60-Year-Old Woman Reduces Her Biological Age To 35 With 4 Tricks

• A 60-year-old woman says she has been essentially aging backwards for about four years.
• A “biological age” test she recently took revealed her body was 35 years old.
• She enjoys hiking, raving, hormone therapy and fasting.

This essay, as told, is based on a conversation with Tina Woods, a 60-year-old healthcare entrepreneur and CEO of Business for Health in London. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I just turned 60 and I have never felt better.

I have the strength of an ox, dance moves to rave all night long, and I radiate renewed joy for my marriage and my work.

I made a conscious decision to change my lifestyle a few years ago. I was in the process of leaving the corporate world, watching my children enter adulthood, and starting hormone replacement therapy. I decided it would be a good time to embark on a very simple – but remarkably effective – longevity quest.

It all started when I was researching my 2020 book, “Live Longer with AI,” and began seeking advice from longevity experts around the world. At the time, longevity science was still pretty fringe, so I spoke to a lot of pretty eccentric people who wanted to live forever and who touted radically longer life as something within our reach.

But even among the most diehard immortalists I spoke to for the book, I began to notice a pattern. Most of the things they did on a daily basis to stay young were fairly simple and inexpensive. They usually involved some form of calorie restriction, a healthy diet full of plants, decent exercise, and plenty of sleep. In short, the basics. Stuff your grandmother might have recommended.

I Reduced My ‘Biological Age’ by 10 Years: Here’s What That Means

Tests I took on my 60th birthday this spring suggest that my brain is aging like a 35-year-old, my heart health is in its mid-40s, and so is my metabolism.

It’s incredible to realize that in just four years, I’ve shaved a decade off a key measure of biological aging: My GlycanAge went from 46 to 35, while I aged from 56 to 60. (The GlycanAge test is a finger prick designed to track the level of chronic inflammation in your body, which directly predicts much of the decline associated with age.)

It drives me crazy when people wear these kind of one-off statistics about their “biological age” as some kind of badge of honor. As if the new tests being used for aging are definitive or validated.

I find that they can help provide a holistic view of our health. Taken together, along with the daily data from my smartwatch and the various apps I use to track my health over time, my GlycanAge provides a single data point that goes hand in hand with how I’m feeling, which is fantastic.

If I hadn’t researched my book and met experts who offered to test all this longevity medical technology for free, I probably never would have paid for a biological age test. It costs hundreds of dollars just for one. Do I really need a test to tell me I’ve never felt better? Regular checkups, blood tests and scans at the doctor’s are one thing, but I wouldn’t pay £300 just to brag about a biological age result. (Although it’s nice to see.)

4 Simple Changes I Made to Delay Aging

• Supplements: I take some supplements, but I don’t expect them to work miracles.

  Like many people seeking longevity, I make sure to take vitamin D every day, then B12, omega-3 and collagen for my joints – which are certainly not what they used to be, I would probably class them as my oldest body part, biologically speaking.

  A bone scan I had as part of my recent longevity checkup in Poland proved helpful diagnostically and convinced me to start taking some calcium as well. I like to eat Swiss cheese on non-fasting days, and I also try to prioritize proteins like chicken and fish in my diet, as well as lots of vegetables. I make a nice lentil soup and snack on seeds and nuts, generally avoiding ultra-processed foods.

• Caloric restriction: Four days a week, I eat only one meal a day, and while it’s still a bit controversial, I’m convinced that it’s one of the keys to healthy aging. It was a conversation with geneticist and longevity physician Nir Barzilai in New York that really sold me on this idea, because he explained how, mechanically, it makes sense that a little calorie restriction—specifically, a little bit of fasting each day—might benefit human longevity. (We already know it’s great for flies, worms, and mice, and there’s enough anecdotal evidence of benefit in humans that many longevity scientists already practice some form of calorie restriction or fasting themselves.)

• VO2 max: I also have a religious devotion to exercise: I take Zumba classes twice a week, as well as strength training sessions at home in the basement (my “gym”) and YouTube videos to get in shape. My VO2 max, a key measure of heart health and fitness, is off the charts!

  Tina Woods

  This regular workout keeps me in tip-top shape and ready to dance the night away with my husband in some of London’s hottest clubs. Being on the dancefloor absolutely electrifies me, and it’s also rekindled aspects of my relationship with my husband that I lost at the start of the menopause, bringing us closer together in a fun way. I feel like music is my lifeblood. I’m even a DJ now – I recently spun the tables at the world’s first longevity rave (held in a vegan café, of course).

• THS: One of the most pharmacological methods I have used to alter my biological age since I began this journey is hormone replacement therapy for menopause. It was an eye-opening experience. I have always been in pretty good shape and relatively healthy, but I noticed during menopause that I started gaining weight and generally felt low on energy, not like myself. Low libido, urinary issues. YuckI thought. It is a bit boring.

  My doctor suggested I try HRT. I started with a patch version, but it didn’t work very well. My current regimen consists of a few doses of estradiol gel, which I rub into my skin, plus progesterone capsules and a tiny bit of testosterone gel that I take off-label (I monitor my hormone levels very closely with regular blood tests and make sure my testosterone sachets are branded and not bought from a dodgy online pharmacy). It took me a while to find the right dose for me, but now I love it and believe it has played a big part in my recent reduction in biological age (what with healthier eating, losing about 20 pounds, finding my zest for life and all!). At first I was worried that testosterone might harm my heart health or mess with my cholesterol levels, but I am happy to report that everything seems to be going very well.

Joy is a key element of my longevity

I hope more work is done to measure how happiness and optimism can change our lives and help improve our longevity. There have already been studies on how stressors and major health events – such as pregnancy – can temporarily accelerate biological aging. And we know that happier, more optimistic people tend to live longer.

Scientific studies of flies, worms, and mice will never give us a better idea of ​​how happiness, meaning in life, and joy affect human health. I look forward to seeing how we might better study this in people, collecting data on biological age that will illuminate the simple, inexpensive things we can all do to live more fruitful and, yes, longer lives.

I know that longevity blue zones have gotten a lot of attention as beacons of healthy aging, and that many of the techniques their proponents advocate are sound. But I wish I had some stronger science to inform us about what we can do to make the most of our days, in a relatively simple and inexpensive way.

It’s amazing to see the impact of all these basics: nutrition, fitness, purpose, joy. I don’t get IV blood transfusions, stem cell treatments, or any other biohacking stuff that costs an arm and a leg, I do it all on the cheap. I’m now convinced that hope and happiness will trump any pill when it comes to improving biological aging. This is just my opinion at this point, but it’s based on what I’ve seen in myself.