Living healthier and feeling younger is about more than figuring how your lifestyle is impacting your organ systems and then working to reverse that. It’s also about slowing down how fast you are aging.

Put another way, it’s about keeping an eye on your aging speedometer. And that’s something we’ve devoted our lives to helping you do.

Now researchers from Columbia University and Duke University, working with data from the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, say that some DNA methylation effects (when DNA is altered by a chemical reaction in the body) may be the timekeepers of your aging process.

They found that methylation causes chemical changes to your DNA that can alter gene expression (epigenetic changes) and regulate protein production.

So the researchers looked at 20 years of data on 1,000 people to identify how methylation changes 19 biomarkers affecting things such as cardiovascular, metabolic, renal, hepatic, immune, periodontal, and pulmonary functions.

Not only did that allow them to determine the speed at which a person was aging, it showed that different organ systems in your body can age at different rates.

How do you limit negative DNA methylation?

By working to protect those biomarkers from disease and dysfunction. The key is to control body-wide inflammation.

That means managing stress with your posse, purpose, play, and techniques such as  meditation, eliminating inflammation-promoting foods (red and processed meats, added sugars, highly processed foods), and making sure to get 30-60 (or more) minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day.