Living in Extreme Heat Makes You Age Faster

Turns out that not only is climate change ruining our coastlines and making our weather more extreme, but that extreme heat it’s causing will age you so fast you’ll feel like the villain at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

A recent study published in the scientific journal Science Advances found that high temperatures have a significant impact on the biological aging of older adults. The researchers gathered data from 3,600 adults across the US aged 56 or older. They then compared epigenetic aging to the number of extreme heat days in their regions.

At a molecular level, the researchers found that people in areas that more frequently experience heat waves age faster than those in temperate or cool climates.

Older adults in regions with over 140 days of temperatures exceeding 90 degrees Fahrenheit every year could age up to 14 months faster than folks in cooler climates. If you’re wondering how they even measured this to begin with, they used epigenetic clock tests, which I’ve written about before.

The epigenetic clock test provides a person’s biological age by measuring changes in methylation values in cells. That’s all very Science-y and complicated, though. The easier way to put it is that, like a tree, there’s a way to look inside of you so we can count your rings to determine your age. Your epigenetic age doesn’t always align with the date you were born.

Obviously, we know that heat can dehydrate you, it can cause heatstroke, and it can even contribute to cardiovascular diseases. According to the new research, there are more subtle effects on aging that accumulate over time that, for instance, could increase your biological age by 2.48 years for every additional year of high heat exposure you experience. That’s a rapid increase in biological aging on par with smoking and heavy drinking.

Fittingly, researchers found that there was a 14-month difference in the epigenetic ages of people living in Phoenix, Arizona, and people in cooler climates like Seattle, Washington. That difference still existed even after the researchers took a variety of factors into account, such as income, physical activity, smoking, and education.

You could have two people making the exact same amount of money at the same job, who experience the same level of stress, and are both non-smokers who abstain from alcohol, yet the one who lives in a hotter climate will be of an older genetic age than the one in the cooler climate.

The sun is cooking us all, but those of us under direct heat are cooking faster — and it’s only going to get worse as the effects of climate change ramp up. In the meantime, wear your sunscreen and stay cool.