Audio long read: How quickly are you ageing? What molecular ‘clocks’ can tell you about your health
Nature Podcast
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4.4 • 859 Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
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Summary
With money pouring in and an unprecedented level of public attention and excitement, scientists are publishing a steady stream of papers on ways to measure how rapidly a person’s body is declining.
However, there are mixed feelings of enthusiasm and apprehension among researchers about efforts to develop tests that measure the impact of ageing on the body, as they are often interpreted and presented without a full reckoning of the uncertainties that plague them.
This is an audio version of our Feature: How quickly are you ageing? What molecular ‘clocks’ can tell you about your health
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Behind this door is uncertainty. Neighbours reported a break-in, smash glass. It could be a false alarm. |
| 0:10.7 | It could be a burglary. Someone could still be inside. They could be dangerous. So, are you going in? |
| 0:23.8 | If you think you could be a regular or volunteer police constable, search met careers. Change needs courage. Change needs you. This is an audio long |
| 0:35.6 | read from nature. In this episode, how quickly are you aging? |
| 0:40.5 | What molecular clocks can tell you about your health? |
| 0:44.5 | Written by Heidi Ledford and read by me, Benjamin Thompson. |
| 0:50.0 | If the number of on-camera screams is any indication, |
| 0:54.2 | Kim Kardashian's first encounter with epigenetics was a thrilling one. |
| 1:00.8 | The reality television star and her family shrieked and squealed in the season finale of the Kardashians |
| 1:07.1 | in Los Angeles, California last July, as they each learned the results of a commercial blood test |
| 1:13.6 | that purportedly assessed their biological ages. |
| 1:18.6 | Although Kardashian was 43, the placement of chemical markers on her DNA, her epigenetic profile, matched that of a 34-year-old, according to the test. |
| 1:31.8 | Her body, moreover, was aging 18% more slowly than most people of her age. |
| 1:39.0 | You should give yourself a pat on the back, said Matthew Dawson as he relayed the results. |
| 1:45.2 | Dawson is chief executive of True Diagnostic in Lexington, Kentucky, the company that sells |
| 1:50.9 | the test. |
| 1:52.1 | On the other side of the country, neuropsychologist Terry Moffitt says she was, quote, mortified, |
| 1:59.2 | end quote, when she saw the segment. |
| 2:02.2 | Moffitt, who works at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, |
| 2:06.3 | had spent decades with her colleagues collecting data from around 1,000 people |
| 2:11.6 | to create the basis for one of the tests provided by true diagnostic. |
| 2:17.1 | She had hoped that her work might one day inform |
... |
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