Mona SharmaCelebrity nutritionist and wellness advocate

The Real Way to Measure Your Biological Age

4 Dec 2025 · 1 min

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In this segment, the speaker explains that measuring telomere length, once considered a strong indicator of internal aging, is limited because it reflects only the specific cell type sampled and does not represent whole‑body aging. They introduce "glycan age," which examines sugar molecules (glycans) on immune cells; the patterns of these glycans shift with age and can provide a more systemic view of aging. However, the speaker emphasizes that the scientific consensus is to use a combination of multiple biological age tests rather than relying on any single metric to obtain a comprehensive assessment of an individual's aging status.

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For a long time, it was thought if we measured the length of our telomeres, that would be a really good marker as to how we were aging on the inside. But it turns out that it is, but only in the specific cell type that you measure it from. So it's not a good reflection of what your aging is across the entire body. Another type is something called a glycan age. And this is looking at glycans, which are little sugar molecules that are on the outside of your immune cells. And again, the patterns of these glycan sugar molecules change in quite a rel way as you get older. Sometimes when you do these types of tests, it's more reflective of aging across the entire body as well. But ultimately, scientists still agree that the best way is to do a range of all these different types of tests and not take one of them as the ultimate number, shall we say.