How to Lower Your Biological Age (What the Evidence Actually Shows)

Search "how to lower your biological age" and you'll find supplements, cold plunges, and headlines promising you can "reverse aging" or shave a decade off your cells by next quarter. Most of it is oversold. Some of it is fabricated. And underneath the noise there is a real, well-measured answer that almost nobody states plainly.

Here is the honest version. You cannot reset your biological age to a younger number on demand, and the tests that claim to measure it are still estimates that disagree with each other. But the pace at which you age is not fixed. A small number of ordinary habits reliably slow it, and one randomized controlled trial has now shown a lifestyle change moving the needle on a validated aging biomarker. The effect sizes are modest. They are also real, cheap, and available to you today.

If you're not sure what biological age even means, start with our companion piece on biological age vs chronological age, then come back here for what to do about it.

The short answer

• You can slow the pace of aging, not rewind it. The honest claim the evidence supports is a slower trajectory and improved markers, not a reset to a younger self.
• The levers are unglamorous: regular movement, a mostly-plant diet, enough sleep, not smoking, moderate-to-no alcohol, managed stress, and social connection.
• Effect sizes are modest per lever but stack. A caloric-restriction trial slowed a pace-of-aging marker by roughly 2-3% (Waziry 2023). Combined healthy habits are linked to 12-14 more years of life at age 50 (Li 2018).
• Track the trend, not one number. Bio-age tests are estimates and disagree, so watch your trajectory over months, not a single reading.

Want a starting estimate and the habits most likely aging you? Take the free Longlevity assessment →

What "lowering biological age" means

Biological age is a measure of how your body is aging compared with the calendar. Two people born the same year can have different cardiovascular fitness, inflammation, blood sugar control, and cellular wear. Biological-age tests try to capture that gap in a single number.

The most useful research tool here is a shift in framing. Instead of asking "how old are my cells right now," newer methylation clocks ask "how fast am I aging right now." The leading example is DunedinPACE, a blood-based DNA-methylation biomarker built from the Dunedin birth cohort that tracked 19 organ-system measures across two decades (Belsky 2022). Think of it as a speedometer rather than an odometer. A DunedinPACE of 1.0 means you're aging one biological year per calendar year. Above 1.0 is faster; below is slower.

This distinction matters for anyone trying to "lower" their number. Turning back the odometer is largely not something lifestyle can do. Easing off the accelerator is. That is the realistic goal: a slower pace, sustained over years.

The one randomized trial worth knowing

Most biological-age research is observational: it watches who ages faster and looks for patterns. That can't prove a habit causes slower aging. The exception, and the reason this topic is worth writing about at all, is the CALERIE trial.

CALERIE randomized 220 healthy, non-obese adults to either 25% caloric restriction or their normal diet for two years, then measured DNA-methylation aging markers (Waziry 2023, Nature Aging). The result: the caloric-restriction group slowed their DunedinPACE pace-of-aging by roughly 2-3% versus controls, an effect visible within the first year and held at two years. In the authors' framing, a 2-3% slowing is in the range that translates to a 10-15% lower mortality risk in other datasets, comparable to a smoking-cessation effect.

Two honest caveats keep this in perspective. First, the effect was modest. Second, two other well-known clocks in the same study (PhenoAge and GrimAge) did not change significantly, which is exactly why you shouldn't stake everything on one test. The takeaway isn't "starve yourself." It's proof of concept: a sustained lifestyle change measurably slowed a validated aging biomarker in a controlled trial. The levers below are the practical, sustainable version of that finding.

Move your body (the best-supported lever)

If you do one thing, move. In the Health and Retirement Study, physically active adults had a slower DunedinPACE than inactive adults, roughly 0.05 fewer biological years per calendar year after adjusting for demographics and health conditions (Ammous 2025). It's observational, so treat it as association rather than proof, but it points the same direction as everything else.

You do not need to train like an athlete. The mortality curve is steep at the bottom and flat at the top: about 75 minutes a week of brisk walking captures most of the benefit, and pushing past the guidelines adds little (see our deep dive on the minimum effective exercise dose). Aerobic movement does most of the work; adding resistance training protects the muscle and bone you otherwise lose after 50.

Practical target: 11 minutes of brisk walking most days, then add two short strength sessions once that's automatic. More on the specifics on our exercise habits page.

Eat mostly plants, and mind your weight

Diet is the lever CALERIE tested, and it's the one with the most confounded evidence outside a trial. The signal that holds up across large cohorts is unglamorous: more vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and fish; less ultra-processed food, refined sugar, and red and processed meat. That's the pattern behind the Mediterranean-style diets that consistently associate with lower disease and mortality (we cover the specifics in what the research shows about longevity diets).

Body weight belongs in the same section. Carrying excess visceral fat drives the chronic inflammation and insulin resistance that show up in nearly every accelerated-aging profile. You don't need to chase caloric restriction the way the CALERIE participants did; for most people, the achievable version is a mostly-plant diet, fewer ultra-processed calories, and a stable weight in a healthy range. See our diet habits page for where to start.

Protect your sleep

Sleep is where a lot of otherwise-healthy people quietly lose ground. In the Health and Retirement Study, short sleep was associated with about 1.3 years of GrimAge acceleration and a faster DunedinPACE pace of aging, with insomnia adding to the effect (Kusters 2024). Across large datasets the relationship is U-shaped: both too little and too much associate with faster aging markers, with the low point around seven hours.

The mechanism is straightforward. Short and irregular sleep raises inflammatory signaling, disrupts glucose metabolism, and blunts overnight recovery, and it also erodes the willpower behind every other habit on this list. Fix sleep first and the rest gets easier. Consistent timing tends to matter as much as raw duration. Our sleep habits page has the practical protocol.

Subtract the accelerators: smoking and alcohol

The fastest way to slow your pace of aging is to stop actively speeding it up. Smoking is the single largest modifiable accelerator of biological aging and mortality, and quitting produces some of the biggest life-expectancy gains in all of the literature (see quitting smoking and life expectancy). If you smoke, quitting is the highest-leverage change on this whole list, and nothing else comes close.

Alcohol is more nuanced but the direction has hardened. The old "moderate drinking is protective" story has largely collapsed under better-controlled studies, and the current read is that less is better, with no clearly safe amount for aging markers (we walk through this in is any alcohol safe). You don't have to be perfect. Cutting back measurably reduces one of the accelerators.

Manage stress and stay connected

The last cluster is the one people skip because it's hard to quantify, and it's real. Chronic psychological stress is associated with elevated inflammation, dysregulated cortisol, and markers of accelerated cellular aging, though the effect sizes are smaller and messier than headlines claim (see stress and cellular aging). The fix isn't eliminating stress; it's building reliable recovery so the stress response resolves.

Social connection sits alongside it. Isolation and loneliness carry a mortality risk comparable to several traditional risk factors, and strong relationships track with slower decline (see loneliness and longevity). These levers rarely show up in supplement ads, but they're doing quiet work on your trajectory.

Track the trajectory, not a single number

One more caveat, because it's the one most likely to save you money and stress. Biological-age tests are estimates, and different clocks routinely disagree. In the CALERIE trial itself, DunedinPACE moved while PhenoAge and GrimAge did not. A single reading tells you little; the noise between tests can swamp the signal from a year of good habits.

What's actually informative is the trend over time. Measure the same way, on the same schedule, and watch the direction across months and years. A number that drifts down over three check-ins means far more than one impressive reading. That's exactly why the Longlevity assessment is built to be retaken: the point is your trajectory, not a one-time verdict. Our methodology page explains which effect sizes we use and where they come from.

Frequently asked questions

Citations

• Belsky DW, Caspi A, Corcoran DL, et al. DunedinPACE, a DNA methylation biomarker of the pace of aging. eLife. 2022;11:e73420.
• Waziry R, Ryan CP, Corcoran DL, et al. Effect of long-term caloric restriction on DNA methylation measures of biological aging in healthy adults from the CALERIE trial. Nature Aging. 2023;3(3):248-257.
• Li Y, Pan A, Wang DD, et al. Impact of healthy lifestyle factors on life expectancies in the US population. Circulation. 2018;138(4):345-355.
• Ammous F, Zhao W, Ratliff SM, et al. Physical activity is associated with decreased epigenetic aging: findings from the Health and Retirement Study. Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle. 2025;16(3):e13873.
• Kusters CDJ, Klopack ET, Crimmins EM, et al. Short sleep and insomnia are associated with accelerated epigenetic age. Psychosomatic Medicine. 2024;86(5):453-462.