Slumping metabolism with age

Healthy Aging

Getting back younger-than-40 metabolism

Like an older home or car, our bodies tend to need increasing maintenance as we age. While not everyone ages the same way, we can pretty reliably predict that our metabolism will slow down, our joint discomfort will go up, and our pill boxes to fix heart, liver, and sleep problems will get fuller.

In this series, we are talking about the latest peer-reviewed science on the different pieces and parts of us that age. Most importantly, we will cover new avenues being pursued to protect us against – and even reverse – those parts of aging that we can see and feel.

This week, let’s talk about metabolism.

I think I know what metabolism is, but just to be sure…what is metabolism?

Metabolism involves many orchestrated chemical reactions in each and every one of your cells, with the end result of creating energy and all the other good stuff you need to stay healthy.

Got it. Does our metabolism really slow with age?

While it is more accurate to say that our metabolism becomes more dysregulated as we age, Ravera et al. absolutely show that our aging metabolism results in substantially less cellular energy and more damaging oxidative stress. As you can see in the figures below, these changes really start kicking in once we hit 40 years old.

The result? Harder-to-burn fat, harder-to-control glucose levels, and less resilience against ongoing cellular damage. In other words, aging-related breakdown. Ferrucci et al. characterize this decline in cellular energy and metabolism as the ‘energy-splicing resilience axis hypothesis of aging’.

Okay, those graphs were pretty discouraging. Let’s hear some good news.

The good news is that we now know what to target to get our metabolic health back to our 20s and 30s: Turn up cellular ATP. Turn down oxidative stress.

• Turn up ATP. Describing ATP as ‘life’s energy reservoir’, Chu et al. summarize a variety of interventions being studied to increase ATP as a means to support healthy aging. Compounds being explored to raise ATP levels include use of xanthine oxidoreductase inhibitors with inosine, terazosin, ketone-based interventions, and RNA therapeutics.
• Turn down oxidative stress. Many antioxidants are being explored for their anti-aging potential. A thorough review of this topic is provided by Rusu et al., with a focus on plants with antioxidative properties, including Pistacia lentiscus, Siegesbeckia pubescens, Rosa gallica, and Ginkgo biloba. Go plant power.

While promising, the ability for these interventions to safely restore our metabolism, especially as we age, are still being studied. So, stay tuned!