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Dec 9, 2025
The Guardian view on ageing research: our lives have more distinct phases than we thought | Editorial
The Guardian view on ageing research: our lives have more distinct phases than we thought | Editorial
The Guardian
Tech moguls may foolishly hope to stay forever young, but others could benefit too from evidence of the human body's dynamic and varied journey through life
Ageing can feel remarkably sudden. One morning you awake to find new aches, or lapses in strength and memory that you could swear were not present just a few days prior. We do not literally age overnight, but as research is increasingly showing, we may not do so in a steady, linear path either.
Over the past decade a multitude of studies have suggested that ageing - at least for certain organs and bodily systems - may actually consist of long periods of stability, punctuated by inflection points or periods of rapid biological change. This shift in thinking has raised hopes for anti-ageing medicines. But it could also make us rethink our attitude to ageing in general, viewing it as a dynamic and varied journey - rather than simply a slow march of attrition and breakdown.
The latest study bolstering this view, published in Nature Communications, used a large number of brain scans to show that the structure and interconnectivity of the brain can be separated into five distinct eras, marked by turning points at nine, 32, 66 and 83. Of particular interest in this study is the identification of a very long "adolescent" phase from age nine to 32 in which brain connections appear to become stronger and more efficient - a period that extends well into what we traditionally consider a static "adulthood".
Other recent studies looking at a variety of bodily structures have proposed a rapid period of ageing in many organs at around age 50; specific changes in metabolism and other systems around age 44 and 60; or that the skin as an organ goes through four distinct ageing phases, while the adult immune system ages in two phases.
These results are largely the fruits of the so-called "omics" revolution in research, with the generation of large datasets allowing the cheap and rapid measurement of an organ or body's entire c
