts of ageing.
Don’t wait for aches, fatigue, or lab results to force your hand. With an Ezra MRI Scan with Spine, you can see what’s happening inside your body now, track changes over time, and spot signs of disease early.
