Plate Nº 16 · recorded September 30, 2026
Health & Medicine ResearchReported finding
Where You Live May Speed Up How Fast Your Body Ages
A Finnish twin study finds lifestyle and environmental exposures in childhood explain about 28% of variation in biological age at 22, pointing to structural factors, not just personal habits.
By Nathan Brooks4 min read728 words
In brief
- Childhood and adolescent lifestyle and environmental exposures explained roughly 28% of the variation in biological age at age 22.
- Smoking, alcohol use and youth unemployment were linked to accelerated aging; higher tree cover and neighborhood factors predicted slower aging.
- The study assessed 186 exposures — the 'exposome' — using machine learning in a longitudinal twin cohort at the University of Jyväskylä, published in Environment International (2026).
Your body may be aging faster or slower than your birth certificate suggests — and the difference may start long before middle age. Researchers at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland have found that biological aging can accelerate as early as young adulthood, and that lifestyle and environmental exposures during childhood and adolescence account for roughly 28% of the variation in biological age at age 22.
The study, published in the journal Environment International, comes from the university's Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences. Doctoral researcher Annika Opperbeck led the work, which analyzed data from a longitudinal twin study — a design that follows the same participants over years and, because twins share much of their genetics, helps researchers isolate the effects of environment and behavior.
What is biological age?
Chronological age counts the years since birth. Biological age measures how worn the body's cells and tissues actually are. Scientists estimate it using markers such as epigenetic age — chemical changes to DNA that accumulate over time and alter how genes switch on and off. Biological aging begins before birth, and it can run faster or slower than the calendar. When it runs faster, the risk of age-related diseases climbs earlier in life.
Measuring the 'exposome'
The Finnish team focused on what scientists call the exposome: the total collection of environmental and lifestyle exposures a person experiences. They assessed 186 distinct exposures in participants' childhoods and adolescent years. These included personal behaviors — such as smoking and alcohol use — along with neighborhood-level factors like surrounding greenness, air pollution and sociodemographic conditions in participants' living areas. Machine learning models then linked these exposures to epigenetic age measured at age 22.
Together, the childhood and adolescent exposures explained approximately 28% of the variation in epigenetic age among the young adults. That leaves most of the variation unexplained, a limitation the researchers acknowledge — genetics and other unmeasured factors clearly play substantial roles, and the findings describe associations rather than proven causes.
Individual choices are only part of the story
Smoking, alcohol use and youth unemployment all correlated with accelerated biological aging. So-called neighborhood factors pointed the other way: higher tree cover, a higher vegetation index and a neighborhood age structure weighted toward certain age groups predicted slower aging.
The takeaway, according to the researchers, is that biological age is not simply a matter of personal discipline.
"Our results show that biological age is not determined solely by individual choices," Opperbeck says. "Many of the environmental exposures we identified are structural and systemic, meaning that individuals cannot change them on their own, but society can."
She sees a practical implication in that. "This gives us the opportunity for early interventions to alter long-term health trajectories and reduce health inequalities before they become established," Opperbeck continues.
In other words, if unemployment, pollution and neighborhood composition shape aging by the early twenties, then policy interventions — rather than individual lifestyle advice alone — could plausibly shift long-term health outcomes.
Some results ran against expectations
Not every finding matched expectations. Larger green spaces were associated with accelerated biological aging, and airborne black carbon — a component of air pollution — predicted slower aging. Both results seem counterintuitive.
The researchers offer a cautious interpretation: these patterns likely reflect underlying rural–urban differences that also influence aging, such as socioeconomic and lifestyle differences between rural and urban populations. A green, sparsely populated area is not interchangeable with a green suburb, and the study's models may be picking up those broader structural distinctions rather than the effects of vegetation or pollution themselves.
What comes next
The study is a single snapshot from one Finnish cohort, and its machine learning methods cannot yet untangle how environmental and lifestyle exposures interact with one another over time. The researchers say that further development of these computational methods will allow scientists to examine those complex interactions in greater detail in future work.
For now, the core message stands: by age 22, the places and circumstances in which people grow up have already left a measurable mark on how fast their bodies are aging — and much of that mark is shaped by society, not just by individuals.
Publication details: Annika Opperbeck et al., "Exploring the exposome and unexplained variance in epigenetic ageing – Insights from a longitudinal twin study in adolescence and early adulthood," Environment International (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.envint.2026.110430
via Medical Xpress (Source)
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